Friday 16 September 2011

What's happening September 2011

Two more polls completed, the first was "How do you like your blog?" and from 43 votes we had:

23 (53%) text is just fine
13 (30%) in glorious video
4  ( 9%) I don't like blogs 
3  ( 6%) audio for my 'pod

So the message is that I shouldn't bother with an audio blog, that roughly 1 in 10 people who find my blog (probably looking for tabs) like to fill in polls but don't like blogs, and I should run say 2 text blogs for every video blog I post. Okay, thanks all!

For "I'll watch a youtube video...", from 58 votes we had:

27 (46%) even if I had to watch an advert first
18 (31%) only if it was totally advert free
13 (22%) even if there were overlaid adverts

Which tells me that only around one in three respondents don't want any adverts at all...which is less than I expected. It seems that adverts are just an accepted part of life, I would say because they are easily ignorable. But, marketers are prepared to spend huge dollars on them, so they must work. On this site I get about a 1% click rate - that is, 1% of all advert views result in someone clicking on the advert. That either means that 1% of people don't know how to use the internet, or 1% of people do know how the internet works and that clicking on an ad sends money to the publisher :)

Speaking of which, I signed the youtube channel up. I had been asked, slightly persistently, by Viso Music (a Canadian broadband TV crowd) to partner with them. After about two months of avoiding making a decision, reasoning with myself about why I should or shouldn't, and boring them to tears with incessant questions I finally said "what the hey" and signed their (scary) agreement.

Good or bad decision? Time will tell.

There were two good reasons that made it an easy decision in the end. Viso have an arrangement with YouTube, they look after the licensing issues of cover artists, and in return YouTube will allow a cover artist to be a Youtube partner. Normally if you, as a cover artist, applied to be a partner you'd get turned down due to copyright infringement. But as a partner, you can then advertise with your videos.

Did you notice the two good reasons? (a) I'm now a partner with Youtube protected under the banner of the ligitimate company Viso Music so Youtube will never shut me down due to copyright infringement. (b) Youtube videos get adverts which sends money my way - although it won't be much, maybe a dollar a day.

The downside is I've basically signed videos over to them, if I want to pull the plug, well, they've got the videos now, I don't.

Of course, early days, we'll see how it works out.

In other news I started working on an interesting video which I'm sure you will appreciate, stepping through an arrangement with screen video captures and a commentary. It is taking longer than I hoped, but I will finish it, sometime! Mostly mastered playing "Stupid Girl", will probably record a video of that in the next few weeks. Really enjoying playing it, it's just got a good feel and a cool sound. Recommended!

Thursday 8 September 2011

Naudos new guitar revealed?

It looks like Naudo has unveiled his new guitar (but didn't specifically discuss it, just got his daughter to record him playing a few songs on it!)  I did a bit of research and decided it is a Crafter SAC TMVS electro-acoustic, here's the product blurb: http://www.crafterguitars.com/gallery_acoustic/sac_tmvs.php

Unknown if he's had it modified in any way - I suspect it's off the shelf, I get the feeling he's not that finnicky with his selection...
<snip>


*UPDATE*
Word from The Man himself has revealed no, the Crafter SAC TMVS is not his new guitar, he has had that one for about 4 years.  His new guitar is in fact a Prudencio Saez.  I hope to see it soon! :)


Best wishes as always Naudo my friend! :)
(http://youtube.com/Naudords)
JAW