It's web 3.0, it's web 3.0, so much better than Web 2.0!

'We're emailing to let you know that we're changing our...'

LOL.

We make music. That's what we do.

I make videos. I like making videos.

We make stuff, that's what we do. We like making stuff.

I've been exhorted by Social Media to GET POPULAR for some time. CLAMOUR FOR ATTENTION!!!!!!

Now I'm being told that there's a youtube crackdown on WHO GETS THE MOST VIEWS!!!

Really?

Social Media, Facebook and Youtube are the railways stations and the carriages that transport us.

They are not the destination.

Youtube is a storage facility that wants to be a TV network and wants me to spend my time fighting for attention rather than doing work that is worthy of attention.

Of course, that's my viewpoint. I snarkily interpret their position as 'well if you were popular enough we wouldn't be having this conversation.' LOL.

Hold my videos.

If it doesn't suit, I'll host them somewhere else.

My job is making stuff, not making Youtube great again.

This is a platform on which virtually every song by every artist can be accessed at no cost or at the discounted rate of a cut of a cut of a slice of the advertising revenue.

EDIT - Got asked to add this other comment I said off screen cos it's true - 

For 10 years we have stuck to our knitting.

In that same time, 'youtube stars' have developed Successful products that often use Clickbait images (where are those huge boobs I saw in the pic???) or other varieties of Huckster behaviour that wouldn't have been out of place in a 19th Century Periodical.

Now, thanks to the backlash against social media by State based players, cultural insensivity from Yahoos and Yobbos who make obnoxious videos or outright malicious bad stuff, Youtube have changed their parameters.

Now that's cool - businesses grow, systems evolve. I'm cool with the DRM at the moment.

Doesn't bother us. Why? We never played the clickbait OMGZ!!!! game.

No biggie. Doesn't affect our bottom line.

Yet it means that people who have based their business on the things that worked in web 2.0 (2007-2017), are suddenly going WTF and getting 'demonetised' etc. Oops.

Now as a thinking person, you'd might comment, 'hey we played by your old rules, developed a product and were doing ok, now you're changing the rules, what gives'?

You might also start to wonder 'if I play by your new rules and work out how to succeeed, will you pull the rug out again or change the goalposts?'

Especially when the way that they have succeeded, the things that they have done, to become the major player, were 'Bad' but now 'we've stopped doing that'.

'Of course we remove copyright material. Of course we moderate offensive videos. We can't be responsible for what people upload, although we can run ads on it and suddenly discover Virtue when Lucre allows and PR Demands.' 

A while ago, Facebook, who relied on our content and the willingness of other people to connect with us in order to create a big enough audience to sell advertising to, have found instead, that it's easier to sell advertising to us, to reach people we already have a connection to.

Net result? I removed FB from my 'most visited' tabs.

If you read the tea leaves, Facebook are deeply worried about what's happening to their crowd.

We're still making music.

...Still making videos.

...Still doing shows.

...Still...doing our job.

While our friends in Tech Land hustle for a buck and keep changing the rules to try and find the next buck, they may have forgotten the motto 'Don't be evil'. Oops.

It doesn't suit the personality of this outfit to be fooled into Hustling for someone else's benefit.

Youtube hosts our stuff, thanks.

We put up content, youtube sell ads, we share revenue.

Sure.

Trying to press me to 'YOU GOTTA LIFT THOSE NUMBERS!!!' suggests that somehow my job is to work for youtube so that they can make a buck off our work.

Our work is NOT 'youtube'.

Our work is what we do.

Watch it, don't watch it, we're still gonna make it cos that what we like doing.

If you like our stuff, buy it, stream it, contribute to us by coming to a gig - It helps us and if what we do helps you, it's a fair exchange.

While Social Media are 'tweaking the algorithm' We're going to stick to our knitting. If we're ever worthy of attention, that's a bonus, not the objective.