My official artist channel on YouTube now has 6 new music videos that feature songs from my new studio album.
Promotional or artistic. Those are the reasons for music videos. Traditionally, they would boost sales of the music.
In the streaming age, I'm not sure the promotion aspect matters much. Since I make mine myself with free video footage I find, using free tools to put them together with studio recordings of my songs, they're not so much works of art I create from scratch either.
I'm unaware of how hitting play on one of them would make people later want to hit play on the song without the video part in the music streaming service they use, but I suppose that does happen.
I guess some would, and will, because watching/listening to the video peaked their interest enough to want to listen to the entire album. So, I guess posting several music videos featuring songs from my album is a form of album marketing.
I enjoyed MTV back when it launched in the early 80s because it was cool and new and seemed aimed at people like me. I was a popular music fan, and I was around 14 years old. I probably didn't check it out until I was about 15 though. It made me a fan.
I grew up watching reruns of The Monkees TV show in the 70s, so I was already aware of how the marriage of music and video could be fun.
When I became aware of YouTube in the late 2000s, I initially thought it was great because I could watch live footage of bands I liked. Later, I noticed a lot of self-releasing musical acts like me were setting up their own channels. Eventually, I created one for myself. It took me a while to think of how I could use it though.
Since I was not a live performer, I thought I could at least create a video for one of my recorded songs. I think I joined in 2013, and eventually posted my first video in about 2016. That was a slide show video of my state folk song Smitten With The Mitten that showed the official symbols of the state of Michigan.
A couple years later, I thought I should attempt a lyric video. Whoa, that was a challenge, but I pulled it off for my song "Coney". Very time consuming. Later on, I used public domain video footage I found on the Internet Archive for several more. Then I tried some that leveraged free stock footage.
Fast forward to last year, and I was realizing artificial intelligence could be used to quickly put together video content that would be appropriate for the song subject matter.
Now I'm close to having 100 videos on there, and hardly any of them show footage of me, nor do they feature much content I actually filmed myself. So, not a lot of creativity for the visual portion of it. I was just proud to teach myself how to put the song title text in there, you know?
I'm not good at any of it. It's also really annoying that despite my efforts to tweak the settings in YouTube, the automatic subtitles keep showing up. If any of you uploaders can tell me how to permanently disable those, I would appreciate knowing. It's particularly annoying when they get the lyrics wrong, and even more so when it's a lyric video. So confusing.
All free software tools. Tried a bunch of different combinations. It was interesting, tedious, and now with AI, it's a lot faster to whip these up in a jiffy. I would never use AI for my actual music, but for videos, it comes in handy.
They're not too much trouble now, but in the beginning, there was a learning curve for sure. Mine are obviously very much the work of a novice, amateur for sure. The art is in the music.
It just seems like something you should have if you're a solo artist. I figured out how to set up my own website, figured I should also have a blog, some social media profiles, and it was a final missing piece - to have a YouTube channel with music videos. Another box to check for my online presence.
Has it helped? Probably a little. Was it worth the effort? Yeah, I guess so. It's just a normal part of my process now. I write songs, record them, create an album cover graphic, and then make a few music videos for each album release. Part of my process, along with blogging announcements of the release, and creating a web page for each album.
For each album, I also set up a video playlist now too. Playlist: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLv8nm8Sw4SS9plF0EoVVczunzgAc5vZt5&si=typte5erBdbFiUcW.
My videos range from 1.5 thousand views to 12 views. I guess I've been an active music video artist for over 10 years now. I myself think it's fun to watch some of my own music videos when I'm done making them. I figure if I like some of them, others might too.
Some are interesting enough to enhance the listening experience. They can make you like a song more than you would have from just hearing the audio alone, in my opinion. It's another way to experience music. Some purists think they are distracting and not how music should be consumed.
My focus is on the joy of the challenge of figuring out how to do it myself, and keeping the cost extremely low by using only my own labor. Some are funny, some are lame and low-quality, and some are actually (arguably) impressive.
For the album I just released, "Hues of Blue," I've created 6 new music videos featuring the audio from the studio album recordings. They are not necessarily the best songs on the album, but they are ones for which I was able to easily and quickly find appropriate video material to go with the song subject matter.
Here those are:
Scoop: https://youtu.be/GqPeqOFEAcw?si=o4ISKucnSW_suUh5
Rock Bottom Blues: https://youtu.be/KLBCDdG8wP8?si=-pkQHgxNcrrB2CBW
Treasure Trove: https://youtu.be/THGkrqbj82s?si=juVK3Scgq2TbwqjY
Waiting At The Window: https://youtu.be/_TcZuo7MuYc?si=GOesaM7EABjH60jm
More Than Meets The Eye: https://youtu.be/T9b7kS6xX74?si=OoCBRnbFtaj4TOYR
One Fly In The House: https://youtu.be/7fjWdrA8320?si=1G9zRFc4JkVsb18p
