Posts tagged alex day

^ The gold plated play button, reports of it going *ting* when looked upon are as of yet unconfirmed.

The new rewards system -which attendees of this years VidCon got a sneak peek at- was officially unveiled just over a week ago.

It consists of a gold plated play button for those who have reached at or above a total of 1,000,000 subscribers and the thing is framed in a way reminiscent of gold or platinum records.

There’s good stuff in here for the slightly less mammoth creators too. Those who have reached 100,000 subs get a 500 dollar gift card and a custom DSLR bag.

Awards

It’s actually not unusual for social media personalities and organizations to receive awards based within an online genre or even a single website. 

The Webby Awards are old as balls, rewarding internet peeps and businesses since 1995 and The Streamy Awards go one further.

They focus exclusively on web series; still a pretty small industry despite the large audience growth and acceptance into mainstream culture that it’s made in recent years.

What’s different about these rewards is that they’re given exclusively on the basis of numbers.

^ Look familiar?

Mixed Reception

The reception among big YouTubers has been largely positive and tends to break up into those who are still a bit too small to qualify for the gold and have a hungry look in their eyes.

“I want one, my house mate Charlie. He’s got a million subscribers. He just sits at his desk just across the room from me with his gold…plate….thing. I do just want to put more effort into my videos and make them more worthwhile” - Alex Day

and those who are grateful for the recognition but have some concerns

“I love it because it feels like a thank you…a thank you to the people who have invariably worked extremely hard to achieve that level of success. And it’s important for YouTube to recognize that those people play a large part in the success of YouTube” 

“The fact is that most of the people doing really interesting things, who have the most potential to grow, to change things, to continue altering the landscape of media, and who I am fascinated by do not have 1,000,000 subscribers” - Hank Green

“I’m flattered, since i am in the 100,000 category - but saddened by all the incredibly talented and hardworking people going un-thanked, the ones who don’t quite have that many subscribers but still make huge contributions to this community daily” - Kristina Horner

They aren’t the only ones to focus on the smaller channels.

Smaller Channels

One thing brought up repeatedly in the comments on the official announcement, on twitter and other sites where the discussion has taken place is that the awards do nothing for smaller partners and creators.

The awards themselves arent the main issue here however. It’s a sense of continued and growing frustration with YouTube -spawning movements like the #SaveYouTube campaign- its policies and the general attitude of the site as a whole.

A lot of the ways in which bigger creators got a leg up in the past simply don’t exist any more or have been redirected towards already popular channels.

Stuff like getting featured on the main page or appearing in the recommended videos section and although the community has gone a long way in picking up the slack there’s always going to be people who slip through the sizeable cracks.

Stabilisation

When taken together with things like the new London Creator Space and programs like YouTube Next Vlogger and NextUp a picture forms of a business trying to consolidate its gains and standardise skills and pathways to success in an industry where technical proficiency can vary from the profound to the mediocre.

It could well be a risky move, there’s a good chance it may simply limit creativity, create a stiff model for how creators should work and interact with their audience that could stunt them in the long term and make the industry even harder to break into.

Then again it might usher in a new generation of ultra-proficient creators while improving the already substantial profiles of the people who did it the old fashioned way.

Damned if I know, feel free to have your say though.

Your Editor

John Mortimer.

^ An attractive idea, sure, but will it blend?

Following the recent high profile adaptation of the “Annoying Orange” web series to cartoon network you could be forgiven for thinking that YouTubers were lining up around the block to have their content featured on the screen that -for better or worse- still dominates the worlds consumption of audio-visual media. 

Just this week, however, the people behind two of the most influential YouTube channels Hank and John Green of VlogBrothers and Alex Day of Nerimon have individually spoken out about their reasons for rejecting TV and major record labels respectively.

Creative Freedom

In a tumblr post John Green explained why the Vlogbrothers had never made a television show 

A lot of it boils down to the limited creative freedom offered; often you’re working with other peoples money and unless you have a track record paved with melted down emmy awards they’re going to want a say in how it’s spent.

Despite the fact that they may have next to no knowledge in what does or doesn’t succeed.

“In one conversation with an anonymous cable network, an exec said to us, Crash Course would be PERFECT if you were a little less nuanced and stuck to topics that interest people. Like, you know, Hitler and sex.”

Even the creator of Annoying Orange Dane Boedigheimer has no illusions about the rigidity of the development process in network television

“If we’d taken this to a traditional network we’d still be talking about ‘Who’s gonna play Annoying Orange?’ and ‘How do we make him less annoying?’”

Day in particular has no love for the behemoth of traditional media; his recent crusade against the major labels in the form of chart success has been well publicised.

Community

Another massive factor for YouTubers is the effect any projects might have on their communities of viewers and/or listeners. 

“if we were on TV, I worry we’d lose that sense of connection, which Hank and I have enjoyed so much the last five and a half years. Like, the Sherlock fandom and the Doctor Who fandom are great communities, but they are about Sherlock and Doctor Who. Nerdfighteria isn’t about Hank or me”

The ability of viewers to comment on videos, to read the tweets and tumblr posts of people whose content they enjoy and then be able to respond and have them respond back is something traditional media simply can’t compete with.

Albums Are Dead

Even the formatting of some forms of media are coming under question; In a somewhat less than critical article by Forbes Magazine Day says

“Albums are dead as far as I can tell. The concept of an album seems redundant when you can cherry-pick any individual track you like on iTunes anyway. Putting out singles means each song has its own artwork and its own video; it gets its time to shine”

Singles are certainly a stronger format than albums. In 2011 sales of singles rose for the fourth successive year in the UK 177.9 million copies, versus 86.6 million in 2007.

However, it’s seems unlikely that the desire to blend a group of songs into a creative whole greater than the sum of its parts will ever really go away.

The true fans will always enjoy listening to an album the whole way through, listening out for common themes and tones of emotion and discussing them with others.

Whether they do that on a laptop at 3am while browsing tumblr or listening to a 12” vinyl in a dark and smoky room is kind of superfluous.

^ Are big studio albums like Abbey Road a thing of the past?

Risk

There’s also the small matter of YouTubers quite reasonably thinking “well, why should I?”. You don’t find yourself in a phone conversation with a high level exec unless you’ve already gained a large amount of success already.

In a time of increasing competition in an already crowded marketplace dividing your attention and creative energies could be a fatal move. 

There’s always the chance that you could alienate your current subscriber base and gain almost nothing for your efforts.

The Future

So are we going to see YouTubers increasingly collaborating with the giants of traditional media or are they going to stick with what they know?

More of both probably.

Some will decide to steer clear of traditional media and the people who control it regardless of how many lucrative deals are dangled under their collective nose; others will embrace it wholeheartedly.

It’s likely that most however will decide purely on a case by case basis, cherry picking the opportunities that appeal to them.

In that case the gatekeepers of the TV and music industries are going to have to work a lot harder and be a lot more flexible if they want to infuse their industries with the creative energy that abounds on sites like YouTube.

I swear to god if I have to type the words “traditional media” one more time I’m going to hack my hands off with a rusty penknife.

Your Editor

John Mortimer.

Or perhaps more accurately, they’ve arrived.

It’s safe to say that things haven’t been going as originally planned during the execution of the “Exceptionally Ordinary Variety Tour” and this is particularly true of the line up. 

Alex Day

Alex Day has backed out of the tour completely, his reasons for doing so are unclear; the official announcement simply states that he will be leaving “to pursue other ventures in his career” implying that he has something more important to attend to and that it’s probably work related. 

Whether that means his career on YouTube or his music career is unknown.

His own statement was even less obliging saying simply that

“I can’t go on the tour”

and that fans shouldn’t

“think of it as losing me; think of it as gaining Tom”

Tom Milsom and Eddplant

Long time YouTube musicians Tom Milsom and Eddplant have quickly stepped in to take Day’s place. Milsom will be performing at every stop on the tour while Eddplant will be performing at the Anaheim show only.

This will have eased the minds of the tours organizers who -while undoubtedly having a dedicated fanbase- lack the sheer numbers to sell out a tour like this.

Milsom’s nearly 100,000 subscribers and Eddplant’s 44,000 will fill the hole left by Day.

Whether it will be enough to console the Nerimon fans who chipped in to the Kickstarter campaign in hopes of seeing Day perform on stage outside of Vidcon is another matter altogether.

The tours official statement on the matter read that

“He [Alex Day] wishes to express the deepest of apologies to his fans that donated money to the Exceptionally Ordinary kickstarter campaign, expecting to see him on the tour”

Cassandra Croft

To heap even more troubles on the shoulders of organizer and show runner in chief Todd Williams perhaps the most varietous act of what is still, essentially, a variety tour has been thrown into doubt.

Professional stunt woman and daily vlogger Cassandra Croft A.K.A NerdzRL may be unable to attend due to an unforeseen work opportunity

“It’s not set in stone, in saying that I am sorry. I’m on standby for the tour. I hope most of you understand that this is something, stunts is something I wanna do and that’s why I chose this opportunity.”

Tickets

In brighter news tickets for three out of five venues have been announced including Portland, San Francisco, and Seattle.

Full and up to date listings of attendees and links to their various places of residence in and around the green and verdant interwebz can be found here and here

Your 45% Vicious Journalist 55% Chinese Take-Out Editor

John Mortimer.

One week ago YouTube musician Alex Day launched his new single “Lady Godiva” (a re-imagining of the Peter and Gordon single) utilising the same platform so successfully used in the promotion of his Christmas charity single “Forever Yours” which charted at #4 in the UK.

“I would be really over the moon if you could consider getting lady godiva and some of the remixes on itunes and then we can show the major labels that the world dosen’t need them any more; we are the ones in control and we can make this work.”

While it didn’t reach quite the same heights as “Forever Yours” “Lady Godiva” earned a respectable #15 in the UK charts. Some however have questioned the motivations behind his release of the single and the way in which he’s promoted it.

Fellow YouTube musician and personal friend of Alex Day Tom Milsom questioned why Day felt the need to gain a chart position in the first place and pointed out that if everyone bought the original and the various remixes (a loop hole in the charts Day has exploited to boost his chart placing) fans would spend almost seven times the amount asked by large record labels.

Although Day did make it clear that he felt fans should only buy the single if they liked it, it’s clear that the motivation for its style of release was the desire to make a point to “doubters” and major record labels.

“The thing is ever since christmas all i’ve been hearing is ‘you can’t do this again, you guys [the fans] are just bored, you don’t really care, forever yours was just a one off novelty and it won’t happen again’ “

“we will show the doubters of the world [that] we are not meaningless we are brilliant”

Day is undoubtedly a pioneer among YouTube musicians in gaining chart positions as well as recognition from the press. However, it remains to be seen if his highly independent style of release will be utilised by the YouTube musician community as they gain notoriety.

John Mortimer.