Youtube

On Tuesday I saw a post by a DJ friend of mine about the new Foo Fighters. Did he post a track? No! He posted the video from youtube. I thought that was interesting given the source of dissemination. DJ's listen to music, right? Surely they don't sit around watching youtube videos for the source of their music. Some of you out there probably use Pandora, Slacker, Last FM or some other source for streaming music from the cloud. I use Slacker at home and in the studio when I want to be a passive listener. When I want to go truly on demand, I go straight to youtube. Not that any of this is new information but youtube seems to be hands down the best source of on demand music. A couple of weeks ago I was turning a friend on to a band and when he told me he would check it out he said, "Cool, I will check it out on youtube." I didn't tell him to go there, that was simply his response. I have spent countless hours there, watching and listening to just about anything I want to hear. Granted, you have some of the asshole major labels taking down "their content" but you can usually still find the track, even if it is not accompanied by the actual video. Once again, where the fuck am I going with this?

I believe in 2008, youtube leapfrogged Yahoo as the second largest search engine in the world. As reported in an article posted in 2010 on www.viralblog.com , youtube exceeds over two billion views a day, and the average person spends 15 minutes per day there.  About 20 percent of all the content on youtube is music so do the math. With over 24 hours of video uploaded to youtube every minute of every day, that is about 3500 hours of music video uploaded every day. Staggering to think about. I know what some of you are thinking now. If there is so much music on youtube, why should I be there if I will simply be a needle in the stack of needles? Because all of your fans and your potential fans are already living there. Now, since I have thrown a few obligatory factoids out there, as Snoop would say, "Back to the lecture at hand."

Since I posted the Foo Fighter's video at the top of this blog, did you watch it? I am sure this video cost them next to nothing aside from the alleged meth and Jack Daniels for our beloved Lemme. Doing videos now is just part of the gig. Resign yourself to the fact that video has become king again. Include video in your release strategy even if it is simply a slideshow of band photos. Remember that on the internet, content is king. Shoot video of your band in the studio. Shoot video of your day on the road shopping for unicorn snow globes at the truck stop on your way to the gig. Fans want to be let into your world. Fans want to see what you are doing when you aren't jumping around on stage acting like a maniac. When Gravity Kills broke in the mid-nineties, we had the benefit of a video friendly MTV. Tons of people watched and tons of bands were discovered by music fans on 120 minutes, Alternative Nation as well as Head Banger's Ball. In turn what happened to MTV was they found out that their video programming did not keep their viewer's attention and their ratings went up when they played the reality shows like The Real World and Jersey Shore that have become our guilty pleasures. Why the fuck would I want to sit through a bunch of shit I don't want to see with the hope of catching a video from a band that I gave a shit about? The internet and youtube give me the option of watching what I want to watch, when I want to watch it. Now don't give me excuses that shooting video is expensive or a pain in the ass. HD cameras are cheap now and when you think about it, a video camera should be looked at as an essential piece of band gear or equipment necessary to complete a home studio. Make yourself get in the habit of shooting video and give your fans more to capture their attention and hopefully keep them paying attention.