After a long debate with myself about where and how to place the lyrical videos I’ve made of my music, I finally settled on Vimeo. It’s not free – but I did not feel comfortable with the sometimes questionable advertising, and being lumped together with all sorts of weird stuff on YouTube. Vimeo is a dedicated video platform – no advertising, high quality. (All the files I’m publishing on there are created in iMovie, in 1920 X 1080 format, H.264 AAC codec, HD colour, and stereo sound.)
I had previously tried to publish on YouTube and was promptly questioned because of “copyright” issues. Moi? Infringe copyright? Never!
Obviously not many people actually create this kind of original(-ish) contents. I am manic about credits and attribution. I am the child of librarians and, because my parents insisted, from long habit I always go into detail about credits, attribution, references and copyright. To work those into the video titles took long because, as the expression goes, the devil is in the details.
For example, the data on the Pexels clips that I incorporated…well, no other words for it… the data sucks. Just so you know, when you want to make data (the stuff that the internet consists of) findable by search engines, you have to encode and organize it, which means organizing words. Unfortunately on Pexels, the underlying descriptions are not only inaccurate and incomplete, but often badly miss-spelled. But then the people who produce and post those clips are probably not Machine Learning system experts.
Similarly, when people make those long, semi-funny tags for their tweets, etc., they often don’t realize that later no-one will be able to find that tweet from those mangled tags, because the information is not standard, and people search by using standard or common words and phrases. You’ll know this if you ever tried to Google yourself or anything you’ve made or done. Amazing what you can and cannot find, and where you can find it! (Actually, sorry, don’t Google yourself. It’s a chilling experience.)
So I traded exposure and distribution on YouTube for quality on Vimeo. I figured that after so much work, not only the design but the production, the original graphics, the packaging, formatting and the tagging, those videos were worth being showcased. The audio, after all, has already cost me thousands of dollars in sound engineering, publishing and distribution. Not to mention time spent.
Courses for horses
It’s courses for horses. You want audio tracks on the internet, use a dedicated audio platform. You want video, the same applies. This is particularly true in terms of functionality: if you want people to experience and enjoy what you’ve made, but not copy it, rip it off, say it’s theirs, or use it to put you in a social media sh**storm, then publish it on a platform which has functions to prevent all that. Yes, the internet is full of nasty things and you have to be careful.
So, in due course, I’ll be embedding the Vimeo codes for all the lyrical videos I’ve put on this site. This will continue for as long as finances allow. *Sigh* Yes, there is that. There ain’t no free lunch. Everything has a price – either money, or time, or convenience, or security or quality… People moan about YouTube but the point is, it’s free and if you get enough subscribers you can get some money from adverts. So don’t blame the platform. After all you are not being forced at gunpoint to have an account on Spotify, or SoundCloud or YouTube or anywhere.
I need to keep reminding myself, when I hang my head in embarrassment at my stuff compared to all the other professional-looking, slick videos on Vimeo, that I made these with no money at all, and no help, and by learning as I go. So, “Buck up old gal”, I keep saying to myself.
The first video on vimeo
Right now, my page is looking a bit sad and empty. But the bells and whistles will follow.