Promoting Your Work on You Tube

[sdoggingsworth]

I've noticed that songs with a flashy thumbnail tend to get more hits than songs that don't. It just grabs people more.

I recently put together a slideshow to go along with mine, and I know a lot of folks hate slideshows, but it sorta has different sections that tell a little musical story, so I added a slideshow to help it along.

Do you think the corniness of a slow-moving slideshow actually detracts from the music and makes people think of it more as a bad PMV than a good song?

Trying to walk a line here.

-Sprocket

[Freewave]

Yeah i like making pmv's myself (and slideshow style pmv's of still images occasionally) but a lot of reasearch has been done that the thumbmnail will be integral to the success or failure of your video. Those do generate randomly so you can never plan at what time your 3 thumbnails will occur at although the first and the last are generally close to the beginning and end of the video.

I'd recommend doing hi-def videos 720 or 1080 on any to keep the audio and video quality high as otherwise you're sacrificing quality in comparison to whatever anyone else uploads. I tend to think my non-hi-def early pmv's with slightly sloppy editing may have hurt my early videos rather than helped them. So it is a difficult path to walk and many simply avoid anything but a static still image.

One thing I only just discovered is if you remix someone else's track make sure to reply back to that original video with yours AS a video response. That way they can link them so people checking out the original will be aware of the remix.......
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While I'm at and the subject is up does anyone know HOW on the new youtube you can add friend's fellow youtube channel as "you might also like" when people hit your subscription button? I'd like to include some people I work with frequently and hopefully vice versa but can't find any mention of how to do it. Like how people Living Tombstone recommend 8 of his friend's channels....

[sdoggingsworth]

They generate randomly? I know they tend to default to the image at the very middle of the video, but I've seen some use their opening frame as well, so there must be some way to set it.

-Sprocket

[Freewave]

They generate randomly? I know they tend to default to the image at the very middle of the video, but I've seen some use their opening frame as well, so there must be some way to set it.

-Sprocket

Nope. They're gone through various randomized algorithms and as soon as anyone cracks them and finds a way to choose they change it again so you can't. Youtube partners (paid youtube channels) MAY be able to choose...

You can see a list of changes and updates in the description in this ytube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z8Npxtubc4c

[inkBot]

People seem to be doing visualizers more and more. I found the visualizer in Korw's "Luna's Moon Dance" to be pretty clever. Having just one picture with elements of it visualized.

I'd argue that one reason why slideshow might be a bad move is that we are hardwired to find patterns and connect things with other things. If a video with a song has one image throughout, we'll connect that image and the song together, and thus increasing the likelihood of remembering that song and/or picture.

With a slideshow we will have trouble picking out a specific image to connect to that song. Especially if the image on the thumbnail is different from the one at the beginning of the video. Thus decreasing the likelihood of us remembering it. Since instead of having just "this" and "that" to connect together we now would have "this" and a whole string of "'and that' 'and that'" etc. It's much easier for our brains to just dump the string of "'and that' 'and that'". It's akin to how most people memorize numbers in twos.

Edit: Don't want to come off sounding as I don't think you should ever do slideshows. I'm sure it can be done well. But it'd require that the images feel like they belong together, either through theme or style. Having them all be done by the same artist, or a smaller selection of artists, helps. Then it'll flow together and we can think of the slideshow as one continuous thing. If the images clash, that'll be much harder to accomplish.

[Legion]

agreed. I love visualizers, but man. I still respect the single picture videos. they're cool!

Everything has a time and place, really. Visualizers are great for songs that work well for them, generally songs with more beat. I would never use one for a really mellow song, there I'd use a picture. Even slideshows have their place, I thought it worked well for this song in particular (though he may have overdone it a tad).

[Acsii]

They generate randomly? I know they tend to default to the image at the very middle of the video, but I've seen some use their opening frame as well, so there must be some way to set it.

-Sprocket

You get three options to choose for your thumbnail... But if you are a partner you can upload a custom thumbnail