Am I A YouTube Quisling?

I've been posting on ATS since 2007. I've posted on numerous subjects, most significantly though on 9/11 and government corruption issues. I realize that doesn't make me unique.

My stance in most of what I have posted is to be highly sceptical about government and about the influence of corporations on our lives. Recently, in one thread, I called modern fascism the transformation of corporations into a fungal growth.

Now an issue has come up.

I, as a personal hobby, paint and write music. I have a YouTube channel and have made a few amateurish videos of me performing my music on guitar. I just want to get the music out there and see what kind of responses it receives, how many views and most interestingly, where those views come from. YouTube has an "Analytics" page where things are broken down statistically for each uploaded video. It is very interesting. I've been amazed at how many different countries have viewed my videos.

When I say countries, I mean usually one person in that country.

My videos don't get viewed a lot. None of them has "broken" 500 views. I don't care. Its fun and that's enough for me.

Here's the issue. Recently YouTube began to send me a little notice that I could start to "monetize" my videos, by becoming a YouTube "partner". I only had to submit an "agreement" to abide by the conditions of partnership and I would start to receive a percentage of ad money generated by "clicks" on ads that would be posted on my channel with my videos.

I am very conflicted about doing this. I don't trust corporations, lawyers or "agreements" between ants and elephants.

I do appreciate the opportunity that YouTube has made available to me, to have my music heard around the world. I understand that "monetization" of work is basically what work should be about, but I worry about what kind of ads might be associated with my music. Commercial ads are one thing, but what if political ads started to appear? And when you get right down to it, aren't commerical ads really political ads to some extent, anyway?

Sellout? Dupe? Collaborator? Thin edge of the imperialist wedge?

Do these terms apply to me if I decide to monetize? I want to do the right thing and I am leaning toward not monetizing. I would feel like a complete heel if my viewers in poorer countries were subjected to ads from some slavering transnational corporation, just because they wanted to hear one of my tunes.

Thoughts anyone?

reply to post by ipsedixit


I abide by the old Viking saying "If you were gonna do something anyway, you may as well get paid for it".

Monetizing something you are doing passively is always a good idea. If your convictions are so strict that you don't want advertising on your videos that you may be morally against, then don't do it. I'd definitely consider it, though, if I were you.

Also, if you start bringing in couple dollars a week for your videos, wouldn't you be more inspired to keep making them?

reply to post by Cuervo

What you are saying is true. Another thought that came to me is that even in poorer countries, the people who are listening to my msuic are not too poor to afford internet access. Undoubtedly they are not too stupid to ignore or mute ads that they don't want to deal with either. Those thoughts make me less hesitant about monetizing, so I might do it. It would be good to get other perspectives though.

Well you wouldn't really get anything anyway. If your videos havent gotten more than 500 views. You get something like 0.00001€ per video view
Curious thought that I've never had that kind of offers. I have 0 complaints and all my stuff is used legally. I got about 255k views. Maybe I dont put up videos often enough.

Originally posted by PsykoOps
Well you wouldn't really get anything anyway. If your videos havent gotten more than 500 views. You get something like 0.00001€ per video view

Curious thought that I've never had that kind of offers. I have 0 complaints and all my stuff is used legally. I got about 255k views. Maybe I dont put up videos often enough.

I've wondered about this myself. I was surprised when YouTube, a little while ago, told me that I could upload videos longer than 15 minutes in length if I wanted to. I was happy about it but puzzled. The next thing was the "monetizing" invitation. Another puzzle.

One thing about my videos is that all my material is original. I write all my own music. Another thing is the number of foreign views of these videos. One of them has 95 views in Brazil! There is an amazing spread of countries in my viewership. I've never counted them all but it is not unusual for one of my videos to have been viewed in 15 to 20 different countries. It's possible that there is some kind of statistical benchmark of criteria that my "demographic" satisfies and that has led to the invitation to monetize. That might be the reason for this development.

Well, you could have 2 accounts, 1 for this agreement, and another for things you don't want youtubes' hands in.

reply to post by CynicalDrivel

That's true. I guess if I wound up having ads for the joys of a holiday in a re-education camp or demonizing organic farmers, I could close down the offending account and move my stuff to the other account or just terminate the partnership agreement. I think that can be done. I'm tempted to monetize at this point. I haven't seen anything that would really deter me from it. It has helped to put my thoughts down and to get reactions. I haven't read anything dire yet.

Btw are you sure it's youtube that is sending you these messages and not some scammer? Also as an artist make sure you read the terms & conditions of this new agreement before you accept it. Especially the copyright part. I never heard of youtube trying to rob peoples copyright but you never know.

I monetized.

YouTube gives the uploader a choice of different formats for the ads. I chose the one in which a little clickable ad appears like a banner at the bottom of the video screen while the video plays. It'll be interesting to see if any revenue is generated. If anything unusual happens I'll let people here know.

Edit: I took a look at the analytics pages for each of my videos and figured out that, on average, one of my videos is seen in 17 different countries.

Two of the videos were seen in 25 countries, while the least travelled video was seen in 6 countries.

I have no idea if this sort of viewership is unusual, but it is the only thing I can think of that might be relevant to an ad campaign.

Thought I would post an update on my YouTube activity. I still have not received money from YouTube and I don't even know how many monetizations I have to have before I get money. One of my videos has been seen in 45 countries. Another video, my most viewed video, has been viewed 578 times in total, and in 27 countries.

Thanks to all my "monetizing" viewers and to other viewers too. It is very interesting to look at the analytical pages of my channel to see all of the stats and to see who/where is actually viewing. I can't figure them out. Who are they in all these places?

I think YT sends the check once a year. Not sure thought. With the amount of views you have the amount will be so low that they might not even pay it. In the contract there has to be something about minimum amount they pay or something.