Why No Music, or Like Requests?
From time to time I get the question about why I did away with any opening animations, music, and “like and subscribe” requests.
In the past, I used a few different music bits in the opening and closing of videos. The original one I used was a sort of silly, goofy piece that struck me as funny. I thought it was reflective of my approach to modeling in general. Light hearted and fun.
Later I switched to a “rock” theme, which I really liked, but apparently many did not. ????♂️So I used it for a while, as well as a different song for a closing bit to “roll credits”.
At some point I added an opening animation on the advice of someone trying to help me increase the traffic to my channel, and for a while I had both that and the “rock song”. Eventually I decided having both was a bit redundant, so I dropped the rock theme and stuck with the animation.
Over time, I saw more and more cases of YouTube hitting small channels with violations of copyright. Certainly in some cases this was obvious – you can’t just stick “Free Bird” in your video simply because you found a way to download it from the Googles.
But in other cases I saw more and more instances of small creators doing it the way YouTube said to, and still running into trouble. Worse, the whole issue of AI has vastly complicated things. People (or AI?) with bad intentions will actually generate a similar sounding piece of music from an existing clip, and then issue a copyright claim with YouTube that the original clip is a violation of the copyright of the AI generated clip. Which was actually generated from the “real” human created clip! (And yes, this is a real thing – not theoretical.)
I realized that YouTube (and Google in general) is very bad about what I think amounts to “bait and switch”. They say “yeah that’s fine”, and then later say “hey, you’re wrong”. And they’re also bad about applying rules fairly selectively. And worse, once a claim is made, it’s between you and the entity making the claim. YouTube says “not our problem.” But if you don’t resolve it with the claimant, you can be demonetized or even have your channel deleted altogether.
This realization was one of the mile markers on the road to decide that being a “YouTuber” was simply not going to happen. So I just gave up adding any music.
And I’m glad I did. Though I’ve never been given a “strike” by YT, a few things have popped up saying I had not properly “licensed” the rock theme that YouTube said was free to use without attribution. So I went through and started clicking the buttons they said I should to properly license the things they originally said needed no license.
Eventually they just automatically licensed the music that they said could be used with additional license or attribution or button clicking. Or at least I think they did… at this stage – who knows?
So getting rid of any animations, music, or pretty much anything I didn’t directly create (or had direct permission to include) was an easy decision.
As for the likes requests, I saw that it didn’t really matter. Most videos I make have a 100% “like” rate.. but YouTube doesn’t pay attention to 8 likes on a 3 month old video with 312 views.
It’s the same with popping up the little “subscribe” animation, or asking for subscribes throughout a video. I figure people get it by this point. They know how to subscribe. There’s little point in asking. Do or do not – there is no try. <(-_-)>
So I’ve arrived at the point that essentially I see YouTube as free video hosting. I do make a little money each month, generally $75-$100. It’s nothing to sneeze at, but it won’t retire me to the south of France, or to La France, South Carolina for that matter. Or even Paris, Texas.
Addendum – Oh, The Irony
So after writing all that above about using music in a YouTube video, I decided to verify that the “silly song” I used early on was truly still “free”.
Nope.
It had been released under the Creative Commons License 3.0, which allowed me to use it with only attribution needed. Which I of course did.
But it seems that changed somewhere along the way, and I just had to pay for a license. It was only $34, but the principle is what bugs me.
Where Are The Old Patreon Videos?
Starting in January of this year, I’d begun re-releasing old Patreon videos to the public. I started by releasing a new video every day. Some of these were the old vlog “rambles”, while others were the “Exclusive” videos from Patreon.
Early in the year I had a burst of enthusiasm to update many of these (especially the “Exclusive” stuff) with new thumbnails, descriptions, etc. I actually had them loaded up and pre-scheduled through the end of May.
But for reasons I can’t really articulate, I lost my enthusiasm for that. Like most other efforts, an initial glimmer of “maybe this will grow things” was met with “nope, didn’t do it.” In fact, it actually slowed growth. One particularly spectacular misreading of how Google handles simultaneous video releases actually netted me a single day loss of 125 subscribers. Yay me.
So I figure going forward I’ll just load those old videos up when I have the notion to do so, but otherwise not worry about it. The series about painting the A-A5 Speeder Truck is going up once a week on Wednesdays, and there will be a total of 8 episodes of that. After that I have a few more of the “exclusive” series stuff left that will make its way to YouTube eventually. But I think for the most part I’m done with the old Patreon vlogs, at least for a while.
Some Of My Favorite Aviation Channels
The impetus for me going back to some aviation projects has its roots in getting a bit bored with much of the scifi/miniature modeling content I had watched for so long. I’ve not given them up, certainly. But I just found myself winnowing down what I watched. I mean, how many “slap chop” videos can I really watch?
One day a video about the development of the F2H Banshee caught my eye. The Banshee has always been a favorite. The video was from a creator going by “Not A Pound For Air To Ground”, a title that really caught my eye. It was a catch phrase for the “Fighter Mafia” in the Pentagon in the process that led up to the F-15.
I watched the video, and I was hooked on that channel. His presentation style, dry humor, and choice of subjects were all interesting to me. Of course, this led to a search for more channels like that. Rex’s Hangar is also quite good, covering a lot of esoteric pre-WWII topics in particular. Both Rex and “Not A Pound” are voiced quite clearly by real people, and I highly recommend them.
Two others, Aviation Deep Dive and DroneScapes, are also quite good, though I suspect they may be voiced by AI. There’s nothing particularly sinister about that, but sometimes the pacing and pronunciation gets a bit odd. But the info is generally good.
One that I just ran across, and I think it is worth keeping an eye on, is Airpower 21st Century. I first watched his video titled “The Prototype Eurofighter For Next-Gen Upgrades“, and it really impressed me. His questions and discussion really stood out. It was as though every question he asked was one I thought “yeah, I’d like to know that myself”. And he seemed to have a knowledge of the subject that gave him a good awareness of the matter at hand.
So if you’re a fan of aviation, I think all of those are worth a look!
Links:
Kits In Progress
Eduard 1/48 P-39
I thought I’d have this one completed by now, but several events outside of modeling took up some time. Nothing dramatic, just “other focus”. I have the paint and decals on, and the first three videos ready to go.
The first in the series, which covers painting the cockpit, will be out July 12th. The second video will be out July 26th, which covers assembly. It’s longer than usual too, going a bit over an hour. I debated doing that, but in the end I got back to “be helpful”. It will hurt the views, and I’ll get a few nasty comments, but a quick look over at SGT Bius shows he has that “zero concern” look, so I’m good too. ???? So it’s a lot of minute, in depth, very boring details about assembling model aircraft airframes in general, and the Eduard P-39 in particular. The third video will cover base painting and decals, and is scheduled for release on August 9th.
I’ve yet to start part 4. I’m working towards wrapping it up with part 4, but I’d thought part 3 would wrap it up. Oh well. Who knows? Next month I may be telling you of part 5, “Gluing on an Wheel”. ????
Wave 1/20 Ma. K Seapig
The Seapig is moving along in the background, and I really like the color choices I made for it, unusual as they are. Several times over the years I’ve heard people who know Kow Yokoyama, Maschinen Krieger’s creator, mention that he enjoyed drawing inspiration from nature for colors and schemes. (As well as WWII subjects!) So I think the froggy origins of this scheme fit right in to that thinking.
I do like to build a variety of things, but more and more I feel like no matter what I do, whether it be aircraft, 40K, general scifi, armor, or whatever, I always have this thought of “I need to do another Ma. K kit”. There’s just so much to like about them!
New Stuff
1/35 Kaiyodo Ma. K Kangaroo
And speaking of liking Ma. K, I now have the 1/35 Kaiyodo Maschinen Krieger P.K.A. Kangaroo two kit set. It’s from the same maker as the Sturm Kafer and Krote kits. Kaiyodo is quickly becoming my favorite Ma.K kit maker. The fact that they have all plastic kits goes a long way with me. Combine that with the fact that they tackle odd designs, and in a scale that has loads of aftermarket possibilities, really sets them up to be the potential “flag bearer” for the genre among manufacturers. I do love Wave and Hasegawa, but they just keep rereleasing the same plastic. Kaiyodo’s willingness to depart from the “norm” is refreshing.
I probably won’t get around to building the kit until early 2026. But it will get built, that’s for sure!
Closing Arguments
I was so blessed in my marriage that I got along wonderfully with my wife’s parents, and I saw in over 35 years of knowing them that they truly loved me. They’ve both passed away, my mother-in-law in October 2022, and my father-in-law in October of 2023.
One of the many things I remember my father-in-law saying in his later years was something to the effect of “the problem with getting old is you stop going to birthday parties, and you start going to funerals.”
When I was growing up, all of the kids I knew in my neighborhood built scale models. I can’t recall anyone I knew who didn’t build models. Some kids built many, some a few. There was the group who built them, played with them, and blew them up. Others built them and displayed them on their shelves. But everyone built them. All of my friends, plus their older siblings, quite often even their dads.
One of my best friends was Ray. He lived up the street from me. While many of my friends would come over to build models, (or play baseball, or Star Trek, or WWII, or GI Joes, or whatever…) Ray was my “model” buddy. That seemed to be the thing we both connected on the most. While other kids built models, when it came to airplanes, Ray and I lived and breathed them.
We’d constantly quiz each other on the minutia of P-51 variants, or the relative merits of the P-47s armament, or what tactics worked best if you were in an F-4E against a MiG-17. Years later my mom told me that the school librarian said I’d read literally every aircraft book the library had. And Ray was always right there, reading those books too.
Because we lived near Moody Air Force Base, there were many retirees and active pilots. Through my dad’s business connections, church friends, and even my next door neighbor, we had access to first hand stories of flying in every airplane from WWII to that very time. And those pilots were always impressed with our knowledge of aircraft, history, and tactics.
Ray had an older brother who was as close to a real life Sheperd Paine as I thought anyone could ever get. I think his name was Luke, but I’m not sure. It’s been so many years. His ceiling was dominated by airplanes hanging from fishing line. Right in the middle was a giant B-52, bomb bays open, ready to strike.
On occasion Luke would let us come in his room, no doubt under threat of severe injury if we touched anything. He was quite skilled, and his models were so precise and clean. All of the decals were straight, the paint was even, and you could see the smallest details. He was even able to get his silver enamel paint to dry. It was a marvelous day to go into the inner sanctum and see those models.
I don’t recall the occasion, but at some point Luke gave me one of his 1/72 scale F-4E Phantoms. As they were flying overhead daily, I was very interested in them. The plane was given a space of honor on my shelf, and I was very careful with it. Sometimes I’d just sit and look at it and wonder if I’d ever be able to do such magic with a kit.
Ray’s dad worked at Moody Air Force Base. He was a firefighter on the base. What mattered to me was I could go with them to the base exchange, and they had loads of model kits at prices that were low even for that time. One of the coolest things was a display rack covered in Airfix bagged kits, and they were all priced at fifty cents each if memory serves correct. In a day when most kits were around $1-$2, that was a real bargain. A fiver from my Grandma would yield a veritable mint of models to build!
In the summer of 1978, we moved away, and though I kept up with Ray for a few years, eventually we went our own ways. I graduated high school, got married, joined the Army, had kids… life moved on. When social media started becoming a thing, I was quite pleased to be able to locate and catch up with many childhood friends.
But try as I might, through Facebook, Twitter, Google searches, and inquiries to mutual friends, I was never able to catch up with Ray. Even relatives who still lived in the area and knew him when we were kids came up blank. So eventually I gave up.
One of the sad things I’ve learned as I get old is that if you have trouble finding a friend from the past, part of the search must now include the word “obituary”. When I’d received word that another friend from that era had passed, it suddenly struck me that I’d not done that particular search for Ray.
It’s weird. As I typed in that search, I just sort of knew. Don’t ask me how. I knew. I put in his name, the town, and the word obituary.
And there it was.
My friend Ray had passed away a few years before. The obit had a few details of his life. Nothing remarkable, really. Worked at these places, a few comments about his family… the usual things we see in an obituary for a person that just lived whatever it is a “normal” life is anymore. Eventually every stitch of it is summed up by the dash between their birth date and date of death on the grave marker
In fact, as I was writing this, a check of where Ray was buried showed that it was just a few plots away from my own parents.
I am a grown man. I’ve jumped from airplanes, been in combat, rode patrol boats in the Amazon’s tributaries, swam in the Panama Canal, been chased by a wild boar in Germany, and even raised two teenagers. I don’t have to stomp around trying to act tough. At some point, you just know. I’ve seen things most people haven’t and lived to tell the tale. I’ve grown a bit of a tough shell.
But I will admit I cried. I wished I’d have tried harder to locate Ray while there was time. I’d have liked to simply say “thanks for being my friend.” And then show him the models I was building. Perhaps he still built too. Who knows, maybe he’d even seen some of the work that I am always spamming loading online?
I’ll never know though.
I’m not sure I have a meaningful point to all this. All I know is that as I look back over the course of my life, building models and sharing them with my friends has always been a happy part of the journey. Yet the older I get, the more of my modeling friends pass away. And though I always make new friends, there’s no doubt that I miss the ones no longer here.
Enjoy the hobby friends. I’m thankful for all of you.
Leave a Reply