It's FAWM again, and I have to upload somewhere. Historically, that's been Soundcloud (it has a Download button which is super good for dopamine).

But over time, I've increasingly seen FAWMers posting to YouTube, and now I'm wondering if I shouldn't try it out.

I have an anxiety disorder that is tricky to live with. Thus, the most thrilling video I would ever upload would be whatever FL-Studio's insane video-creation wizard produced by me clicking Next a lot.

So. What I want to know is this.

Is YouTube a significantly better platform than Soundcloud for posting original music? Should I be doing both? Why is YouTube good?

Please sell it to me. I want to understand this from the perspective of a person who isn't crippled by lower brain chatter.

Thank you.

SoundCloud is a platform for musicians. It's nice to connect there and find people to collaborate, but you barely find a real audience. Most non-musicians dont know about this platform. I use their app a lot to listen to music.

YouTube has creators and listeners both, but its damn hard to find new people unless you do tons of funny or educational videos. I use because of it's broader audience and free space.

Thank you, @Nadine, that's helpful. YouTube is pretty much part of human culture now. My kids use it. My 82 year old Dad uses it. It is the river, I guess.

So for you it's about access to an audience. Fair. I have a complicated relationship with wanting an audience.

Anyhoo. Thanks for your input.

God, FAWM is so much nicer than the broader internet.

I've found I get more listens on YouTube because punters seem more likely to click on a link to a video than to a simple audio stream.

By "more", I mean two or three per year as opposed to zero.

Both youtube and soundcloud are corporate owned platforms. Anything you post and host there and the metadata (IP-adress, cookies, ...) are subject to further utilization by those companies. Often without your consent, as the terms and conditions are twice as long as Shakespeare's Hamlet.

If I were you I'd find me a pretty peertube instance and host my videos there. Peertube easily connects to other services of the fediverse, like mastodon or friendica and people can easily follow and comment/like your videos from there. Besides it has a download button =)

youtube has a better algorithm and fewer spammers, so if you're looking for an audience for original stuff, you have a better chance at it, especially for well-produced fare like yours.

for me soundcloud was useful for storage but has evolved into a platform for trading likes on rickety demos and I think you're beyond that stage.

even if you just spam-published lyric videos of Mass Love, you'll be way ahead than on soundcloud. I think there was a survey a year or two back that youtube is people's go-to platform for music discovery.

and then there is Dog in a Car! If you can make that, you can break youtube.

you can always throw in a few covers in adjacent genres to get people to come over, but that's up to you.

so yeah, my money's on the tube.

Youtube won't generate an audience unless you work hard at it, nor will Bandcamp, but nor will Soundcloud either. I still use soundcloud for temporary, it's convenient and like youtube, the URL plays straight away on the FAWM site. Longer term, Bandcamp. Youtube usually only when I make an actual video of something, or for live performance recordings (visual and audio). You could of course use the FAWM hosting, but for that a donation is needed..

I do watch a lot of music based YouTube and Tiktok, and honestly I think most people skip performance videos (unless they’re virtuosic). What tends to work better is demonstrating a particular aspect of writing or recording in the video. I wanna see how you put things together! Or how you got that sweet drum sound. This is canny because you can just sneak in your actual song in the educational content!

@dragondreams No zong left unbust. This is our creed.

@torsten you minx, you're making Mastodon sound cooler all the time. For my purposes, Peertube is not an improvement on Soundcloud yet. The advantages are philosophical, but not practical, is my uneducated opinion at this point.

@leepat you're very kind. Thanks for the compliments.

@timfatchen If I follow you, you're saying that YouTube doesn't offer any particular advantages over any other platform. From that perspective, staying put on Soundcloud would be the path of least resistance.

@frenchcricket, You made a good point about using educational content to self-promote, I've seen people do that.

I don't think I'd be able to do that sort of thing, though. Would require me to talk on mic, for one thing.

@mdavisto Yes, soundcloud=POLR. Except that the free version has a significant song limit, so I regard it as temporary. (youtube OTOH appears to have no limits whatsoever, everything I've ever put up is still there and I can put up any length tho' that relates to past contracts. But its a pain having to create and upload video, even if the video is simply a one-frame still.)

@timfatchen Ah, but there I have an advantage, in that FL Studio (my DAW) can automagically create a video with no input from myself. I have used this feature exactly once.

I used to have a pro account at Soundcloud but I abandoned the platform because it has an endemic spam problem. The majority of comments are left by people who won't have listened to your music but are desperate to sell you promotional services that will artificially inflate your listen count. And SC's owners have done absolutely jack about it. Folks, if you use SC for hosting your music on FAWM, please keep an eye on the embedded comments that pop up to make sure they're genuine; a lot of them won't be.

For me, YT is the lesser of two evils; they take active steps in cutting out spam, and I suspect their reach is an order of magnitude greater. You can also enable a comment approval function (make sure to turn it on!) that means you have to OK any message before it's made public. And as @timfatchen observes, there's no limit to the amount of stuff you can upload there. However, if you post original music there, be prepared to get the occasional DMCA claim by dodgy orgs claiming your work as theirs. I've successfully contested the ones I've had, but it's a pain to have to deal with.

The tl;dr is that SC *rely* on users staying put being the POLR. They don't deserve your money, and why put up with a 20-minute limit on hosted material for the free tier when YT lets you store as much as you want (and gives you better stats about how it's doing into the bargain)?

my first fawms were all soundcloud and when my limit of free space was reached i switched to youtube. in terms of fawming, both platforms were suitable for reaching fellow fawmers. the only other people who listened to my soundcloud posts were friends and phony promoters. my youtube fawm posts averaged 20-100 listens, while other youtube posts, such as my ethnographic films and live performances reached between 20-200,000 views. for the last several years, i have posted exclusicely on bandcamp, which draws the largest non-fawm traffic and can be moderately lucrative at times.

One reason I would not use Youtube myself for FAWM purposes - the ads!

@mikeb I agree they're a problem. I only ever use YT in a browser with the plugins NoScript and uBlock installed and enabled. No ads get through unless the video maker includes a sponsored message as part of their recording. Makes things *so* much more pleasant.

Honestly I've tried using SoundCloud before but every time it just refuses to let me make an account for literally zero reason whatsoever, and i gave up and posted my stuff on YouTube. Not really sure if one has its pros or cons but if you ever need help with the FL Studio ZGameAudio Visualizer, I'd be willing to help out! it's what I export all my videos of my songs with, lol.

@headfirstonly Thanks for such an indepth piece of feedback, it's appreciated. I have indeed noticed that every time I post anything on Soundcloud, it's instantly liked by 2-3 promo companies. Someone remixed one of our tracks (with permission), and it mysteriously got 100,000 likes in a week, and yet no comments.

Is the procedure to fight DMCAs onerous?

Also, regarding Adblockers, Firefox on Android supports NoScript and uBlock, so, when I'm on my phone, I don't use the YouTube app.

@billwhite51 Do you post straight to Bandcamp during FAWM? No spit and polish first?

@mikeb Like @headfirstonly, I recommend installing adblockers. You can do this at the network level for most ads, using something like pihole, but NoScript and uBlock are trivial to install, and result in a massive quality of life upgrade.

@lunaathefur Thanks for the offer. It's something I've been meaning to look into, but, somehow I only ever think of it about 5 minutes before it would have been useful. If I get stuck I'll shout, but, probably just going to use the wizard.

@mdavisto fighting DMCA is normally not that big of an issue if what you're making is indeed your own stuff, all you do is send a claim that it's yours and you let YouTube do the rest (and hopefully it all works out in your favor, lol)

The wizard is really useful and easy way to make videos to go along with Music, so if you're starting there that's what I'd recommend. Plug-in Presets are also there but they don't have the same customization options as the wizard does, and normally requires going into more tabs and resizing things to get the text to all fit lol. I'd say if you get a chance and want to, just sit down and spend like 15-30 minutes having fun with it and not having a clue what you're doing! its how i know the majority of how it works lol. Aimless clicking, and google!

@mdavisto have one bandcamp file where i post the songs as they are written for my FAWMERS. then, after fawm ends, i work on sequencing albums for the general public from those tracks.

@mdavisto No, as @lunaathefur says, you just have the jump through the hoops to show it's your own music (last flag I had was from an algorithm that thought I was Serge Gainsbourg, which was kinda funny) but it's tedious and unrewarding.

@headfirstonly
are YT ads even an issue if the channel is not monetised (which it can’t be below 1000 subscribers)?

@leepat That's a good question; I've certainly never seen any on my own channel, so probably not. Oh to have problems like that... :-D

I've heard that if you use an ad-blocker, the content creator does not see any compensation, but if you pay for a Youtube Premium subscription, the creator can still get compensated for your ad-free views. I'd be interested if anyone could confirm or deny this. (I understand there are also other factors that go into whether a specific video or channel can be monetized, but I watch enough Youtube in general that the answer to this is relevant to me even if it wouldn't directly impact a brand new channel created for FAWM.)

I use unlisted YouTube videos for my demos for two reasons that have nothing to do with it being a fabulous platform:
1) it's the most reputable website I know of where musicians can upload an unlimited number of music without paying anyone.
2) I find recording a video on my phone and uploading it to YouTube is the easiest possible method for sharing first drafts of songs. Eventually I will want to put in the work of a multi-track mastered recording, but not during FAWM. I'd rather do the easiest thing.

Okay a bonus third reason is that in the long run, YouTube is a good place to have a presence if you want to grow your fanbase and make money, and using it as my main platform can only be good for that. However, I know it's not likely I will ever have a large subscriber base or an income from YouTube and I'm okay with that. Still I like the idea that it could happen someday, and it won't happen on any other website.

Personally I dislike Soundcloud, not just because they nickel and dime creators, but I also find it very focused on hip hop, rap and electronic music (which is almost the opposite of mine) and most followers, comments and messages are spam. YouTube doesn't have as much spam as most social media so that's another plus. I do keep my most recent polished albums uploaded to Soundcloud just for the hell of it, but I can't say it's ever been benefited me in any way.

@leepat There never used to be ads on unmonetized channels, but in the past year I think, YouTube quietly updated its terms and conditions to say that they are allowed to put ads on any video they want, and if the creator is not monetized they're under no obligation to share the income. It's not a great policy, but honestly it must be such an expensive website to run and it's pretty much the only place that doesn't charge creators to post unlimited content, so I'd rather they increase ads than take away my option to post.

Even with the monetization feature unlocked on my channel it really doesn't work if your video doesn't get over about 1000 views, and the people need to actually watch the ads.

In my opinion if you do youtube, don't expect to get it monetized. It's a tedious process and getting enough subscribers is really difficult for small creators.

@lunaathefur Totally, that's why I said I see that as a potential future bonus, in contrast with most websites where that would not even be an option. They just make money off your content without giving you anything in return. I already make significant money (not enough to live off of) from songwriting and performing, so I would never expect YouTube to be a full-time gig. And it's definitely not my main way of trying to further my career or build a fanbase either. But like I said, imo it's still the best website where you can post unlimited content for free and the potential pittance they offer is still better than what everyone else is offering.

@billwhite Are you saying that you use two different Bandcamp accounts? That's a bit clever.

@amandaroseriley thank you for sharing very useful insight. You'll probably hate my stuff, I'm very synth oriented, and heading deeper in. And yet, it mostly comes out pretty anyway, in part because of an almost inappropriate love for orchestra. How weird is that?

I get you 100% with being OK with being obscure, and here's why.

There is a moment, sat at my computer, when a track begins to work. It was fumbling about before, the idea was there, but wasn't ... and suddenly it begins to work. That hit of dopamine is unlike any drug I know. It's pure, unfiltered joy, and is why I make music. Nothing else I do makes me feel the same way.

I can see how views from premium users benefit creators. But urrrrrrr YouTube's advertising is obnoxious. All of this data they gather, yet they still can't show me an ad for something I give a shit about.

@mdavisto Don't worry, I didn't say I hate that music, just that I haven't found much benefit to having my music on a site where that's all 99% of the users listen to. It's not as much of a place for networking or finding fans if your music is acoustic, folk, or pop/rock. But if your music fits in better with the norm there, then ymmv. I still think it has issues with spam though. And very true about the joy of making music that you find awesome, independent of whether anyone else does ❤️

You only get ads on videos if you're monetised or there's a copyright claim. I don't get anything like the views! And being copyrighted on my second a-cappela of Eternal Flame was quite the compliment!

But I do get sucked into watching other people's monetised vids. Definitely not just songs that I amthere for! Pretty eclectic channel. I try to let ads wash over me. Sometimes it's a free way to donate to creators.

@mdavisto that FL Studio video feature sounds sweet.

I think I'd never heard of SoundCloud until I saw someone using it on FAWM. Then I splurged for Logic and it has a SoundCloud upload built-in so I was like "ahhhh, now I see why they use it!" and now I'm like "hmm, how long will it be until they add a YouTube share feature to Logic"?

Maybe for now I could make a template video in Final Cut of randomized screen saver images and bind my songs to that video. God that sounds like more work than I'm ready for. Path of most resistance.

I like YouTube because I find it easy to share direct links to my songs. However, with you tube you have to upload everything in video format. So unfortunately, I can't just upload an mp3, I have to make some kind of video to upload it. It's simple, but it's an extra step. Still I like being able to just send a YouTube link to someone if need be.