Aux-In

I have been on various forums for a good while now, and I just wanted to note a few suggestions on ways in which we can share content to where it will actually be there x number of years from now, instead of being lost to history because it got deleted for reasons we all probably know about. That's the idea, anyway.

Find official content: What tends to happen with YouTube videos is that they get moved, deleted, set to private, and so on, even if they are on official outlets. This has the affect of disabling any YouTube video links a forum poster adds when he/she is writing about a topic(s). Mostly, though, these videos are getting deleted due to copyright. The majority of content I listen to isn't on a Vevo channel, so when I come across a new song in an unofficial mix on an unofficial channel, I know that at some point that mix is likely to get deleted, or the entire channel ends up getting deleted due to copyright. Knowing this, I then take it upon myself to try as hard as possible to find an official upload, whether that be on the original artist's channel, the label's channel, or some sort of other recognized/official uploader and/or promoter. I do this even if a different uploader adds better value to the song via a cool background, fancy video, or the fact that they've uploaded the full version instead of a stupid radio edit. I know, I know: "Cool background? It's about the music anyway, bro." And it certainly is, which is why I think it's important to take the necessary steps to find the proper content.

Searching: Given the above, I try to search on the artist's YouTube channel for the song directly in question. If they don't have one, I try to find the label's channel, or Vevo if the artist is big/mainstream enough to have one. If I can't find it there, I try to search on Soundcloud, but that's not as ubiquitous as a YouTube video. Other people might recommend Spotify, but I have no experience with that service.

Example: Is the song available on any of the following?:

Artist's YouTube: No
Label's YouTube: No
Vevo: No
Soundcloud: Yes

Because the only official upload is available on Soundcloud, I would choose that link over any other unofficial link. Some sites have Soundcloud embedding, some don't. I used to want to choose the video with the better background, but I've since stopped doing this because I want that guy or girl five years from now to be able to play a video I posted and relate it to the write-up I did about it. Let's face it, I'm not going through all this trouble to present undiscovered material on Internet forums just to have that negated due to these issues. With that beef noted, I don't mind going out of my way to find the official content, especially if I believe in the music being created, or that it spoke to me in some way.

YouTube Auto-Generated Channels: From what I reasonably assume (this is nothing more than an educated guess), YouTube is trying to help provide official content by adding channel names via randomly-generated searches, otherwise known as YouTube - Topic channels. YouTube has a page discussing it, but it's not in depth at all -- very sufacey and nontransparent. As it were, they look like this:

Artist A - Topic

or

Artist B - Topic

The - Topic channels are more of a compilation of different things, even non-music related, and this is all based off your searching history or the history of multiple searches of a similar topic. Basically, YouTube is auto-creating these channels without a human at the helm.

YouTube is also using the pound key in front of the artists' names for content that is licensed to them by the artists themselves, or their labels. It looks like this:

#Artist A

or

#Artist B

Using Nirvana as an example, there would be two different auto-generated channels that look like this:

Nirvana - Topic

or

#Nirvana

I'm not entirely clear on how it all works, but both are different systems that basically do the same thing. The # videos look to be song-specific, and these are then linked to the #Nirvana account.

For example, I search for Nirvana's "Frances Farmer Will Have Her Revenge on Seattle."


I can tell immediately that none of the videos on the first page are official uploads. What I'm going to do now is add a pound sign in front of the title I just typed:

#Frances Farmer Will Have Her Revenge on Seattle


The page still looks essentially the same, however, what this will do is help you find the video content that is licensed to YouTube by the whoever the rights-holder(s) is/are. It's not until I get to page three in the search results that I find the #Nirvana channel that tells me this: "Provided to YouTube by Universal Music Group International." Now I at least have a greater certainty that this song will remain available, as it was legitimately provided to YouTube by the label. All of the # videos have this similar look where the background is faded.


Generally, this is useful when you can't find official content via an artist, label, or through Vevo. Now, let's say that the label ends up going under in a few years or the license expires and the videos get deleted anyway. That's okay, because a unofficial video is vastly more susceptible to being deleted due to copyright than a label going under or YouTube losing a license.

These are observations based on my experience with posting musical content on forums. Add yours if you wish.

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Reviews l YouTube Playlist: Another Dimension

"All over a bowl of bitter beans."

Trollheart

I'll be honest man, that sounds like a whole lot of trouble to basically ensure videos are still there when new members read your entries years or months later. I guess for you it's important, as after all your journal is very video-intensive. Me, I do tend to check every so often (though with so many journals and so many entries in each I can't do that on a regular basis, and I usually stumble across problems when I'm looking for or checking something else) but to be perfectly honest, if I see a video is missing I tend to shrug. If someone really wants to hear that they can find it themselves; my articles focus more on the writing and less on the YouTubes.

Fair play to you for your detailed guide, and anyone who wants to go to that length of trouble ensuring their YTs are there forever, but given the probably small amount of people (comparatively speaking) who even read these things much less click on videos, I would just consider it wasted effort. Well, not wasted effort, that's not fair: certainly too much effort for in the end a small return.

It's just not that important to me, personally.

I would also point out that the percentage of videos in my journals that are no longer accessible is actually quite low; most of even the first few pages, written four years ago now, still have their videos intact. So it's not perhaps as big a problem as it could be.

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Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018

Key

I'm with TH on this one, and i'm guilty of using a lot of YT videos in my journal(s). The other thing for me, is that even if a video is gone for good in one of my older posts, it doesn't make the post any less interesting. I usually use YT videos to finish off a point I was making, or it just adds a bit more commentary than I otherwise would. Most of the time, i'll even talk about what's in the video below the video, so that even if the video is missing, you can still read what the video was about.

Aux-In

@ both Ki and Trollheart, that's perfectly fine. It's definitely a pain, which is the entire intention of copyright in many ways. Some of the material you guys are likely into is some older stuff at times, and in that case, there isn't anyone around to care enough to put their content into YouTube's content ID system.

What it is for me is that I think about the history of what I'm posting, and for most of my stuff, the players involved are still active. I've seen videos that have been up for years get taken down a few days, weeks or months after posting them. Also, no one listens to my type of music to begin with; it's not like it is with rock, so it's more important for me to have the videos actually be there.

That's just my perspective, and I've noted some things to look for when you are picking videos, even from the front page of a search.

Cheers

__________________
Reviews l YouTube Playlist: Another Dimension

"All over a bowl of bitter beans."

DwnWthVwls

I always make sure to add the artist - song title above the video this way old posts are still understandable. I'm not gonna look for specific kinds of videos, sometimes it's hard just finding one video for a specific song.

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I don't got a god complex, you got a simple god...

Trollheart

This is a good idea. Often I've gone back to say an album review, found the video was dead but couldn't remember which track I was trying to display, and often the YT name will not help. I may do this in future. Or maybe I won't bother. Still, a good idea.

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Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018

Ami

Download video from youtube
inettools.net/en/application/youtubedownloader

Mr. Charlie

I too will endeavour to add the artist and track title when posting vids.