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Respected players using "clickbait" on Youtube.


arthurhenry
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I'm sometimes surprised by Scott Devine and Janek Gwizdala's use of "clickbait" in their video titles. Both are highly knowledgable, articulate, talented people with much to offer bass students, but this seems at odds with the rather cheap methods they employ to attract attention to their videos. I realise they are business men with a product to promote in a competitive market place, but it feels a bit cringeworthy and populist. Some examples:

Devine:
Ultimate hack for learning and using the modes (does he mean "method"?)
How to play bass fast. 5 ultimate tips
Master the entire fingerboard with these 5 simple shapes

Gwizdala:
A street dog that will melt your heart
Practicing (sic) with the TV on. Good or bad?
Taking divorce one day at a time (A video with much useful info about bass and music and a brief, sensitive discussion about the end of Janek's relationship - why did he give it this title?)

Gwizdala also seems particularly fond of filming himself constructing and even shopping for, flat-pack furniture.

Please note: I am not criticising or complaining, just stating my personal reaction and hopefully prompting some discussion. It doesn't really matter anyway!

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[quote name='arthurhenry' timestamp='1491643885' post='3274488']
Gwizdala:
Taking divorce one day at a time (A video with much useful info about bass and music and a brief, sensitive discussion about the end of Janek's relationship - why did he give it this title?)
[/quote]

I would assume he gave it that title so that people searching for divorce advice would click on the link. A click is a click for advertising revenue purposes, doesn't matter if the video turns out to be about the subject you're looking for or not.

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I'm not condoning or condemning, even though I have some sort of naive romantic notion that we still do this for the MUSIC business. That changed a long time ago and we firmly live in the reality that is the music BUSINESS.

I was once asked by a very successful business guy why I wanted to teach and do music full time. I told him in all honesty that I wanted to give back for all the years of help and guidance I'd received and to maybe put experience that you just can't instantly buy on the internet to good use.

You know what he said? No Dan, you're not. You're doing it to earn money. Money.

He knew that i'd still do it anyway. It's me, it's what I do, but until I'm not single handedly feeding 4 mouths, paying a mortgage, keeping a car on the road and all the usual bills, money is the reason. Successful online educators are business people and clicks mean traffic and traffic will hopefully turn in to earning. Bills paid, happy family.

Edited by dood
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[quote name='bazztard' timestamp='1491645419' post='3274503']
the more money they make the more free vids they can post :)
[/quote]

.... and the more egotistical they get.
They are talented, I'll give them that, but they do have an ego.

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[quote name='mentalextra' timestamp='1491658143' post='3274614']
It looks to me like Scott has obviously taken some advice about his youtube channel. I wonder if he'll 'nest' in Brighton with the other youtubers, or even release a product range of toiletries in Boots? :D
[/quote]

He's got the perfect name for that - "Simply Devine Pour Homme" :D

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I'm sure they have paid someone to do some SEO on their videos. I wouldn't blame them for everything.

There's a few sites I used that were very good but are now so full of junk articles designed to grab people's attention while recycling old content, or even having so little content, that they're unusable now.

This has got so prevalent and is making the web so cluttered that even Google have changed their algorithm so that sites working like that are now being penalised in search results.

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They exchange a lot of time than you'd first think producing videos, coupled with the fact of years upon years of practice, travel, gear, sick days etc.

I would also like to get more back for my time, that's why I go about as if my business makes the best sandwiches

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[quote name='TimR' timestamp='1491660852' post='3274636']
I'm sure they have paid someone to do some SEO on their videos. I wouldn't blame them for everything.
[/quote]

This. I'd imagine (without checking adwords key word tools) that all things bass related makes for a very small, very crowded pond (ok, I know, bass aren't pond fish), so the SEO has to look for different angles (aargh, another fish pun)to get these videos up the rankings.

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I don't blame these guys. They have to do something to get their videos up the rankings and clickbait titles are one way of doing it.

Janek put a video up the other day with a name about Jeff Berlin and using a metronome. It was about 30 minutes long and he spoke very briefly about Jeff and metronomes and said nothing more than "I disagree with him and I like them". But such a title guarantees hits as it now shows up in searches for Jeff and it's a bit controversial (even if the actual video content isn't).

It's just a Q and A video but 'Q and A #228' isn't a compelling title.

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Everything's a 'hack' these days, I think we're just getting old and been there, done that :)

Have you noticed the trend now to clip the videos up? They delete the unnecessary frames, probably keeps interest and packs more into a shorter time for people with shorter attention spans. Both Janek and Scott have been doing it a while - now Mark Smith's doing it too. Btw, I have been enjoying his cruise vids these past few days.

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[quote name='MisterT' timestamp='1491776936' post='3275337']
Have you noticed the trend now to clip the videos up? They delete the unnecessary frames, probably keeps interest and packs more into a shorter time for people with shorter attention spans.
[/quote]

This is also an editing trick to weed out any footage that isn't up to scratch - maybe they've gone off on a tangent, flubbed their lines or said something contentious that seems too severe at the editing stage (at least that's how I use it...).

Bob Reynolds (a superb sax player) has a long running vlog, which is full of great advice spliced in with footage of him doing mundane 'real life' things like driving his kids to school and I always find it a pain trying to skip through the dross to get to the good stuff.

I was really enjoying the Janek vlog up until he started timelapsing his therapy sessions, but each to their own.

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I think with Janek's VLOG we need to remember he very clearly calls it a VLOG and not bass lessons. So we should expect to see an insight into his life and not just him talking about how to be a better musician. I think his content has been outstanding. He gives us loads of excellent free advice, and I like getting a glimpse of what life is like for the working musician.

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[quote name='wateroftyne' timestamp='1491855622' post='3275959']
There's a lot of noise out there, and these guys have to play the game if they want to be heard.

As for fast-cutting the videos, blame us. We've developed terrible attention spans.
[/quote]

I'm not sure what you mean... *runs off to binge-watch an entire series on Netflix*

Joking aside and in response to the general topic, I often find that Janek's video topics are often mirrored in Scott's videos a few days later. Like you say, a lot of noise and it's often difficult to get to the really good stuff but what we forget is that all of the 'free' videos like Janek's VLOGs and Scott's free lessons are all there to tease at what is on offer at VBL or SBL, which they want us to pay to be a part of. They aren't ever going to give everything away for free, in a concise, direct way because that's bad business and these guys have to put food on the table.

Edited by skej21
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[quote name='TKenrick' timestamp='1491923665' post='3276523']
Right on cue...
[/quote]

See, for me that's not clickbait.

'Clickbait', as I understand it, is about enticing people to click on stuff for the sake of generating advertising venue (from click-through fees).

What you've pointed to here is a free tutorial, made available by Scott, which is actually useful. That's not clickbait. Sure, Scott runs a business and he'd love us all to be subscribers to his commercial service. And this video is designed as a taster for that. But it's not clickbait in the true sense of the word. It's just a snappily written video title. Better that than "Practice lick #142" or whatever the alternatives might be ;)

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