The case of this article is unfortunate, but it's actually missing what I think is the more serious problem with YouTube for independent artists right now.. This is just a problem of an unfortunate strike against a video - I imagine that it will be fixed under appeal. These things happen, as a great great number of videos need to be evaluated by staff against a complicated set of criteria and precedents. It doesn't actually speak very much about any kind of systemic bias against independent artists.
What DOES create a problem for artists is the tuning of the algorithms to be highly preferential to long form frequently posted content E.g video game commentary. This is a big problem for creators who work in short, high effort, highly polished media - E.g animators.
This really really bums me out. I was an employee at YouTube during their period of great growth and I absolutely loved the platform and potential for compensation that they gave to niche and indy animators and musicians, and had great hope for a future where the democratization of video distribution would lead to a flourishing of art and entertainment that caters to a higher common denominator than the over-polished, focus group approved, mass market creativity that passes for main-stream.
Sadly, it looks like the prime goal of increasing return visits and raw view time has lead to algorithmic optimization of that same mass-media race-to-the-bottom in quality and diversity in search of a broadly palatable and compulsively consumable product. It saddens me and I still feel that they could have it both ways if they took a more aware approach to niche content. YouTube offers monetization - the fact that artists even need Patreon means that GoogTube is ignoring a need, and thus a business opportunity. Just because a piece of work may only appeal to 50,000 people world wide doesn't necessarily mean that it has less value or merit than one that appeals to 10 million.
I support quite a few animators on Patreon, and the impression I get is that they are all struggling to keep working on it as a primary job.
What DOES create a problem for artists is the tuning of the algorithms to be highly preferential to long form frequently posted content E.g video game commentary. This is a big problem for creators who work in short, high effort, highly polished media - E.g animators.
This really really bums me out. I was an employee at YouTube during their period of great growth and I absolutely loved the platform and potential for compensation that they gave to niche and indy animators and musicians, and had great hope for a future where the democratization of video distribution would lead to a flourishing of art and entertainment that caters to a higher common denominator than the over-polished, focus group approved, mass market creativity that passes for main-stream.
Sadly, it looks like the prime goal of increasing return visits and raw view time has lead to algorithmic optimization of that same mass-media race-to-the-bottom in quality and diversity in search of a broadly palatable and compulsively consumable product. It saddens me and I still feel that they could have it both ways if they took a more aware approach to niche content. YouTube offers monetization - the fact that artists even need Patreon means that GoogTube is ignoring a need, and thus a business opportunity. Just because a piece of work may only appeal to 50,000 people world wide doesn't necessarily mean that it has less value or merit than one that appeals to 10 million.
I support quite a few animators on Patreon, and the impression I get is that they are all struggling to keep working on it as a primary job.