Band's Youtube channel - a question about followers

[Silvia Bluejay]

Damo And The Dynamites have had their own Youtube channel since the beginning of 2019, and @Happy Jack and I have been posting videos from gig performances since then. (There are a lot of videos!)

We tend to use the channel for the benefit of landlords and venue managers - for checking out and hopefully booking the band - so we've never been particularly obsessed with the 'glory' of gathering thousands of followers. We've allowed the channel growth to be completely organic, which means it's been painfully slow.

 

Having said that, we wouldn't mind being able to change the default gobbledigook URL to the band's name. The current rules appear to say that we need at least 100 followers, which I noticed we reached yesterday. Except Youtube almost immediately reverted to showing 98 followers, then 99. This hadn't happened when we reached, say, 10, 20 or 50, so I imagine that, for some reason, Youtube really doesn't like people having customised names on their channels.

 

Until now we've got round the problem of giving the band's URL for people to check by asking them to search Youtube for the name of the band, which is unique, and we have a QR code to the channel on posters and flyers. So there's no panic about that.

 

However, I'd be curious to hear if the above experience was common among those of you who have a Youtube channel, when you reached 100 followers. 🙏

[Dankology]

No experience to contribute here but happy to be a follower if we need to experiment and see what happens when you go significantly over 100...

[Silvia Bluejay]

That's lovely, @Dankology, thank you ! The URL is this and the current count is 99, instead of 102 (as it should be if YT hadn't made several followers suddenly disappear).

Some people are reporting being several followers over 100 for weeks, and still not being allowed a custom URL. It's a jungle out there... 😉🙄😂

Edited November 22, 2021 by Silvia Bluejay

[Happy Jack]

 

[geoham]

You were just at 99 subscribers, I hit subscribe and it took you to 100. Hopefully stays there! Interested to find out...

[Silvia Bluejay]

Many thanks! 🙏

I've learnt my lesson and will wait a few hours before hitting Settings! That's when the followers disappeared yesterday. YT is sneaky... 🙄

[Oopsdabassist]

subscribed!!

[Happy Jack]

11 minutes ago, Oopsdabassist said:

subscribed!!

Excellent!

 

As a person who does NOT have Admin rights to that channel, I can confirm that YouTube currently shows 102 subscribers.

[Silvia Bluejay]

Thank you all for your help! We're currently back to 102 followers. As per many complaints I've spotted online, there is no change whatsoever to the status of the channel, and still no option is offered to customise the URL. That option should appear below the channel URL highlighted in the screenshot below.

 

I will keep you all posted if and when anything changes. 👍🙏

 

 

[fretmeister]

I've got 3 YT accounts so I've followed you from all of them.

 

Hopefully that will work.

 

Maybe there is a time limit so the 100 followers is a constant and not a blip?

[Silvia Bluejay]

You may be right. We shall see! And thanks. 🙏

[Silvia Bluejay]

Interestingly, I'm not getting notifications for all the channel's new followers. I've followed back those I've been notified who had content in their channel, but that only includes, for instance, one from @fretmeister. That's my notifications, though - the number of followers has correctly gone up by 3 when he followed with all his channels. All very intriguing. 🤔😉

[fretmeister]

23 minutes ago, Silvia Bluejay said:

Interestingly, I'm not getting notifications for all the channel's new followers. I've followed back those I've been notified who had content in their channel, but that only includes, for instance, one from @fretmeister. That's my notifications, though - the number of followers has correctly gone up by 3 when he followed with all his channels. All very intriguing. 🤔😉

 

I've "liked" a video with one of them that hasn't shown up for you yet to see if that makes a difference.

[Velarian]

One possible way round this is to register your own domain name for the band (namecheap.com is a good registrar) and just set up a redirect to your more cryptic YouTube url. This would cost less than a tenner a year to maintain. It looks more professional and you don’t need to maintain a website but adding that and specific email addresses can come later if needs be. 

[Silvia Bluejay]

Thank you both!

@fretmeister, your Like is visible to me as the admin, but Likes and Dislikes are set up on the Dynamites channel to be hidden for everybody else (there's a reason, but it's a long, boring story).

@Velarian I may consider that in the future, depending on the direction the band takes. For now, I'm grateful for you guys' help, and I'll spend the next few days - or weeks - monitoring what happens re. the option of a customised URL.

I'll keep you all posted. 🙂🙏

Edited November 22, 2021 by Silvia Bluejay

[pete.young]

I've subscribed and it's now showing 106 subscribers.

[Dood]

Subbed now

[Silvia Bluejay]

Thank you! Neither of your follows is being notified to me on the channel, despite the subscriber number increasing accordingly. Weird. 🤔🤷‍♂️

[Silvia Bluejay]

And despite some of you having just subscribed, all I see in the Dashboard is a list where the most recent is dated 20/11. 🙄 Perhaps it's because some subscribers are set up to remain anonymous, as the screenshot below says.

I've followed back all those who were notified to me.

 

 

Edited November 22, 2021 by Silvia Bluejay

[Happy Jack]

And while we're talking YouTube, I've just re-posted the video shot by @Silvia Bluejay of my talk at the 2014 SouthEast BassBash on another thread and found that the on-screen quality has deteriorated really, really sharply.

 

There were nowt wrong wi' t'video when uploaded in 2014. Now it looks like a piece of film salvaged from a skip after a couple of days in the rain.

 

Even more alarmingly the sound quality (from the camera that we used to use for all our band videos) is also now complete pants.

 

Any ideas WTF has happened here?

 

 

[Stingray5]

20 minutes ago, Silvia Bluejay said:

And despite some of you having just subscribed, all I see in the Dashboard is a list where the most recent is dated 20/11. 🙄 Perhaps it's because some subscribers are set up to remain anonymous, as the screenshot below says.

I've followed back all those who were notified to me.

 

 

 

Hi Sylvia, you should be at 112 subscribers now. I have 4 channels (yeah, I know, I'm a sad old g1t that way) and have subscribed from all four. (I don't think any of mine are 'private').
One thing -- and forgive me if you've seen this -- but in the Damo channel, have you seen where you can set a custom URL? ( > Customization > Basic). I did this for the Landmarq channel a while back and it opens using:

https://www.youtube.com/user/LandmarqOfficial 

 

I note that it also works where the word 'user' in the URL is replaced simply by the letter 'c' (maybe that's Youtube changing things again, but either way seems to work?).

[Dood]

1 hour ago, Silvia Bluejay said:

Thank you! Neither of your follows is being notified to me on the channel, despite the subscriber number increasing accordingly. Weird. 🤔🤷‍♂️

 

How odd!!

 

Thank you for following my channel @DanVeallBassist back ❤️ 

[Silvia Bluejay]

@Stingray5 Thanks - I've got two notifications, one from Landmarq and one from one of your channels, and followed back both.

To reply to your question, the screenshot I posted earlier, before my last post, was from Studio - Customization - Basic Info. It still shows the same (lack of) options.

 

It may be a matter of time, now that the channel is well over 100 followers. Many thanks!

 

@Dood your follow is still not notified in the list (but counts towards the total number all the same), so I found your channel in your signature and followed it from there. 👍

[Silvia Bluejay]

Just now, Dood said:

 

How odd!!

 

Thank you for following my channel @DanVeallBassist back ❤️ 

We posted these at exactly the same time!

[Dood]

Just now, Silvia Bluejay said:

@Stingray5 Thanks - I've got two notifications, one from Landmarq and one from one of your channels, and followed back both.

To reply to your question, the screenshot I posted earlier, before my last post, was from Studio - Customization - Basic Info. It still shows the same (lack of) options.

 

It may be a matter of time, now that the channel is well over 100 followers. Many thanks!

 

@Dood your follow is still not notified in the list (but counts towards the total number all the same), so I found your channel in your signature and followed it from there. 👍

 

Actually, now you mention it, I had some weirdness receiving subs on mine too. I wanted to comment on the latest subscribers, but it wouldn't report it back correctly, so I didn't bother.