Note from the future: Looking over this again, I’m not a huge fan of this post. It’s kind of random and is about a very minor inconvenience that I blow out of proportion. Part of that is intentional for comedic effect, but I don’t think it really comes across like that in writing. I really only wrote this because it was a random thought I had when I needed content when I first launched the site. It’s also not really true anymore since YouTube Music has evolved a lot more since this was written. I generally don’t remove stuff simply because I don’t like it, so I’ll leave it up with this note. This is meant to be sort of silly and is very much a rant, don’t take it too seriously. Thanks!
Okay, if you are a musician on YouTube listen up because I got something to say to you. If all your music is exclusively on YouTube and not on any other platform, you need to fix that now. I use Spotify daily, and it works great. Spotify is meant for music and it does music very well. YouTube is meant for videos and it does videos very well. YouTube is not meant for music, so it doesn’t do music very well. See where I’m going with this?
The problem with music on YouTube is that (unless you have YouTube Premium) it takes a lot of cellular data. When I am out and about, I don’t have lots of data to spend listening to music on YouTube. Since YouTube still streams 1080p video (because YouTube is a video platform), even though it’s just music, it maxes out my data limit quickly. Spotify, on the other hand, doesn’t have this problem since it only streams music. Smaller files to stream equals less data.
Also, I like keeping everything in one place. I like my music on Spotify, my games on Steam, and my videos on YouTube. Everything has its place, and everything just works better that way. When I have 95% of my music on Spotify and 5% on YouTube, it can get cumbersome very quickly. Same thing with game launchers, different streaming platforms etc.
At the very least, YouTube artists, put a download link to the song. If it is a Bandcamp link and I have to pay for it, it is much better than nothing. I have no problem with paying for music that I listen to frequently, I want to support you! Once I have the song downloaded, it becomes much easier to implement your music into my system.
I know there are alternative methods of getting the audio from a YouTube video, but honestly, it would be easier for everyone if you just gave us other options to listen to it in the first place.
While this post is directed to all YouTube artists, it specifically aimed at moonbowmusicmovie. You guys make some amazing stuff, and it’s just a shame that I can’t easily fit it into my ecosystem of music. Then again, it really isn’t that hard to get it another way, so in the long run it isn’t that big of a deal. Don’t mean to sound rude, just some food for thought.
Thanks for reading,
Andy