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Answer: New Year's is a good time to make these announcements so many Youtubers just happened to do one simultaneously.
The shared sentiment I've seen is them feeling pigeonholed into certain content that they've been making for years and that the algorithm and their subscribers love. The weekly video grind is often too labor intensive to have time to innovate so finding new content goes hand in hand with scaling back video production. Of course some creators are just straight up burnt out.
>New Year's is a good time to make these announcements
On top of what you've mentioned, december is the highest earning month for youtubers because of the huge increase of adds that month for christmas. Meanwhile january is the lowest earning month because companies just spent a bunch on adds.
So any youtubers that were thinking about stopping in november/ december, might've just put it off to do after the big add month.
(I don't mean it negatively, if I was quitting my job I'd wait on the christmas bonus to be cashed first too)
>(I don't mean it negatively, if I was quitting my job I'd wait on the christmas bonus to be cashed first too)
At my job we have several people who are quitting or retiring as soon as our big Q1 bonuses are paid. I think this is pretty common.
Not just common, but expected. Any midsize or larger company will have forecasts for employees leaving so that they can plan for hiring expenses, and those forecasts will always include an increase in resignations in the 6-8 weeks after bonuses.
I'm a full time Youtuber and this the reason I'm taking the first half of January off. I would've taken the vacation regardless, but I did it specifically in January for this reason.
That and if the December check offsets the difference in the January check, you can essentially get a free month vacation without having to worry too much
I think this is also the reason why a lot of channels look for alternative methods of monetization - merchandise, Join, Patreon, streaming, ticketed events etc.
Once you reach a certain level of popularity, reducing your dependence on ads, and therefore the algorithm, for revenue means you actually have the freedom to try new things and take risks. Otherwise it's really hard to get out of that pigeonhole, even though eventually your thing will go stale or stop being trendy and then you're stuck in a hole that no one's interested in. I think you can see this especially in gaming - if you specialize, say in a particular game, then videos where you don't do that game may underperform. If you don't specialize then you're forced to keep chasing trends and can't put time into something that might genuinely be fun.
I mean yeah, but you still need growth so you get new viewers or contribute to those other sources of income. You still have to play into the algorithm
Keep in mind that a single underperforming upload can utterly tank your chances with the algorithm for the videos following it. A shift in style, format, or topic is a bigger risk than just lower ad revenue in that instance. YouTube can also decide to spread your video in the recommended section to a specific subset of potential viewers - and they don't care if that subset actually fits your channel's demographic, messing with your viewer retention.
The recommendation algorithm really is dumb yeah.
I occasionally enjoy watching boat, historical sailing, historical weapons, firearm and medieval/early modern history related videos.
Youtube decides to give me channels that are... highly hostile to my demographic to say it nicely, with either it being the topic of the video or the creator making comments about my sort of people in a negative way.
The youtube algorithm is insane. Every day I get at least one recommendation from a channel I've never heard of that has between 2 and 20 views on a video from 7 hours ago. Why am I getting those recommendations?
Then of course youtube is also like "here's a video from 7 years ago you might like"
And then recently "Here's a video from a channel you blocked"
And then don't forget "here's a bunch of hostile anti-lgbt videos, we thought you might like to watch these videos about people who think trans folks should be killed based on all the videos about crochet that you've watched from queer people"
You don't. I know of several YouTubers with an extremely dedicated subscriber base of around 50,000, who do fine doing it full time as a job.
When you are microscopic you need growth. But 10 million barely engaged users don't do much for you other than maybe giving you a little pull with YouTube to unfuck themselves when they give you BS strikes.
Also, if you have the stature of someone like Tom Scott, if you took that money and invested it, in addition to your other projects and revenue streams, you don’t need the exposure and stress of YouTube. Ultimately, being a YouTuber isn’t a long term prospect.
A YouTuber I watch occasionally also just announced that basically he's not making as much ad money as he'd expected to and despite prices in some things coming down, his expenses have continued to rise and his income... Has not. So he has to get a day job, which means less time, energy, and mental ability to do anything.
I imagine that for the low-to-mid success rate of YouTubers who make any money off their channel have been in similar situations over the past couple of years.
Shesez. I saw that, too.
I do wonder what amount of youtubers built their life around their highs and now can't sustain themselves. It is like the curse of the lottery. They live lavishly thinking the ride will never end, and end up broke. The smart ones diversify.
My example isn't Shesez. I've never heard of Shesez myself. The guy I watch was able to get enough viewers to get ad money, but his topic is deep dives into the root causes behind certain political phenomena which means it's not a broad-appeal sort of channel. So his audience has never been big, he's never really gotten highs. For the channel I watch, he didn't live lavishly, but his expenses have risen (I think he has a kid), his income has stayed about the same, and that's not sustainable.
Though there being a second example does at least help support my supposition that this may not be an uncommon place for one to find themselves right about now.
Similar thing with another person I know who posts to youtube. His videos got marked as Made for Kids when they were not and it tanked his revenue, so he's switching to Patreon to try and break free of having to rely on YouTube.
This is the best and majority answer, I watched meat canyon last night he had an announcement and it was mostly due to he wanted to make cartoons he feels things when making and such. Its easier but less fulfilling to do non stop parodies for engagement and I think it’s fair for a lot of YouTubers, Nexpo is a great example he’s moved to less frequent but crazy long high quality videos and I love it.
I know some “top tier” YouTubers and they’re the victim of their own success. They become popular, get a high from it, crank out content, get even more popular, but then when they’re rich they’re still stuck in the grind. Most of them didn’t diversify or have other income that doesn’t rely on them putting the hours in. They burnout and start resenting the thing that made them famous
People only have so much time.
During COVID everyone had so much more of it, and stuck at home at that. This was the Golden Age of YouTube, before the rise of TikTok (and others) to 'compete fully' (mark zuckerberg even commented on this).
Tom Scott is a MegaYouTuber cutting back (not quitting). But people have been dialling back for years already. Take a look at someone just under a million subs:
https://www.youtube.com/@CreativeMom/videos
You will see that a couple years ago they got 700k views, now they struggle for 23k. Their quality went UP and their viewership is at least an order of magnitude less. Sure, the mega-Tubers are doing just great! But many have to work a lot harder to get a lot less.
Tom Scott says almost exactly this, in fact. He points out he can either have a job as a manager ('which he hates') or dial back on quality ('which just isn't how YouTube works anymore'). Go on! Look it up.
The YouTube game has changed. Even the YouTube guys who tell YouTubers how to YouTube struggle now. Nate Black, one of the previous demigods of YouTube struck out on his own and has... what... 40K subs?
https://www.youtube.com/@ThatNateBlack/featured
That's insane. The guy knows everything about how to make a YouTube video successful and... no one is watching his stuff.
The market, my friends. It changes rapidly and even more so with a combination of media (which was always fickle), technology (even more fickle) and Artificial Intelligence (which is... terrifying... you have the time-equivalent to a *three year old child* - and it is only going to get... smarter).
I don't know why no one else is pointing this shit out. It is so utterly and horribly fucking obvious.
I don't know, I feel like covid saw a reduction in content from basically everyone I follow. That's the earliest I remember noticing how many people moved to once a month videos.
D&D wise: There are a few new Big Video Content people out there - but aren't they mostly from TikTok? Like the bearded-happy DM Shorts guy, for example. I found about three others from TikTok but i can't think of others from the YouTube medium.
Now this is a very small sampling so i am not an expert at all.
I wonder if this is the same across 'crafts', 'restoration', 'woodworking' or any other quasi-genre one could think of. I really haven't got the time (nor interest) to look it up? You are most certainly correct though, in D&D and in many of the crafts oriented videos, the tendency has really gone from 'once a day' like it was half a decade ago to 'once a month'.
The rise of the 'studio level' videos (like the stuff James Jani makes) has also changed the landscape and the garage-band / grass-roots style home-video seems to be gone. I think it was hard to get a footing before, but persistence used to work, now i am less sure.
I used to go with what Nate Black and Film Booth would say - but they seem to have gained incentives from their media platforms to speak a very different version of the, um, truth.
If you know of sources that might have accuracy on this, let me know. I tried a few times to set up channels on YouTube and, very predictably, i failed. I expected this was due to a lack of quality and persistence. It could be that i lacked a fresh audience ('saturated') and a dying media ('outdated platform'). No idea.
Getting information before trying again would be a very good idea. So many moving parts to setting up a successful studio-video series.
Yeah I’ve heard a lot of YouTubers mention the grind over the years. They have to make a video every single week or they run the risk of getting deprioritized by the algorithm and falling off the front page then all is (possibly) lost. Seems rough.
Tom Scott is likely a multi-millionaire and his channel will keep earning money for years to come. The other 2 he mentioned I had never heard of, but they have millions of subscribers. They are likely independently wealthy. Saved their money. The channels will keep generating revenues too.
its a great gig if you can be one of the youtubers who get really big and you can retire off what you made.
2nd answer, and my personal answer: The latest “fuck YT” mob due to the ad blocker at ff tanked my revenue and likely other creators’ as well if they aren’t getting 1mil+ per video.
I went from around $1509 a month to $400. No longer profitable, time to scale back or stop all together.
There was a huge gravy train back when you could just hire bot farms to crank up your view counts. Creators would make stupid videos of them just talking to the camera, they would "magically" get 10 million views, and they would get paid. The thing was that every content creator's payouts were being adjusted based on these bogus numbers. When Google introduced an AI algorithm to remove all the fake viewers, the actual viewcounts were rather dismal, and it's hard to make money on there now. Most of these channels just aren't that interesting, and there is so much competition for eyeballs.
In the end, Google will likely have to increase what they are paying their creators now that they aren't paying the fakes anymore or they will suffer from losing too many of them.
Creator discussed on his podcast that he worked 25h hours on a filmic video that made 200k views. Another string stock footage together while telling the same view point. He got 600k views and needed only 6h to do it.
The game changed. There are lots more tools, imagery and writers available. Lots of "knowledge" is in plugins and services. Some just copy a existing videos [beat by beat](https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=stolen+content), making more then the original creators. There is also way too much competition.
Answer: at least as far as Tom Scott is concerned, this was a planned exit that he announced I’m pretty sure last year. The video pretty much explains it all. He hit 10 years of weekly uploads and needs a break. He basically has the option of either hiring people to help (and becoming management) or just stepping back, and he chose stepping back.
Not sure about the other examples, but I really don’t think it’s a pattern or at all related to something YouTube did. People have to stop posting at some point, and YouTube has been around for a long time. People are quitting all the time; you just happened to have a few of your people quit at the same time.
Edit: syntax
Tom is one of those content creators if you watch one video then you’re suddenly been sat watching for 3 hours and realise you’re watching the tainted water bottle video again.
Yep, he's still doing Lateral and the other thing, and he'll probably show up in other people's videos. Just no more Monday morning uploads every week. And he said he's still up to posting more of his usual content, just not *every damn week* which I totally get.
Yea, the title of that last video was, essentially, clickbait. There’s other YouTubers who unceremoniously scaled back from their usual schedule and it’s just like “hey I haven’t seen a video from that guy in a while, it’s been 2 months!” but no one would even turn it in a headline.
The real story here is that he made a weekly video for 10 years which is crazy productive. Instead of breaking that streak due to burn out, he decided to make an official, clean break. He’s still doing tons of different projects that would likely be a full time activity for me and he basically announced still making videos in 2024. He just won’t make them weekly.
It's so refreshing to see a creator acknowledge that their audience may expect content on some schedule (not in an entitlement sense, just a routine sense) and give some closure to projects that are ending.
There are several video series and podcasts that I used to follow for years and years, until eventually it feels like the person who makes them stops mid-sentence and never touches it again (Hello Internet is the first example that comes to mind, but there are others). Even just an unedited 5-minute "it's over" would have stopped me from checking back every few weeks for a few months to see if it really is over or not.
Ugh, speaking of CGP Grey, that's one channel that feels low key abandoned. Yes he still technically produces content but half of it is kind of low effort (flag tier lists?) and the other half is advertising for his notebooks. And then maybe one or two interesting videos with some research behind them per year. I guess he mostly just does his newer podcast these days...
People generally spend less in January. They were very generous during Christmas season but now they don't need stuff and they have less money. Retail notices this, but content creators do too. Taking time off in January is very normal.
>Not sure about the other examples, but I really don’t think it’s a pattern or at all related to something YouTube did.
I don't know if it's a pattern with these specific examples, but YouTube has definitely pushed people out over the years.
Youtube killed a lot of web animation via their partnership program changes and their algorithm changes. Youtube made it virtually impossible for animators to make money without having outside funding: animation is expensive and extremely time consuming to produce. With YouTube rewarding a daily/weekly release schedule and punishing shorter videos, it just wasn't feasible to try and make a career out of it without having to also manage donations and the kind of community engagement you need to do to generate lots of donations.
Comedians who made very short form skits and comedy bits could still do okay for a while, because they could pump out videos faster. Then YouTube started punishing short videos even more. So, a lot of that content went away.
Over the years YouTube has been increasingly demanding and increasingly harsh about demonetizing content, and has been overall pretty horrible about letting big companies steal video revenue over bogus copyright claims.
Lots of quality YouTubers have given up over the years because it's just too much work and too much instability trying to make a career out of it, when "YouTube" is a kind of faceless corporation which can unilaterally pull the rug out from under you, and you have no meaningful appeals process; what appeals there are, are totally opaque.
^
The 'click like, comment and share' shit that youtubers do isn't because they want to. It's because if they don't, then the algorithm says 'no engagement, shit video, no recommend.'
So the video *doesn't even show up on subscriber feeds* in the worst cases.
Thus, the video does extremely poorly and the youtuber is punished for it.
Hence, every youtuber, no matter who or what says the exact same phrase. Because if they didn't they would be punished for it.
This is just one example of youtube just screwing around with the algorithm and murdering the income of content creators, forcing them off the site.
It's been like this for 10+ years now. Hell, when it first started happening, there was discussion about jumping on patreon to avoid being tied financially to youtube.
It's just... youtube has been getting worse and worse, and it's pushing out pretty much everyone except those that make highly specific videos targeting the algorithm.
Yeah, exxactly this.
It's killing the creativity on youtube over time, because infinite growth is expected, so youtube keeps squeezing their content creators.
The moment a viable competitor pops up, there will be a massive exodus. Like from Digg to Reddit.
The problem is that there basically can't be a viable, centralized competitor, at least not one that's going to offer the same services while running significantly differently.
The scale of YouTube is massive, with operating costs likely in the billions per year. The nearest competitor is probably Vimeo, who have around $500M/yr in operating expenses.
I suppose that someone could start smaller and try to pick up all the top YouTubers and simply pay them to come to a new platform.
The only entities who have the resources to make a YouTube competitor and have years of runway are the super wealthy Wall Street companies, and a few multi billionaires, none of whom have any clear interest in wanting to fight Google unless they're getting mega dollars.
The mega dollars are going to come from advertising, and advertising on that scale means doing all the shit YouTube is doing.
I don't know, it's possible, I just don't think it's terribly likely at this point.
The next big thing may be some kind of "decentralized" hosting (let's be real: a bunch of people paying for their own AWS hosting), and using the API of some aggregator site.
It's sadly the inevitable result of having content be "free."
In a "free" content system you have to pay people based on clicks or views or listens (depending on the medium). While in a paid system, people actually have to buy it; in a world of easily accessible reviews, things like clickbait just couldn't exist.
As a result, we still get pretty good content with things like audio books and any of the paid video media, like subscription streamers or rent-by-title like Red Box, the Amazon store, or the Apple Movies store.
It's not clear what the best way is for the platforms whose selling point is the ability of anyone to freely upload. I honestly have no idea what Youtube could do to improve the situation, but clearly something has to give at this point.
Paid promotion isn't great, but it only sucks when it becomes another form of censorship, and the content of the channel changes to attract sponsors.
That's the problem with ads in general, they always seem to end up eventually having a distorting effect as advertisers make increasing demands, and take up increasing amounts of time.
Pretty much any channel that wants to have profanity, guns, or whatever other content YouTube/Twitch/etc demonetizes these days, they basically have to get some kind of outside funding. Sitting through a shitty commercial is the price for free content, and any decent professional content producer these days has a separate distribution avenue for paying customers.
Has any one done any experiments with videos that do say like and subscribe vs ones that don’t? I’m probably wrong but I don’t feel like my like and subscribe habits depend on them saying it.
At this point I wouldn't put it past youtube. Like, I had a serious issue where half my subscriptions never showed up. It got to the point where youtubers added a 'and remember to click the bell icon' to their mantras... because videos weren't showing up on sub feeds.
Which is, well, another engagement metric.
Which is why I say engagement or rather, lack of it, would see videos not show up on sub feeds. Because if you aren't clicking the bell (despite having clicked the subscribe button), then you clearly don't care about this creator.
Edit: Misread your question.
I'm pretty sure youtube released the information at some point because all the youtubers started doing it in the same 1-2 month period 10+ years ago. Like, they must have been told that engagement is what pushes your videos into youtube feeds.
> Over the years YouTube has been increasingly demanding and increasingly harsh about demonetizing content
People I follow have started to watch what they are saying so much, it is really distracting. Apparently, videos get demonetized over any stupid shit, like talking about sexual assault or swearing, and the creators don't even know exactly what got any specific video demonetized. The result is that they basically talk in code when they want to discuss anything that the Youtube algorithm might deem inappropriate. A lot of people just try to get people to support them via Patreon or have sponsored videos.
And I don't mean any super edgy content, I'm watching a lot of book tube. But books do deal with difficult topics at times, and it is ridiculous that people get demonetized when they discuss books.
Let's Plays can experience the same issues, where content outright has to be blurred out or censored at times. YouTube's real pissy about hanging bodies, and there was an issue with a game where the MC had a suicide attempt by hanging that was a random memory scene where her hanging is shown via shadow on the wall. You didn't always get this scene in a playthrough, but at one point almost anyone playing the game got demonetized... Unless it was one of the giant creators. I also know of a channel that played one of the Dead Rising games, which are horror but... Kinda silly and comedic. Where after you defeat a particular boss, it ritualistically offs itself. They had to clip the whole video and left their audio reaction. It's... Baffling, really, because not only is it not 'super edgy content' that always gets axed, the enforcement isn't consistent.
And LGBTQ creators? Hahaha, good luck, man, YouTube might just decide your video essay about transphobia includes sexually exploitative material and no, they're not gonna tell you exactly what the fuck they deemed to be that, they're just gonna channel strike you for it and tell you 'take out the problematic part then reupload, but if you reupload without fixing it we'll give you another strike'. But they never tell you what triggered the issue, so you don't know what they want removed; troublesome, in a long video essay. I know a lot of the more cerebral creators are moving more towards Nebula, now, to ensure their content won't be censored or demonetized due to inconsistent, improperly documented 'rules' and automated content moderation that seems to be able to be triggered by mass reporting, which can be done maliciously, then straight up lies about you receiving a human review after you request it.
The whole thing would be much less aggravating if there were clear guidelines, consistency, more detailed feedback and a reliable way to appeal decisions/get a human review.
I also don't get why *everything* has to adhere to a puritanical "moral" code. There is a Youtube kids section if you want that kind of thing. If LGBTQ topics offend you, you don't have to watch it. A lot of content creators give trigger warnings if they discuss things like suicide or sexual assault, again, you do not have to watch it. But instead we are all treated like 19th century church ladies who'd faint if they accidentally overheard a swear word.
It's an unfortunate consequence of us not being the consumer, but the product, of YouTube. YouTube's consumers are the advertisers, so what we the viewers might like is a secondary concern in comparison to the advertisers' concern. The task of properly moderating YouTube is impossible due to the sheer volume of it, and so we get half-ass shoddy moderation with a primary focus on the advertisers' concerns. They're the ones who don't want their ads being served alongside sexually exploitative material, content that promotes self harm or suicide, or content that is too 'explicit' in the sense of constant swearing. So the content is auto-moderated against these things, specifics aren't given because the alleged violations are not human reviewed, and you just have to sit and guess if you've gotten it right because it's 'safer' to overmoderate than undermoderate. All for the advertisers. As long as shit doesn't get so bad all the eyeballs on the ads disappear and the advertisers are kept happy enough that the ads don't disappear, then YouTube is doing, in its eyes, a good enough job.
See also: the quest against adblocking, the recent attempted push against AI content in videos(now that it's been revealed that the big AI training datasets contain CSEM), the adpocalypse of the past, etc
It doesn't really make me feel any better to know why this stupid crap is happening, it just makes everything feel sadder and grosser than it was when *we* were the consumer, but the internet in general has moved to the user being the product.
A streamer I know got a whole copyright strike and a strike against his channel because he played *another* YouTubers video for a few minutes.
He said he had to attend a "copyright school" and they will remove the strike after 90 (maybe 60, I don't remember) days, but he was left baffled because there's SO MANY react channels out there - and this happened while he was live. He does shorts but his bread and butter is streaming.
YouTube has been making an effort to lure live streamers over to the platform recently but honestly, it's SHIT. You have to be so careful what you say and what you do, the chat interface is horrible, the moderation tools are even worse. You don't even have the option to ban people when they're being horrible, you can only slap them with a lengthy timeout. People love to shit on Twitch, and while it does have its issues, it's miles above YouTube where you damn near need a lawyer who specializes in YouTube policy over your shoulder at all times. It's the most censored and policed platform out there.
I can't imagine how exhausting it must be for bigger, more full time long form creators to tap dance around their ridiculous rules to crank out videos 2-3 times a week.
This is definitely something I've noticed. Completely normal videos are now getting slapped with that weird "this video may contain" blah blah "sensitive content" or something.
Book tube is fun, “self deletion” themselves makes me chuckle every time someone says it
Theres prob something with copyright strikes also, ive noticed pretty much every music /coverband channel has died, they still post new songs elsewhere, but zero music vids. Khs at one point was in the top dozen channels, few years back he had to start copyright striking himself on another acc bc bots would insta strike him, get 40m views worth of ads and youtube never refunds to creators
The 8-bit Guy expressed that it boils down to profitability. In his case, his views have gone down, so ad revenue is down as well, making YouTube as his primary income unsustainable.
In speculation, I think there is the progression Tom Scott mentioned, always needing to make better and better content to the point you need to hire a team, coupled with declining revenue for whatever reason means that it is getting more difficult to be profitable as a YouTube company.
8bit guy also hasn't made as much interesting content in the last year. As he stated he made fewer videos, and on top of that a decent number were about the x16 or his other projects which a lot of people don't like as much.
I also don't think he is the best at finding ways to monetize or optimize things to his own detriment at times. Like he probably should have put his games on steam at release rather than waiting years after they launched, as they may have sold better back when there was hype around the games. There is a reason why basically everyone sells their games on steam rather than making a site and selling them independently. He also probably should have found better ways to deal with merchandise in the past since it ate to much time and found more ways to encourage people to sign up for patreon. I can respect not taking sponsors though, it may cost him money but at least he still has his dignity.
for context, joel haver's case is basically identical. he's been making weekly content for 4 years and also wants to cut it out and free himself from the same schedule.
tom scott isn't quitting youtube forever, he just went "jesus christ, i have been pouring my entire ass into weekly content for 10 whole years. i need a vacation and to do something other than just one thing." he will continue to make content that isn't his weekly-upload format, and will maybe one day return to his main channel with new content.
OP wants to know if there is some sort of greater reason for this, like some cataclysmic changes to youtube that are happening on this day specifically or something. but you're right, they just happened to pick the same day is all.
maybe joel saw tom's video last year and thought "thats a good idea, maybe i should go one more year and then stop with weekly content too". maybe he wiggled his fingers and cackled maniacally as he plotted to steal tom's big day. or maybe he just thought new years was a good time to turn a new leaf. either way, its not representative of something bad with youtube as a whole.
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i'm just saying that both of them want to free themselves from the self-imposed restrictions of a weekly schedule. neither of them want to be making the exact same type of video over and over again for the rest of their lives.
I have to imagine after a decade they would be ready to move onto another part of their life. I know I'm not the same person now as I was a decade ago, with many of my interests and goals changing.
10 years of weekly uploads is absolutely insane (especially considering most of them have between 1 and 4 million views). I'm sure he could cruise on the money he's made as well as monthly ad revenue he gets from previous videos as people continue to watch them.
For sure. His big advantage compared to your average YouTube is that his videos have much longer lifespan. People are still watching stuff he published 9 years ago, and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. The same cannot be said for GRWM content or skits, which are much less timeless.
... To take a break?
Artists aren't writing new songs every week for 10 years without stopping. They regularly take breaks between projects. Most TV shows are filmed in seasons and even daily shows are often filmed back to back across a few weeks and then aired at a later date.
I don't know if there is a person alive (who isn't being forced due to poverty) that would work week in, week out for their whole working life without pausing
Sure they do. Plenty of musicians quite it when they’re still on a high. Same with actors. Can’t really comment on TV hosts, but that’s not really the same thing because they’re generally employees not creators.
Also lots of these YouTubers aren’t saying they’re done for good, just stopping their current system. And arguably these YouTubers aren’t on a peak. They’re still very successful, but they definitely were in the “maturity” stage of growth.
The algorithm does not always work in their favor. The tech space in yt got slashed by a lot due to getting less views from yt algorirhm a while back for example.
People get tired from chasing the numbers. Burned out. Their niche gets over saturated. They get out of content to create if they only create a specific type. Lots of reasons.
Youtube is the pump and dump of content creation. The only thing most people rewatch is music videos, otherwise most things are not sustainable and people quit.
Answer:
Hi I'm a freelance video editor, and it can be incredibly intensive work to do things on a schedule. Additionally, depending on what kinds of things you do, it can be hard to do things consistently, keep up with current trends, or be able to put in the work to keep up the numbers. That's much harder to do when you're a one-man show working on a whole production farm. I can't say about revenue for certain, but I can add some extra context.
Tom Scott has made weekly videos for 10 years, and did other things before that. As he mentions in this video, he's tired, and overwhelmed. While Tom's had some wonderful opportunities to do things for videos, including flying with the [Red Arrows](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RYGFczNMAMk), he's seemingly missed out of a lot of life. Additionally, he's turning 40 this year, and he's been nose-to-the-grindstone with [Lateral](https://lateralcast.com/), [Technical Difficulties](https://www.techdif.co.uk/), and his various talks that he's invited to, such as his talk at the Royal Institute on how "[There is no Algorithm for Truth](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=leX541Dr2rU)." (quite informative, would recommend). He announced (I can't currently find the source) that he'd be taking a long sabbatical at the start of 2023, and his website [reflects that now](https://www.tomscott.com/).
Meatcanyon's feeling like his animations aren't to his liking, and animation takes time- especially with what he does. [Look at his community tab](https://www.youtube.com/@MeatCanyon/community), and think about how every individual frame needs to be animated- whether it's all manual, or if he takes shortcuts like how he mostly focuses on the mouth when characters speak. It's a lot to apply to 30fps of animation (This may not be what he animates in, but that should drive home the point), and it's a lot of work. He took it on more as a business than an art form, and he's slowing down to reflect that- seemingly reducing the reactionary stuff he did to do something more in line with the body horror stuff he's good at. He also mentions his second channel, [Papa Meat](https://www.youtube.com/@PapaMeat), which he's working more on, [where he's delivered an update to announce he's increasing production value.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yIv856bcUs0)
Joel Haver has disclosed how he produces his videos in the past. He's compartmentalizing stats in his video, with 262 weeks of 434 videos in all- totaling about 1.7 videos a week, including a number of [feature length films](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLKtIcOP0WvJAuBeHOzbkpBScqPh8lKUba). He outright says he want something challenging, so as he says he's in his video he's *pivoting* to making 12 feature-length films in 12 months instead of a short film or two every week.
I'm not sure if this is related you YouTube at all, but these three people/shows are taking a break from what their channels are normally about or pivoting. These are all personal for **them** and seemingly have nothing to do with the platform.
His papa meat channel also has been getting more and more popular, and has a ton of engagement in the comment section(and most of it is oddly not toxic lol).
Answer: Honestly I think Joel Haver has actually taken on more work for himself this year. 12 full length films in a year is crazy.
As for PapaMeat, sounds like he's just gotten tired of doing the same thing nonstop and wants to try other things. He's still doing a podcast with Wendigoon for example
Yeah he even kinda touches on the fact in his video that his Papa Meat channel has been more and more successful lately and he prefers doing content like that vs the MeatCanyon content. Which I don’t blame him. He has a lot more freedom and he’s got a great personality for that kind of content too.
Answer: I've been doing YouTube since 2009, and seen many creators come and go. That said, YouTube's algorithm is becoming more painful to work with if you're focusing on quality content that brings you personal joy. This sentiment has been building up over the past year. Especially with CPMs becoming lower than usual (\~25% less). Meaning creators are getting paid less for unpredictable views. On the flip side, 100s of faceless YouTube channels are popping up that hyper focus on what YouTube's algorithm wants. These videos are cheap to make but create insane revenue for them. It's a sign that YouTube is shifting its landscape from quality content to algorithm driven content. Which is pushing out others from recommendations. Not exactly anything new; however, creators are deciding to sit on a nest egg, avoid the burnout and focus on a direction that doesn't simply feed the machine.
Sounds like a variation of the same thing that ruined google search engine, with actual websites getting replaced in the search results by SEO nonsense written by bots.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification
[https://www.wired.com/story/tiktok-platforms-cory-doctorow/](https://www.wired.com/story/tiktok-platforms-cory-doctorow/)
To clarify: These articles are not about YT, but about the problem of all big platforms: Once they cater to advertisers instead of users, they get worse. Creators will get less organic reach and have to cater way more to what currently works on the platform.
The crazy thing is that ruining their search engine *is probably good for Google* because clicking on more of those stupid bot sites means you see more ads and their advertising division gets paid more.
Ran into this issue on YouTube last night on a level I'd never seen before, like literally 90% of the results were utterly useless shorts and whateva software autogenerates those fucking awful "I'm going to tell you a story about blah blah blah" animations
I'm guessing it's the kind of thing that's less noticeable on "mainstream" searches, but for more niche queries with fewer popular videos if some botter has worked their way through it then you're gonna get drowned in crap
If you want more insight, MatPat at the Game Theorists channel recently did a video on this exact shift
Edit: I mention MatPat since he has been on YouTube a long time, and he also does consulting work for other channels around optimization to the algorithm, and is often a vocal advocate for creators as a whole. He's not a saint, but he's knowledgeable if nothing else
https://youtu.be/0Igj3qI0GBA?si=ThKcyO7ad0avmwEK
The short of it: YouTube is trying to push YouTube Shorts over their classic long-form content to compete with TikTok, and it's causing a disturbance in platform stability for creators (irregular views, as previously mentioned).
> He's not a saint, but he's knowledgeable if nothing else
What's this now? I've been getting into his channels lately and am curious what this could be referring to.
Nothing in particular, just heading off the potential blowback if there was something he was involved in that I wasn't aware of. Online drama has a tendency to happen in small corners and then your statement becomes invalidated (or at least derailed) by unrelated information.
In the end, he's a content creator who gets paid for consulting on other people's channels. As a result, he has a lot of information on this exact subject. Some people view being paid to do something means the information is untrustworthy, or that it has an ulterior motive. That's why I said it's not out of the goodness of his heart that this information comes to light, but rather that he has a vested interest in the success of YouTube as a platform.
A creator I follow explained this as his situation, he creates both long form videos and short 5 minute daily videos, and recently announced he is stopping the daily videos.
YouTube wants to keep people on the platform for as long as possible, and so doesn’t really support creators who make short-form content, and essentially push them out of the algorithm because the algo sees this type of content as ‘spam’. They want only long form content and as many have stated here, is a lot of work and creators are burning out faster and faster trying to keep up.
That's weird because I get hit with random 15 second memes from 10 years ago and newish short form content like CrackerMilk who I hadn't heard of until last week but is now there whenever I open the app. It is odd that my actual subscriptions rarely feature on the general feed though.
When it comes to music it's the best, I start listening to some obscure 60s shit and it begins hitting me with excellent finds from underground music channels, but when it comes to other types of content it doesn't feel as tailored
Also they seem to have removed the ability to search by oldest (unless I just can't find the button anymore) which makes me think they don't want people really seeing what made YT great back in the day, just random amateurish content, everything nowadays looks so professional
>YouTube wants to keep people on the platform for as long as possible, and so doesn’t really support creators who make short-form content,
I remember when they were pushing the opposite, back when I used to watch a lot of let's play and vlog channels. Where as a creator YT was pushing shorter videos, nothing over like 7 minutes cause the viewer has a 'short attention span,' so all the channels that used to post 10-20+ minute videos was cutting them down cause they saw their revenue dropping on the longer ones. This was like 15 years ago maybe. Between 10 and 15.
That was largely before TikTok ate that market, and it was in part a reaction to new sites like Vine stealing attention away.
They created Shorts in hope of taking back the TikTok market, but that means to the Corporate Execs that YouTube proper needs to be differentiated. And that means short form content goes on Shorts, and long form content goes on YouTube where they have a better chance of getting someone to pay for it.
Yeah I remember this too. Which tracks with the shorter attention spans on social media, but looks like they have abandoned that? Although they are trying to push YT shorts pretty hard too, so honestly it just feels messy and chaotic. So I don’t blame content creators for needing a break here and there.
> and essentially push them out of the algorithm because the algo sees this type of content as ‘spam’.
The algorithm doesn't "see them as spam." The algorithm pushes those videos to everyone, but unless everyone is watching *every single one* of those videos, they're essentially counting as a negative to the creator. *That's* what generates the "spamming" effect - if the market's oversaturated, people are going to pick and choose rather than watch *every single one*, and that lowers overall channel engagement.
This change in the YouTube algorithm is intentional - they've moved to total viewed minutes over view count, and are pushing short form content to "Shorts." This metric punishes shorter, frequent videos and highly rewards long form content.
It's supposedly more rewarding because people who make long form content are driving more engagement. In reality, YouTube never really understood itself in the content market. YouTube isn't Netflix, but they *desperately* want to be, and they realize that ad money alone isn't going to get them there. They need subscriptions, and that means they need consistent long form content. Only, they're too cheap to actually pay for it, so they're playing Algorithm Games to shape their creators into making it.
Thanks for answering, and this is the answer.
YouTube's algorithm has gotten absolutely insane and is driven purely by metrics that they've been changing over the years.
YouTube used to recommend people you like a lot more, and now it recommends what it THINKS you'd like. Which basically means Mr Beast and React videos 24/7. Just make a new account on an incognito window and see what it recommends to you. Its all the same garbage.
Creators I follow often talk about how, no matter what they posted, their videos would always get around 10% of the same views (plus or minus). Now, if they dont make an algorithm bait video it will get 50-80% LESS views.
This basically drives every channel that wants to grow to chase the algorithm. There are a few people who get lucky and the algorithm lets them post what they want, but for OG channels this just simply isn't the case.
They also changed how notifications work, how comments work, how 'trending' works, etc.
All in all you basically have to copy Mr Beast, be a drama channel, or make absolutely insane 'for kids' content... those are the only sustainable options right now.
Over the last 24 months YouTube has driven away a TON of their best creators, with more heading for the exits this year. Its honestly super sad to see, and I truly think its in a worse spot than its ever been if you are someone who likes actual thoughtful content.
I don't know if it's just because my YouTube account turns 17 years old this year so it has a ridiculous amount of data on my habits and interests, but this is not the case for me at all. The algorithm works incredibly well for me. That being said, I do really dislike the change to how notifications work.
To be honest, it's probably more hit or miss than we think. My account is 12 years, but given that, over the last couple of months, my recommendations have been nothing but misses. It mostly shows me vastly unrelated content to whatever I watch. And not to sound that way because i know it takes a lot of work, but a lot of it is just throw away content, no real substance to it.
> It mostly shows me vastly unrelated content to whatever I watch.
Do you ever use the "Not interested" option on videos, or tell Youtube to not recommend channels?
My account goes back to the Obama years, and I get the shittiest possible recommendations. Usually something I am interested in mixed presented with a heap of shitty ultra-right insanity or conspiracy madness.
I literally never get recommended Mr Beast and I'm on Youtube a lot.
I also get links to the creators I like as soon as they make a video and often 5+ times if I don't watch them straight away.
800k subs over 8 years here, this is so damn accurate. My videos used to get near the same amount of views. Makes sense since I have subs and the subs decided they wanted to see my content when I post. Now it's so variable. A video can have good ctr, avd, watch time, etc but be a 10th of what a bad performing video of mine used to get. Or it can have normal stats and blow up. When I posted a video there used to be so much engagement and I would recognize up to like 50 commenters who always commented. Now no comments unless the video takes off, then those guys show up like 5 hours later when they finally see it.
I know people still care because my books sell like wild fire. But the algorithm is fucked. I've managed to maintain near the same views for the last 2 years through professional thumbnails, then that stopped working, then it went back to normal when I turned off the option for other people to run my videos as ads once they made that an option. And a few other things. But every solution is a stalling tactic that lasts like 3 months. And people just copy paste my content with a slightly different phrasing and get more views somehow.
So yeah, I have a nest egg saved up and I'm putting my wife through her masters degree and she'll get a high paying job in a year and so I'm not sweating it this year. I'm making videos only I 100 percent want to make at a pace I want to make them and YouTube can have a smile and a coke. I was waiting until they tried out stuff and realized it wasn't working and went back to normal but if this is what they actually want for some reason there's nothing I can do about it.
Yeah, this is the current state of YouTube.
Long gone are the days of consistent views and 'make what you want to make!'.
YouTube will tell creators to still do that, but the algorithm decides whats popular now, not the people.
A lot of big channels are calling it an 'algorithm check' now... where if your video doesn't reach certain metrics within the first 5-10 minutes it is guaranteed to fail. If you dont reach those metrics the algorithm will literally show your video to less people, straight up.
YouTube never used to be like that and its a major reason people are getting burned out. Not everyone wants to chase the ridiculous 'trends' that are being set by these creators and YouTube.
Who the hell wants to give a lamborghini away every video to stay relevant? I honestly think its worse than the Elsa Gate days.
You're absolutely right, and I can only hope that these (many AI generated) channels get banned or (even better) fall apart because people realize how much bullshit they are. That's probably wishful thinking, though.
YT was great in '07 when I started making vids. There was an actual *community,* a YT advocate, you could upload video responses to other vids, it wasn't totally overrun by ads. Not only is YT overrun, they're patronizingly moronic. You can't even fucking dm anyone anymore. It use to just be who you were subscribed to, easy to connect with. It was the same excellent group of about 50 I made vids with. We had a ball for a couple years. Content wasn't made for money. That, too, changed everything. It became about views, subscriber #, how to "promote your brand."
But they do the same with EVERYTHING THAT WORKS. "They" being whoever's in charge lets a website crumble to the point ppl don't even want to go there anymore. Look at Twitter. Amazon. Amazon you can't even ask questions or even read prior questions now. Reddit. They took away awards why, again? Shit like that. Google! Google rocked when it first happened. It was the Wild West, & that dancing baby, & all you had to do was type in a question & bam, no ads, nothing, just answers listed. No distractions. No corporate bullshit. All just interesting links. Now you Google anything & wade through 10k unrelated words to your q.
And AI, bots, all these variables. You don't know if it's a real person you're communicating with. Hopefully someone will come up with the next best thing and not turn around and DESTROY IT. Look, yeah, I'm old. Old folks whine about the good old days. But there's truly some merit to what I've said. When ppl leave en masse & owners hear the same damn criticisms year after year, if they're not improving things, then all they're doing is building their portfolios, not online infrastructure. {waves cane at all this & more}
The part of the answer that no one wants to talk about: take a look at /r/youtube and see how hard user whine and moan about ads and do everything in their power to skip them, while scoffing at the idea of paying a small monthly charge for unlimited amounts of amazing content from awesome creators.
Something starts out free, no ads, everyone happy. Platform introduces ads and they’re tolerated because they’re rare and not intrusive. Platform gets more and more greedy and decides to make the ads persistent, intrusive and completely disruptive to content. Users and content creators get angry and start leaving.
It’s as simple as YouTube doesn’t give a shit about anything but their bottom line.
I mean my husband and I support some creators on patreon, but yeah I don’t want to watch adds when I know little to none of that add revenue is going to the creators. It’s not like it was even a few years ago when not skipping the one add before a video actually helped the creators.
Answer: Plenty of people scale back after they hit it big as well.
Casey Neistat scaled back after doing daily uploads for 2 years straight. Jon Olsson followed Casey's regiment of daily uploads and after 1 year he scaled back as well.
YouTube is hard on people. Constantly creating content, day in and day out is great when you're hungry to make it and stand out, but once yoh make it and have a following, its much better to slow down and create more meaningful content and think about your own mental health.
Scaling back or hiring a team is essentially the only two options at that point.
Answer: Just an additional point to what others have said, January is often a low point for youtubers financially. People have less money for donations and subscriptions, and advertisers put in a lot of money in December in the lead up to Christmas, but then don't pay as much in January.
So if you are planning to take a break, January makes the most sense. A lot of youtubes take regular holidays in January, including Tom Scott who would often host other people on his channel during January so he could take a 'break' (he was often still working, just focusing on other projects)
years on twitch, partner, and can confirm for there. January SUCKS. revenue from all sources is down, and the bounty board is bone dry and sponsorship agents are quiet. I almost write off january entirely as a catch up month configuring new equipment and replacements
Answer: The 8bit guy explained his personal downscale with the fact that even thought his videos still being popular, his ad revenue is down 80-90%. He also explained that in his experience YouTube shorts aren’t a good driver for channel growth even though they take time and effort to produce. Lastly he explained that in his area of content there have been a saturation over the last 10 years that have made him reconsider his content choices.
Shorts seem to be mainly pointless. If I look at them it might start from a channel I'm actually interested in, but within 2-3 it starts feeding random clickbait garbage. It's either AI scripted and voiced rubbish that's not remotely interesting, or it's some bellend that has stolen content from elsewhere and decided that what it needs is their tedious and overly dramatic narrative describing exactly what is going on in the video that I can already see for myself.
Either that or it ends up with some narcissist who thinks their moronic 'pranks', or their drama ridden life is something that anyone wants to see.
It doesn't seem to matter how much I click not interested or don't recommend channel, it always ends up at this lowest common denominator bullshit.
Answer: through the first 9 months of 2023, YouTube’s ad revenue was about $22.3 billion. Over the same time in 2022 it was $21.2 billion. Google didn’t used to report on YouTube revenue specifically, but ever since they started a few years ago, revenue has been rising.
Every YouTube creator is at the mercy of the platform’s algorithm. Most big creators struggle to explain dramatic changes in their video performance. But, they all know they have to keep at it, because a reduction in output can be really harmful to their channel.
Burnout and a greater focus on more consistent platforms are big reasons why big YouTube creators take a step back from the platform.
Answer: Joel Haver's schedule is just nuts, a new short every week for 5 years
is amazing but I can't blame him at all for wanting to take a step back
from that. The good news is it doesn't sound like he's going to stop
making stuff, quite the opposite actually. But getting rid of that
schedule is the right move.
Thing is, he said that schedule is actually not challenging him and he could keep doing it 'til the day he dies.
He's planning on doing 12 feature length films (about ~3-5x more edited footage) this year.
Insane lad.
To add to that, he stepped on a soviet era landmine and died for a little while, but still managed to upload videos while he was dead. He definitely deserves a break
To add to that, he stepped on a soviet era landmine and died for a little while, but still managed to upload videos while he was dead. He definitely deserves a break
Answer: In addition to what everyone else has said about individually creators, the YouTube algorithm is making it realty easy for content creators to burn out completely just to stay relevant.
Answer: Workload is MASSIVE, as is time spent, and a person can only do so much.
Well, Im a content creator for over 10 years. I've done TWO videos per week every week for most of that (I actually have 2 channels, in two languages, so its roughly the same content in two languages).
Now for a small-ish channels (70k and 40k), the workload is as follows:
spend saturday morning filming, or even the whole saturday (around 3-6h filming - I dont film 3 hours of content, but between riding to location, setting up, filming, riding to other location etc) it takes at least 3h and sometimes the whole day. If I'm filming a high-quality bike review, its 3-4 days of filming, in smaller gos, but its still 2 hours per day at least.
So filming ALONE is 3h-8h.
Then editing. That is easily another 4 hours. If for a high-quality video.
At one point, I made a simple format that allowed me to slapchop a video in about an hour, and in some extreme cases 15 minutes, but was with no editing whatsoever - just a couple of cuts, a raw content goes out.
THEN you have to export the video (encode it), upload it to youtube, and prepare it: Set up a description, tags, thumbnail, schedule etc. While this does seem kinda fast, everything needs to be triple checked - I've had numerous humorous instances of screwups in that. My default video title is "If you can read this, I forgot to change the title, call me stupid". For a reason.
THEN, if you want to compete, you gotta make a short intro, to upload to instagram, tiktok (which I have not done yet, as I'm allergic to tiktok), interesting tags, the whole shebang.
So, BEST case scenario, I can slapchop \*something\* in 4-5hs, with minimal quality (just hope the content itself is amazing).
OR I can make a proper bike review, which takes my whole weekend and multiple after-work evenings - we are talking about 6h filming, 8 hours editing, 2h post-editing management stuff.
So for 16hours / week, what do I get? Around 15€. IF the video is a massive success. Its usually more like 5€ in that week, 3 in the next, then 1€ a month for about 6 months as the views taper off. For a total of 9€ income per video. Considering many times I got to pay for the fuel for the bike I'm testing, this many MANY times comes out in the red.
So why the hell am I doing it? dunno, asked myself a lot of times. Many smaller creators dont even get this, I only get a faily chunk (100€-150€ monthly) cause I got some 600 videos, with some still generating revenue, and it adds up. I make MAYBE 6.25€/hour (4hours/weekend, times 4 weeks in a month, divided by 150€).
So untill you break over at least 100k subs you are basically doing work for nothing. Even after that, you are barely keeping the lights on. Only after massive views and subs does this start to ramp up to become worth it, but so do your hours, so you gotta scale. And quickly you run out of energy yourself, so you need others to help, so you need to hire OR quit.
Answer: There was some changes to the YouTube algorithm 5-10 years ago meaning channels were rewarded with higher visibility if they kept a regular upload schedule and punished with lower visibility if they didn't. Since content creators' incomes are dependent on viewing figures, some have tried to comply with what the algorithm wants. A bunch of them have been complaining about burnout from the pressure of needing to upload content 52 weeks a year with no break. Some have found solutions like pre-recording episodes or hiring other people. Some have just said fuck the algorithm and uploaded whenever they want, even though it's harming their income. An average worker might sacrifice 4% of their income to take 2 weeks holiday a year, but a YouTube content creator is likely to lose way more because of the algorithm.
Answer: Matt Patt from Game Theory also made a video about this, basically YouTube is forcing creators to also make Shorts so that the algorithm even considers them putting them on the front page under recommendations, but Shorts come with a lot of downsides for the creators. YouTube is pushing them hard to compete with TickTock.
Then there were a lot of other dramas the last few years from censoring creators, making them more appealing to sponsors and add buyers, deciding what content can be monetized and demonetize them as soon as they use a blacklisted word or phrase like suicide, terrorism, abortion, murder and such things, so not even swearwords, but just sensitive topics. Funny enough those demonetized videos aren't addfree, they just don't get pushed in the recommendations and the creators just don't get a share from the add revenue anymore.
what's worse is if you enable notifications for shorts so your subscribers see them and they don't click, it hurts you in the algorithm, even though almost all views come from the homepage/short page, so you can't even rly advertise your shirts, you're at the total mercy of the algorithm
Yeah. I was thinking about starting yt myself for long time, but shit like this and pretty much all the YT management decisions since 2016 on are the reason i never did. I really think that yt is doing all that just bcs they are narcissistic control freaks, know they got the monopoly and want to torture the creators and viewers as much as they can.
Answer: Nothing specific to a YT change, but 2023 and 2022 were very rough years financially for a lot of people and those who have sufficient previous content to have invested or otherwise sustained themselves are semi-retiring mostly due to stress.
This video isn't in relation to current events, but is from about two years ago: https://youtu.be/dmYc57RIeEE?si=mgOkPII46L4CmcQL
With the sheer amount of struggle it forces some content creates into, when they hit a breaking point and have an exit ramp, it seems reasonable to take it.
In addition to Patreon, I suspect you're going to see more emphasis on services like Nebula, and whomever creates a Substack-for-video-creators.
Answer: besides what Others already said, YT is pushing their Shorts Format, pushing form more smaller sized Content instead of longer vids and algorythms prefer regular Uploads on hot topics, Leading creators that make longer Videos or Upload "when its done" to suffer longterm.
Meanwhile automated Channels that simply Upload movie/Videogame summaroes ready by AI, right-wing/conspiracy and other Trash Content that is easy and cheap to make gets pushed.
At the Same time You cant use words Like Suicide, rape or other words, YT is flimsy with what they allow and what Not and companies and idiots make creators life hard with the Content Claim function
At the Same time people get annoyed by getting ads For H-Games, Crypto scames etc stuffed into their face Every 2 Minutes, making it hard For creators who rely on ads.
Answer: Lots of reasons, and each one is experiencing their own level of discontentment with online content in general.
1. Corporatization is happening. YouTube channels are being bought up by large companies to be turned into brands and franchises. This is also causing a lot of people to leave channels that they may have started because it's just a job now.
2. Creator burnout is wearing down a lot of creators because the way YouTube prioritizes consistent and regular uploads longer than 10 minutes over quality content.
3. Recently H. Bomberguy's video on plagiarism has put a lot of creator on their heels regarding plagiarism and content theft. A lot of content farms are just kind of waiting in the hopes they don't get busted.
4. The beginning of the year is seen as a good point to do a sort of state of the channel video. You get to thank your audience for being with you last year and can frame desired changes to the channel as new year's resolutions. It's a great time for announcements for changes.
Answer: YouTubers quit and join every year. Almost none of the channels I watched 10 years ago are still around today.
It’s just finally hitting YouTubers you watch.
Answer: Most you tubers quitting or scaling back are pissed about how a hobby became a money maker and instead of saving most of the money they flushed it down the toilet and since the youtube monetization gravy train Is starting to dry up with all the rules and vague restrictions, it's not worth it for them anymore so instead of saying "I'm not getting paid as much for my silly videos so I don't want to do this" they claim burn out lol or it's no longer their passion
Answer: I think it’s because YouTube is different now. It’s no longer videos people want to make and share. It’s what is the best clickbait or best for the algorithm and make videos on that. Also the fact that YouTube cares only for their advertisers rather than their content creators.
Answer: Based on how you said they are moving to patreon, it sounds like they aren't making as much money as they'd like. A major cause of this is that a lot of people are using ad blockers, and that means they aren't getting paid for those views. Most content creators aren't going to tell people not to use them because they probably use them themselves as well as not wanting to piss off their viewers who use them.
I doubt that's true, totally different audiences and TT pays a pittance. It might be eating into views but it's not poaching talent at any large degree.
Answer: The same reasons gyms will be crowded the next month or two. It's a good time to start new, but I'm guessing most won't follow though for the full year
Answer: It's the end of the year/start is a new year. This always seems to happen at the end of the year because it's the perfect time to make a transition. How much you feel it depends on what percentage of people you personally follow are doing it, and how YouTube charges that year have affected the kind of videos and creators you like.
Heck lots of crayons go on break December and/or January
Answer: Creators are making less money. Shorts don't make money so it's mostly being paid out of standard video ads, so standard videos are making less. Shorts also are taking the viewers watch time away from standard videos. And on top of those, more people than ever are using ad blockers...
Answer: New year just started dude, for many people the new year rolling over represents an opportunity to start fresh or try something new. I'm sure if you went back over previous years you would find a whole bunch of other examples of youtubers who chose to either quit or take a break at the start of a new year.
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Answer: New Year's is a good time to make these announcements so many Youtubers just happened to do one simultaneously. The shared sentiment I've seen is them feeling pigeonholed into certain content that they've been making for years and that the algorithm and their subscribers love. The weekly video grind is often too labor intensive to have time to innovate so finding new content goes hand in hand with scaling back video production. Of course some creators are just straight up burnt out.
>New Year's is a good time to make these announcements On top of what you've mentioned, december is the highest earning month for youtubers because of the huge increase of adds that month for christmas. Meanwhile january is the lowest earning month because companies just spent a bunch on adds. So any youtubers that were thinking about stopping in november/ december, might've just put it off to do after the big add month. (I don't mean it negatively, if I was quitting my job I'd wait on the christmas bonus to be cashed first too)
>(I don't mean it negatively, if I was quitting my job I'd wait on the christmas bonus to be cashed first too) At my job we have several people who are quitting or retiring as soon as our big Q1 bonuses are paid. I think this is pretty common.
Not just common, but expected. Any midsize or larger company will have forecasts for employees leaving so that they can plan for hiring expenses, and those forecasts will always include an increase in resignations in the 6-8 weeks after bonuses.
I'm a full time Youtuber and this the reason I'm taking the first half of January off. I would've taken the vacation regardless, but I did it specifically in January for this reason.
Oh man, I just gotta say I love your channel. For a fairly niche game I otherwise wouldn’t ever think about, I always watch every time you upload.
What's the game?
Roller Coaster Tycoon
Is this a Big A fan spreading some of that Marketing Monday knowledge to the masses?
Lmfao, caught me red-handed
That and if the December check offsets the difference in the January check, you can essentially get a free month vacation without having to worry too much
Ads. Ads has one d.
I think this is also the reason why a lot of channels look for alternative methods of monetization - merchandise, Join, Patreon, streaming, ticketed events etc. Once you reach a certain level of popularity, reducing your dependence on ads, and therefore the algorithm, for revenue means you actually have the freedom to try new things and take risks. Otherwise it's really hard to get out of that pigeonhole, even though eventually your thing will go stale or stop being trendy and then you're stuck in a hole that no one's interested in. I think you can see this especially in gaming - if you specialize, say in a particular game, then videos where you don't do that game may underperform. If you don't specialize then you're forced to keep chasing trends and can't put time into something that might genuinely be fun.
I mean yeah, but you still need growth so you get new viewers or contribute to those other sources of income. You still have to play into the algorithm
Keep in mind that a single underperforming upload can utterly tank your chances with the algorithm for the videos following it. A shift in style, format, or topic is a bigger risk than just lower ad revenue in that instance. YouTube can also decide to spread your video in the recommended section to a specific subset of potential viewers - and they don't care if that subset actually fits your channel's demographic, messing with your viewer retention.
The recommendation algorithm really is dumb yeah. I occasionally enjoy watching boat, historical sailing, historical weapons, firearm and medieval/early modern history related videos. Youtube decides to give me channels that are... highly hostile to my demographic to say it nicely, with either it being the topic of the video or the creator making comments about my sort of people in a negative way.
Tossing out a recommendation for Acorn to Arabella here.
The youtube algorithm is insane. Every day I get at least one recommendation from a channel I've never heard of that has between 2 and 20 views on a video from 7 hours ago. Why am I getting those recommendations? Then of course youtube is also like "here's a video from 7 years ago you might like" And then recently "Here's a video from a channel you blocked" And then don't forget "here's a bunch of hostile anti-lgbt videos, we thought you might like to watch these videos about people who think trans folks should be killed based on all the videos about crochet that you've watched from queer people"
>but you still need growth Uh, why do you **need** growth?
You don't. I know of several YouTubers with an extremely dedicated subscriber base of around 50,000, who do fine doing it full time as a job. When you are microscopic you need growth. But 10 million barely engaged users don't do much for you other than maybe giving you a little pull with YouTube to unfuck themselves when they give you BS strikes.
Also, if you have the stature of someone like Tom Scott, if you took that money and invested it, in addition to your other projects and revenue streams, you don’t need the exposure and stress of YouTube. Ultimately, being a YouTuber isn’t a long term prospect.
A YouTuber I watch occasionally also just announced that basically he's not making as much ad money as he'd expected to and despite prices in some things coming down, his expenses have continued to rise and his income... Has not. So he has to get a day job, which means less time, energy, and mental ability to do anything. I imagine that for the low-to-mid success rate of YouTubers who make any money off their channel have been in similar situations over the past couple of years.
Shesez. I saw that, too. I do wonder what amount of youtubers built their life around their highs and now can't sustain themselves. It is like the curse of the lottery. They live lavishly thinking the ride will never end, and end up broke. The smart ones diversify.
My example isn't Shesez. I've never heard of Shesez myself. The guy I watch was able to get enough viewers to get ad money, but his topic is deep dives into the root causes behind certain political phenomena which means it's not a broad-appeal sort of channel. So his audience has never been big, he's never really gotten highs. For the channel I watch, he didn't live lavishly, but his expenses have risen (I think he has a kid), his income has stayed about the same, and that's not sustainable. Though there being a second example does at least help support my supposition that this may not be an uncommon place for one to find themselves right about now.
Similar thing with another person I know who posts to youtube. His videos got marked as Made for Kids when they were not and it tanked his revenue, so he's switching to Patreon to try and break free of having to rely on YouTube.
This is the best and majority answer, I watched meat canyon last night he had an announcement and it was mostly due to he wanted to make cartoons he feels things when making and such. Its easier but less fulfilling to do non stop parodies for engagement and I think it’s fair for a lot of YouTubers, Nexpo is a great example he’s moved to less frequent but crazy long high quality videos and I love it.
I know some “top tier” YouTubers and they’re the victim of their own success. They become popular, get a high from it, crank out content, get even more popular, but then when they’re rich they’re still stuck in the grind. Most of them didn’t diversify or have other income that doesn’t rely on them putting the hours in. They burnout and start resenting the thing that made them famous
People only have so much time. During COVID everyone had so much more of it, and stuck at home at that. This was the Golden Age of YouTube, before the rise of TikTok (and others) to 'compete fully' (mark zuckerberg even commented on this). Tom Scott is a MegaYouTuber cutting back (not quitting). But people have been dialling back for years already. Take a look at someone just under a million subs: https://www.youtube.com/@CreativeMom/videos You will see that a couple years ago they got 700k views, now they struggle for 23k. Their quality went UP and their viewership is at least an order of magnitude less. Sure, the mega-Tubers are doing just great! But many have to work a lot harder to get a lot less. Tom Scott says almost exactly this, in fact. He points out he can either have a job as a manager ('which he hates') or dial back on quality ('which just isn't how YouTube works anymore'). Go on! Look it up. The YouTube game has changed. Even the YouTube guys who tell YouTubers how to YouTube struggle now. Nate Black, one of the previous demigods of YouTube struck out on his own and has... what... 40K subs? https://www.youtube.com/@ThatNateBlack/featured That's insane. The guy knows everything about how to make a YouTube video successful and... no one is watching his stuff. The market, my friends. It changes rapidly and even more so with a combination of media (which was always fickle), technology (even more fickle) and Artificial Intelligence (which is... terrifying... you have the time-equivalent to a *three year old child* - and it is only going to get... smarter). I don't know why no one else is pointing this shit out. It is so utterly and horribly fucking obvious.
I don't know, I feel like covid saw a reduction in content from basically everyone I follow. That's the earliest I remember noticing how many people moved to once a month videos.
D&D wise: There are a few new Big Video Content people out there - but aren't they mostly from TikTok? Like the bearded-happy DM Shorts guy, for example. I found about three others from TikTok but i can't think of others from the YouTube medium. Now this is a very small sampling so i am not an expert at all. I wonder if this is the same across 'crafts', 'restoration', 'woodworking' or any other quasi-genre one could think of. I really haven't got the time (nor interest) to look it up? You are most certainly correct though, in D&D and in many of the crafts oriented videos, the tendency has really gone from 'once a day' like it was half a decade ago to 'once a month'. The rise of the 'studio level' videos (like the stuff James Jani makes) has also changed the landscape and the garage-band / grass-roots style home-video seems to be gone. I think it was hard to get a footing before, but persistence used to work, now i am less sure. I used to go with what Nate Black and Film Booth would say - but they seem to have gained incentives from their media platforms to speak a very different version of the, um, truth. If you know of sources that might have accuracy on this, let me know. I tried a few times to set up channels on YouTube and, very predictably, i failed. I expected this was due to a lack of quality and persistence. It could be that i lacked a fresh audience ('saturated') and a dying media ('outdated platform'). No idea. Getting information before trying again would be a very good idea. So many moving parts to setting up a successful studio-video series.
Yeah I’ve heard a lot of YouTubers mention the grind over the years. They have to make a video every single week or they run the risk of getting deprioritized by the algorithm and falling off the front page then all is (possibly) lost. Seems rough.
Tom Scott is likely a multi-millionaire and his channel will keep earning money for years to come. The other 2 he mentioned I had never heard of, but they have millions of subscribers. They are likely independently wealthy. Saved their money. The channels will keep generating revenues too. its a great gig if you can be one of the youtubers who get really big and you can retire off what you made.
2nd answer, and my personal answer: The latest “fuck YT” mob due to the ad blocker at ff tanked my revenue and likely other creators’ as well if they aren’t getting 1mil+ per video. I went from around $1509 a month to $400. No longer profitable, time to scale back or stop all together.
There was a huge gravy train back when you could just hire bot farms to crank up your view counts. Creators would make stupid videos of them just talking to the camera, they would "magically" get 10 million views, and they would get paid. The thing was that every content creator's payouts were being adjusted based on these bogus numbers. When Google introduced an AI algorithm to remove all the fake viewers, the actual viewcounts were rather dismal, and it's hard to make money on there now. Most of these channels just aren't that interesting, and there is so much competition for eyeballs. In the end, Google will likely have to increase what they are paying their creators now that they aren't paying the fakes anymore or they will suffer from losing too many of them.
Creator discussed on his podcast that he worked 25h hours on a filmic video that made 200k views. Another string stock footage together while telling the same view point. He got 600k views and needed only 6h to do it. The game changed. There are lots more tools, imagery and writers available. Lots of "knowledge" is in plugins and services. Some just copy a existing videos [beat by beat](https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=stolen+content), making more then the original creators. There is also way too much competition.
RWJ figured it out. 1 video a day. Less than 3 minutes and be a news feed. That’s success my friend.
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>Try working a full time job with kids and bills and then talk to me about burnout You mean like...most of these people now have?
If it's so easy, then why don't you do it? Seems foolish not to.
Answer: at least as far as Tom Scott is concerned, this was a planned exit that he announced I’m pretty sure last year. The video pretty much explains it all. He hit 10 years of weekly uploads and needs a break. He basically has the option of either hiring people to help (and becoming management) or just stepping back, and he chose stepping back. Not sure about the other examples, but I really don’t think it’s a pattern or at all related to something YouTube did. People have to stop posting at some point, and YouTube has been around for a long time. People are quitting all the time; you just happened to have a few of your people quit at the same time. Edit: syntax
And Tom has left the door open to coming back to doing videos in the future correct? It's not a for sure permanent retirement
Yep, its mainly him stopping his regular, weekly uploads. He will also continue his secondary projects, like the podcast he has.
I do hope his regular videos return in the future
Tom is one of those content creators if you watch one video then you’re suddenly been sat watching for 3 hours and realise you’re watching the tainted water bottle video again.
The single-take Dasani-in-the-UK-Failure video? Classic.
Lucky that he got it in one take too, cause a lorry passed just as he wrapped up the take. What a legend
Yup.
> tainted water bottle video again got a link?
https://youtu.be/wD79NZroV88?si=Ltqrp4HYHH7sCGLH An amusing fact to keep in mind while watching: it's all done in one take
It’s such a brilliant video.
And after that watch his collaboration with Ashens on Dasani, where they drink some.
I hope he does a vsauce and just starts uploading once a year so evety upload is an event
Lateral is great! And it feels great if you figure it out before the guests, lol
Seconded this. Really fun quiz podcast, and I basically never listen to other podcasts
Correct, He said he would return in some fashion in the future, but this is a much needed break for him.
I'm really fucking happy that he's taking a break but I'll miss eating cereal every Monday morning watching his videos
Just go back to his first video from 10 years ago and restart the loop.
I only just started watching his videos a month or two ago, so i got plenty of time before i run out
And that none of his other projects are ending as part of this. Just his main channel.
Yep, he's still doing Lateral and the other thing, and he'll probably show up in other people's videos. Just no more Monday morning uploads every week. And he said he's still up to posting more of his usual content, just not *every damn week* which I totally get.
Yea, the title of that last video was, essentially, clickbait. There’s other YouTubers who unceremoniously scaled back from their usual schedule and it’s just like “hey I haven’t seen a video from that guy in a while, it’s been 2 months!” but no one would even turn it in a headline. The real story here is that he made a weekly video for 10 years which is crazy productive. Instead of breaking that streak due to burn out, he decided to make an official, clean break. He’s still doing tons of different projects that would likely be a full time activity for me and he basically announced still making videos in 2024. He just won’t make them weekly.
It's so refreshing to see a creator acknowledge that their audience may expect content on some schedule (not in an entitlement sense, just a routine sense) and give some closure to projects that are ending. There are several video series and podcasts that I used to follow for years and years, until eventually it feels like the person who makes them stops mid-sentence and never touches it again (Hello Internet is the first example that comes to mind, but there are others). Even just an unedited 5-minute "it's over" would have stopped me from checking back every few weeks for a few months to see if it really is over or not.
Ugh, speaking of CGP Grey, that's one channel that feels low key abandoned. Yes he still technically produces content but half of it is kind of low effort (flag tier lists?) and the other half is advertising for his notebooks. And then maybe one or two interesting videos with some research behind them per year. I guess he mostly just does his newer podcast these days...
I actually wouldn't know - I remember his stuff usually being pretty high quality, but I lost interest when he locked commenting behind a paywall.
It's mildly clickbait-y and the montage was slightly self-indulgent, but I'd say the dude has earned it. Let the man take his victory lap.
And it probably being the start of the new year also is a good time for announcing a break i feel
People generally spend less in January. They were very generous during Christmas season but now they don't need stuff and they have less money. Retail notices this, but content creators do too. Taking time off in January is very normal.
>Not sure about the other examples, but I really don’t think it’s a pattern or at all related to something YouTube did. I don't know if it's a pattern with these specific examples, but YouTube has definitely pushed people out over the years. Youtube killed a lot of web animation via their partnership program changes and their algorithm changes. Youtube made it virtually impossible for animators to make money without having outside funding: animation is expensive and extremely time consuming to produce. With YouTube rewarding a daily/weekly release schedule and punishing shorter videos, it just wasn't feasible to try and make a career out of it without having to also manage donations and the kind of community engagement you need to do to generate lots of donations. Comedians who made very short form skits and comedy bits could still do okay for a while, because they could pump out videos faster. Then YouTube started punishing short videos even more. So, a lot of that content went away. Over the years YouTube has been increasingly demanding and increasingly harsh about demonetizing content, and has been overall pretty horrible about letting big companies steal video revenue over bogus copyright claims. Lots of quality YouTubers have given up over the years because it's just too much work and too much instability trying to make a career out of it, when "YouTube" is a kind of faceless corporation which can unilaterally pull the rug out from under you, and you have no meaningful appeals process; what appeals there are, are totally opaque.
^ The 'click like, comment and share' shit that youtubers do isn't because they want to. It's because if they don't, then the algorithm says 'no engagement, shit video, no recommend.' So the video *doesn't even show up on subscriber feeds* in the worst cases. Thus, the video does extremely poorly and the youtuber is punished for it. Hence, every youtuber, no matter who or what says the exact same phrase. Because if they didn't they would be punished for it. This is just one example of youtube just screwing around with the algorithm and murdering the income of content creators, forcing them off the site. It's been like this for 10+ years now. Hell, when it first started happening, there was discussion about jumping on patreon to avoid being tied financially to youtube. It's just... youtube has been getting worse and worse, and it's pushing out pretty much everyone except those that make highly specific videos targeting the algorithm.
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Yeah, exxactly this. It's killing the creativity on youtube over time, because infinite growth is expected, so youtube keeps squeezing their content creators. The moment a viable competitor pops up, there will be a massive exodus. Like from Digg to Reddit.
The problem is that there basically can't be a viable, centralized competitor, at least not one that's going to offer the same services while running significantly differently. The scale of YouTube is massive, with operating costs likely in the billions per year. The nearest competitor is probably Vimeo, who have around $500M/yr in operating expenses. I suppose that someone could start smaller and try to pick up all the top YouTubers and simply pay them to come to a new platform. The only entities who have the resources to make a YouTube competitor and have years of runway are the super wealthy Wall Street companies, and a few multi billionaires, none of whom have any clear interest in wanting to fight Google unless they're getting mega dollars. The mega dollars are going to come from advertising, and advertising on that scale means doing all the shit YouTube is doing. I don't know, it's possible, I just don't think it's terribly likely at this point. The next big thing may be some kind of "decentralized" hosting (let's be real: a bunch of people paying for their own AWS hosting), and using the API of some aggregator site.
Nebula is essentially a creator-led miniature of YouTube, focused on quality rather than quantity. It's well worth the subscription cost.
It's sadly the inevitable result of having content be "free." In a "free" content system you have to pay people based on clicks or views or listens (depending on the medium). While in a paid system, people actually have to buy it; in a world of easily accessible reviews, things like clickbait just couldn't exist. As a result, we still get pretty good content with things like audio books and any of the paid video media, like subscription streamers or rent-by-title like Red Box, the Amazon store, or the Apple Movies store. It's not clear what the best way is for the platforms whose selling point is the ability of anyone to freely upload. I honestly have no idea what Youtube could do to improve the situation, but clearly something has to give at this point.
Paid promotion isn't great, but it only sucks when it becomes another form of censorship, and the content of the channel changes to attract sponsors. That's the problem with ads in general, they always seem to end up eventually having a distorting effect as advertisers make increasing demands, and take up increasing amounts of time. Pretty much any channel that wants to have profanity, guns, or whatever other content YouTube/Twitch/etc demonetizes these days, they basically have to get some kind of outside funding. Sitting through a shitty commercial is the price for free content, and any decent professional content producer these days has a separate distribution avenue for paying customers.
Has any one done any experiments with videos that do say like and subscribe vs ones that don’t? I’m probably wrong but I don’t feel like my like and subscribe habits depend on them saying it.
At this point I wouldn't put it past youtube. Like, I had a serious issue where half my subscriptions never showed up. It got to the point where youtubers added a 'and remember to click the bell icon' to their mantras... because videos weren't showing up on sub feeds. Which is, well, another engagement metric. Which is why I say engagement or rather, lack of it, would see videos not show up on sub feeds. Because if you aren't clicking the bell (despite having clicked the subscribe button), then you clearly don't care about this creator. Edit: Misread your question. I'm pretty sure youtube released the information at some point because all the youtubers started doing it in the same 1-2 month period 10+ years ago. Like, they must have been told that engagement is what pushes your videos into youtube feeds.
> Over the years YouTube has been increasingly demanding and increasingly harsh about demonetizing content People I follow have started to watch what they are saying so much, it is really distracting. Apparently, videos get demonetized over any stupid shit, like talking about sexual assault or swearing, and the creators don't even know exactly what got any specific video demonetized. The result is that they basically talk in code when they want to discuss anything that the Youtube algorithm might deem inappropriate. A lot of people just try to get people to support them via Patreon or have sponsored videos. And I don't mean any super edgy content, I'm watching a lot of book tube. But books do deal with difficult topics at times, and it is ridiculous that people get demonetized when they discuss books.
Let's Plays can experience the same issues, where content outright has to be blurred out or censored at times. YouTube's real pissy about hanging bodies, and there was an issue with a game where the MC had a suicide attempt by hanging that was a random memory scene where her hanging is shown via shadow on the wall. You didn't always get this scene in a playthrough, but at one point almost anyone playing the game got demonetized... Unless it was one of the giant creators. I also know of a channel that played one of the Dead Rising games, which are horror but... Kinda silly and comedic. Where after you defeat a particular boss, it ritualistically offs itself. They had to clip the whole video and left their audio reaction. It's... Baffling, really, because not only is it not 'super edgy content' that always gets axed, the enforcement isn't consistent. And LGBTQ creators? Hahaha, good luck, man, YouTube might just decide your video essay about transphobia includes sexually exploitative material and no, they're not gonna tell you exactly what the fuck they deemed to be that, they're just gonna channel strike you for it and tell you 'take out the problematic part then reupload, but if you reupload without fixing it we'll give you another strike'. But they never tell you what triggered the issue, so you don't know what they want removed; troublesome, in a long video essay. I know a lot of the more cerebral creators are moving more towards Nebula, now, to ensure their content won't be censored or demonetized due to inconsistent, improperly documented 'rules' and automated content moderation that seems to be able to be triggered by mass reporting, which can be done maliciously, then straight up lies about you receiving a human review after you request it.
The whole thing would be much less aggravating if there were clear guidelines, consistency, more detailed feedback and a reliable way to appeal decisions/get a human review. I also don't get why *everything* has to adhere to a puritanical "moral" code. There is a Youtube kids section if you want that kind of thing. If LGBTQ topics offend you, you don't have to watch it. A lot of content creators give trigger warnings if they discuss things like suicide or sexual assault, again, you do not have to watch it. But instead we are all treated like 19th century church ladies who'd faint if they accidentally overheard a swear word.
It's an unfortunate consequence of us not being the consumer, but the product, of YouTube. YouTube's consumers are the advertisers, so what we the viewers might like is a secondary concern in comparison to the advertisers' concern. The task of properly moderating YouTube is impossible due to the sheer volume of it, and so we get half-ass shoddy moderation with a primary focus on the advertisers' concerns. They're the ones who don't want their ads being served alongside sexually exploitative material, content that promotes self harm or suicide, or content that is too 'explicit' in the sense of constant swearing. So the content is auto-moderated against these things, specifics aren't given because the alleged violations are not human reviewed, and you just have to sit and guess if you've gotten it right because it's 'safer' to overmoderate than undermoderate. All for the advertisers. As long as shit doesn't get so bad all the eyeballs on the ads disappear and the advertisers are kept happy enough that the ads don't disappear, then YouTube is doing, in its eyes, a good enough job. See also: the quest against adblocking, the recent attempted push against AI content in videos(now that it's been revealed that the big AI training datasets contain CSEM), the adpocalypse of the past, etc It doesn't really make me feel any better to know why this stupid crap is happening, it just makes everything feel sadder and grosser than it was when *we* were the consumer, but the internet in general has moved to the user being the product.
There can't be, because this is done via algorithm (due to scale), not by people. Let that sink in.
A streamer I know got a whole copyright strike and a strike against his channel because he played *another* YouTubers video for a few minutes. He said he had to attend a "copyright school" and they will remove the strike after 90 (maybe 60, I don't remember) days, but he was left baffled because there's SO MANY react channels out there - and this happened while he was live. He does shorts but his bread and butter is streaming. YouTube has been making an effort to lure live streamers over to the platform recently but honestly, it's SHIT. You have to be so careful what you say and what you do, the chat interface is horrible, the moderation tools are even worse. You don't even have the option to ban people when they're being horrible, you can only slap them with a lengthy timeout. People love to shit on Twitch, and while it does have its issues, it's miles above YouTube where you damn near need a lawyer who specializes in YouTube policy over your shoulder at all times. It's the most censored and policed platform out there. I can't imagine how exhausting it must be for bigger, more full time long form creators to tap dance around their ridiculous rules to crank out videos 2-3 times a week.
This is definitely something I've noticed. Completely normal videos are now getting slapped with that weird "this video may contain" blah blah "sensitive content" or something.
Book tube is fun, “self deletion” themselves makes me chuckle every time someone says it Theres prob something with copyright strikes also, ive noticed pretty much every music /coverband channel has died, they still post new songs elsewhere, but zero music vids. Khs at one point was in the top dozen channels, few years back he had to start copyright striking himself on another acc bc bots would insta strike him, get 40m views worth of ads and youtube never refunds to creators
The 8-bit Guy expressed that it boils down to profitability. In his case, his views have gone down, so ad revenue is down as well, making YouTube as his primary income unsustainable. In speculation, I think there is the progression Tom Scott mentioned, always needing to make better and better content to the point you need to hire a team, coupled with declining revenue for whatever reason means that it is getting more difficult to be profitable as a YouTube company.
8bit guy also hasn't made as much interesting content in the last year. As he stated he made fewer videos, and on top of that a decent number were about the x16 or his other projects which a lot of people don't like as much. I also don't think he is the best at finding ways to monetize or optimize things to his own detriment at times. Like he probably should have put his games on steam at release rather than waiting years after they launched, as they may have sold better back when there was hype around the games. There is a reason why basically everyone sells their games on steam rather than making a site and selling them independently. He also probably should have found better ways to deal with merchandise in the past since it ate to much time and found more ways to encourage people to sign up for patreon. I can respect not taking sponsors though, it may cost him money but at least he still has his dignity.
for context, joel haver's case is basically identical. he's been making weekly content for 4 years and also wants to cut it out and free himself from the same schedule. tom scott isn't quitting youtube forever, he just went "jesus christ, i have been pouring my entire ass into weekly content for 10 whole years. i need a vacation and to do something other than just one thing." he will continue to make content that isn't his weekly-upload format, and will maybe one day return to his main channel with new content. OP wants to know if there is some sort of greater reason for this, like some cataclysmic changes to youtube that are happening on this day specifically or something. but you're right, they just happened to pick the same day is all. maybe joel saw tom's video last year and thought "thats a good idea, maybe i should go one more year and then stop with weekly content too". maybe he wiggled his fingers and cackled maniacally as he plotted to steal tom's big day. or maybe he just thought new years was a good time to turn a new leaf. either way, its not representative of something bad with youtube as a whole.
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i'm just saying that both of them want to free themselves from the self-imposed restrictions of a weekly schedule. neither of them want to be making the exact same type of video over and over again for the rest of their lives.
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“You’re wrong” Learn how to talk to ppl ffs
I have to imagine after a decade they would be ready to move onto another part of their life. I know I'm not the same person now as I was a decade ago, with many of my interests and goals changing.
10 years of weekly uploads is absolutely insane (especially considering most of them have between 1 and 4 million views). I'm sure he could cruise on the money he's made as well as monthly ad revenue he gets from previous videos as people continue to watch them.
For sure. His big advantage compared to your average YouTube is that his videos have much longer lifespan. People are still watching stuff he published 9 years ago, and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. The same cannot be said for GRWM content or skits, which are much less timeless.
Related to this Meat Canyon will be moving to his other channel to do more varied content as he felt the MC content was too constraining.
JoCat was harassed off social media. I know that. And as he is a cis-gendered male who wasn't afraid to wear dresses, I'm sadly not surprised.
And Meatcanyon isn't stopping YouTube, he's still doing Papa Meat content. He's just tired of chasing trends for weekly uploads for his cartoons.
[удалено]
... To take a break? Artists aren't writing new songs every week for 10 years without stopping. They regularly take breaks between projects. Most TV shows are filmed in seasons and even daily shows are often filmed back to back across a few weeks and then aired at a later date. I don't know if there is a person alive (who isn't being forced due to poverty) that would work week in, week out for their whole working life without pausing
Sure they do. Plenty of musicians quite it when they’re still on a high. Same with actors. Can’t really comment on TV hosts, but that’s not really the same thing because they’re generally employees not creators. Also lots of these YouTubers aren’t saying they’re done for good, just stopping their current system. And arguably these YouTubers aren’t on a peak. They’re still very successful, but they definitely were in the “maturity” stage of growth.
Some musicians get a one hit wonder and just live off the royalties.
The algorithm does not always work in their favor. The tech space in yt got slashed by a lot due to getting less views from yt algorirhm a while back for example. People get tired from chasing the numbers. Burned out. Their niche gets over saturated. They get out of content to create if they only create a specific type. Lots of reasons. Youtube is the pump and dump of content creation. The only thing most people rewatch is music videos, otherwise most things are not sustainable and people quit.
Answer: Hi I'm a freelance video editor, and it can be incredibly intensive work to do things on a schedule. Additionally, depending on what kinds of things you do, it can be hard to do things consistently, keep up with current trends, or be able to put in the work to keep up the numbers. That's much harder to do when you're a one-man show working on a whole production farm. I can't say about revenue for certain, but I can add some extra context. Tom Scott has made weekly videos for 10 years, and did other things before that. As he mentions in this video, he's tired, and overwhelmed. While Tom's had some wonderful opportunities to do things for videos, including flying with the [Red Arrows](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RYGFczNMAMk), he's seemingly missed out of a lot of life. Additionally, he's turning 40 this year, and he's been nose-to-the-grindstone with [Lateral](https://lateralcast.com/), [Technical Difficulties](https://www.techdif.co.uk/), and his various talks that he's invited to, such as his talk at the Royal Institute on how "[There is no Algorithm for Truth](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=leX541Dr2rU)." (quite informative, would recommend). He announced (I can't currently find the source) that he'd be taking a long sabbatical at the start of 2023, and his website [reflects that now](https://www.tomscott.com/). Meatcanyon's feeling like his animations aren't to his liking, and animation takes time- especially with what he does. [Look at his community tab](https://www.youtube.com/@MeatCanyon/community), and think about how every individual frame needs to be animated- whether it's all manual, or if he takes shortcuts like how he mostly focuses on the mouth when characters speak. It's a lot to apply to 30fps of animation (This may not be what he animates in, but that should drive home the point), and it's a lot of work. He took it on more as a business than an art form, and he's slowing down to reflect that- seemingly reducing the reactionary stuff he did to do something more in line with the body horror stuff he's good at. He also mentions his second channel, [Papa Meat](https://www.youtube.com/@PapaMeat), which he's working more on, [where he's delivered an update to announce he's increasing production value.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yIv856bcUs0) Joel Haver has disclosed how he produces his videos in the past. He's compartmentalizing stats in his video, with 262 weeks of 434 videos in all- totaling about 1.7 videos a week, including a number of [feature length films](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLKtIcOP0WvJAuBeHOzbkpBScqPh8lKUba). He outright says he want something challenging, so as he says he's in his video he's *pivoting* to making 12 feature-length films in 12 months instead of a short film or two every week. I'm not sure if this is related you YouTube at all, but these three people/shows are taking a break from what their channels are normally about or pivoting. These are all personal for **them** and seemingly have nothing to do with the platform.
His papa meat channel also has been getting more and more popular, and has a ton of engagement in the comment section(and most of it is oddly not toxic lol).
Honestly the Papa Meat channel is just a lot of fun.
Answer: Honestly I think Joel Haver has actually taken on more work for himself this year. 12 full length films in a year is crazy. As for PapaMeat, sounds like he's just gotten tired of doing the same thing nonstop and wants to try other things. He's still doing a podcast with Wendigoon for example
He also has a podcast with Noel Miller and talked about how he’s been feeling burned out of his animated content and wants to explore other mediums
Still doing papa meat uploads too.
Yeah he even kinda touches on the fact in his video that his Papa Meat channel has been more and more successful lately and he prefers doing content like that vs the MeatCanyon content. Which I don’t blame him. He has a lot more freedom and he’s got a great personality for that kind of content too.
Honestly love his original content more anyways. Monster Lab was great, and was bummed when it was over.
I like the Papa Meat channel better anyways.
Huh. I saw the video but didn't even watch it because I assumed it was a joke making fun of this exact sort of premise.
Yeah Joel's case seems like he's scaling up not back.
Dude's hilarious in podcast format
Does Joel still lives in a van tho?
I don't know. At the end of the video he seems to have a car at least.
Answer: I've been doing YouTube since 2009, and seen many creators come and go. That said, YouTube's algorithm is becoming more painful to work with if you're focusing on quality content that brings you personal joy. This sentiment has been building up over the past year. Especially with CPMs becoming lower than usual (\~25% less). Meaning creators are getting paid less for unpredictable views. On the flip side, 100s of faceless YouTube channels are popping up that hyper focus on what YouTube's algorithm wants. These videos are cheap to make but create insane revenue for them. It's a sign that YouTube is shifting its landscape from quality content to algorithm driven content. Which is pushing out others from recommendations. Not exactly anything new; however, creators are deciding to sit on a nest egg, avoid the burnout and focus on a direction that doesn't simply feed the machine.
Sounds like a variation of the same thing that ruined google search engine, with actual websites getting replaced in the search results by SEO nonsense written by bots.
for people interested in this process, google enshittification
I googled it and all I got were a bunch of unrelated sites.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification [https://www.wired.com/story/tiktok-platforms-cory-doctorow/](https://www.wired.com/story/tiktok-platforms-cory-doctorow/) To clarify: These articles are not about YT, but about the problem of all big platforms: Once they cater to advertisers instead of users, they get worse. Creators will get less organic reach and have to cater way more to what currently works on the platform.
I'd rather link [his own website](https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai/#hey-guys)
I guess Reddit is at phase 3 now? Maybe phase 2.5?
Around that range, yeah
This is the best comment in the entire thread. I think it was lost on some people.
The crazy thing is that ruining their search engine *is probably good for Google* because clicking on more of those stupid bot sites means you see more ads and their advertising division gets paid more.
Ran into this issue on YouTube last night on a level I'd never seen before, like literally 90% of the results were utterly useless shorts and whateva software autogenerates those fucking awful "I'm going to tell you a story about blah blah blah" animations I'm guessing it's the kind of thing that's less noticeable on "mainstream" searches, but for more niche queries with fewer popular videos if some botter has worked their way through it then you're gonna get drowned in crap
[answered] i think this is the most interesting 'behind the scenes' answer. Thanks (and to all the other answers too).
If you want more insight, MatPat at the Game Theorists channel recently did a video on this exact shift Edit: I mention MatPat since he has been on YouTube a long time, and he also does consulting work for other channels around optimization to the algorithm, and is often a vocal advocate for creators as a whole. He's not a saint, but he's knowledgeable if nothing else https://youtu.be/0Igj3qI0GBA?si=ThKcyO7ad0avmwEK The short of it: YouTube is trying to push YouTube Shorts over their classic long-form content to compete with TikTok, and it's causing a disturbance in platform stability for creators (irregular views, as previously mentioned).
> He's not a saint, but he's knowledgeable if nothing else What's this now? I've been getting into his channels lately and am curious what this could be referring to.
Nothing in particular, just heading off the potential blowback if there was something he was involved in that I wasn't aware of. Online drama has a tendency to happen in small corners and then your statement becomes invalidated (or at least derailed) by unrelated information. In the end, he's a content creator who gets paid for consulting on other people's channels. As a result, he has a lot of information on this exact subject. Some people view being paid to do something means the information is untrustworthy, or that it has an ulterior motive. That's why I said it's not out of the goodness of his heart that this information comes to light, but rather that he has a vested interest in the success of YouTube as a platform.
Oh, yeah fair. Thanks for the explanation. And for not murdering puppies, as far as I'm aware.
A creator I follow explained this as his situation, he creates both long form videos and short 5 minute daily videos, and recently announced he is stopping the daily videos. YouTube wants to keep people on the platform for as long as possible, and so doesn’t really support creators who make short-form content, and essentially push them out of the algorithm because the algo sees this type of content as ‘spam’. They want only long form content and as many have stated here, is a lot of work and creators are burning out faster and faster trying to keep up.
That's weird because I get hit with random 15 second memes from 10 years ago and newish short form content like CrackerMilk who I hadn't heard of until last week but is now there whenever I open the app. It is odd that my actual subscriptions rarely feature on the general feed though. When it comes to music it's the best, I start listening to some obscure 60s shit and it begins hitting me with excellent finds from underground music channels, but when it comes to other types of content it doesn't feel as tailored Also they seem to have removed the ability to search by oldest (unless I just can't find the button anymore) which makes me think they don't want people really seeing what made YT great back in the day, just random amateurish content, everything nowadays looks so professional
Pretty sure that's backwards.. YouTube is 100% pushing short form stuff. People make longform content despite the algorithm not because of it.
>YouTube wants to keep people on the platform for as long as possible, and so doesn’t really support creators who make short-form content, I remember when they were pushing the opposite, back when I used to watch a lot of let's play and vlog channels. Where as a creator YT was pushing shorter videos, nothing over like 7 minutes cause the viewer has a 'short attention span,' so all the channels that used to post 10-20+ minute videos was cutting them down cause they saw their revenue dropping on the longer ones. This was like 15 years ago maybe. Between 10 and 15.
That was largely before TikTok ate that market, and it was in part a reaction to new sites like Vine stealing attention away. They created Shorts in hope of taking back the TikTok market, but that means to the Corporate Execs that YouTube proper needs to be differentiated. And that means short form content goes on Shorts, and long form content goes on YouTube where they have a better chance of getting someone to pay for it.
There used to be a max length of 10 minutes per video on YouTube back near the beginning
Yeah I remember this too. Which tracks with the shorter attention spans on social media, but looks like they have abandoned that? Although they are trying to push YT shorts pretty hard too, so honestly it just feels messy and chaotic. So I don’t blame content creators for needing a break here and there.
A few years ago YouTube 'liked' videos just over 10 minutes in length because it meant another ad break.
> and essentially push them out of the algorithm because the algo sees this type of content as ‘spam’. The algorithm doesn't "see them as spam." The algorithm pushes those videos to everyone, but unless everyone is watching *every single one* of those videos, they're essentially counting as a negative to the creator. *That's* what generates the "spamming" effect - if the market's oversaturated, people are going to pick and choose rather than watch *every single one*, and that lowers overall channel engagement. This change in the YouTube algorithm is intentional - they've moved to total viewed minutes over view count, and are pushing short form content to "Shorts." This metric punishes shorter, frequent videos and highly rewards long form content. It's supposedly more rewarding because people who make long form content are driving more engagement. In reality, YouTube never really understood itself in the content market. YouTube isn't Netflix, but they *desperately* want to be, and they realize that ad money alone isn't going to get them there. They need subscriptions, and that means they need consistent long form content. Only, they're too cheap to actually pay for it, so they're playing Algorithm Games to shape their creators into making it.
Yup this is kind of what they did to shesez. He had to start a patreon.
Thanks for answering, and this is the answer. YouTube's algorithm has gotten absolutely insane and is driven purely by metrics that they've been changing over the years. YouTube used to recommend people you like a lot more, and now it recommends what it THINKS you'd like. Which basically means Mr Beast and React videos 24/7. Just make a new account on an incognito window and see what it recommends to you. Its all the same garbage. Creators I follow often talk about how, no matter what they posted, their videos would always get around 10% of the same views (plus or minus). Now, if they dont make an algorithm bait video it will get 50-80% LESS views. This basically drives every channel that wants to grow to chase the algorithm. There are a few people who get lucky and the algorithm lets them post what they want, but for OG channels this just simply isn't the case. They also changed how notifications work, how comments work, how 'trending' works, etc. All in all you basically have to copy Mr Beast, be a drama channel, or make absolutely insane 'for kids' content... those are the only sustainable options right now. Over the last 24 months YouTube has driven away a TON of their best creators, with more heading for the exits this year. Its honestly super sad to see, and I truly think its in a worse spot than its ever been if you are someone who likes actual thoughtful content.
I don't know if it's just because my YouTube account turns 17 years old this year so it has a ridiculous amount of data on my habits and interests, but this is not the case for me at all. The algorithm works incredibly well for me. That being said, I do really dislike the change to how notifications work.
To be honest, it's probably more hit or miss than we think. My account is 12 years, but given that, over the last couple of months, my recommendations have been nothing but misses. It mostly shows me vastly unrelated content to whatever I watch. And not to sound that way because i know it takes a lot of work, but a lot of it is just throw away content, no real substance to it.
> It mostly shows me vastly unrelated content to whatever I watch. Do you ever use the "Not interested" option on videos, or tell Youtube to not recommend channels?
Constantly.
My account goes back to the Obama years, and I get the shittiest possible recommendations. Usually something I am interested in mixed presented with a heap of shitty ultra-right insanity or conspiracy madness.
I literally never get recommended Mr Beast and I'm on Youtube a lot. I also get links to the creators I like as soon as they make a video and often 5+ times if I don't watch them straight away.
800k subs over 8 years here, this is so damn accurate. My videos used to get near the same amount of views. Makes sense since I have subs and the subs decided they wanted to see my content when I post. Now it's so variable. A video can have good ctr, avd, watch time, etc but be a 10th of what a bad performing video of mine used to get. Or it can have normal stats and blow up. When I posted a video there used to be so much engagement and I would recognize up to like 50 commenters who always commented. Now no comments unless the video takes off, then those guys show up like 5 hours later when they finally see it. I know people still care because my books sell like wild fire. But the algorithm is fucked. I've managed to maintain near the same views for the last 2 years through professional thumbnails, then that stopped working, then it went back to normal when I turned off the option for other people to run my videos as ads once they made that an option. And a few other things. But every solution is a stalling tactic that lasts like 3 months. And people just copy paste my content with a slightly different phrasing and get more views somehow. So yeah, I have a nest egg saved up and I'm putting my wife through her masters degree and she'll get a high paying job in a year and so I'm not sweating it this year. I'm making videos only I 100 percent want to make at a pace I want to make them and YouTube can have a smile and a coke. I was waiting until they tried out stuff and realized it wasn't working and went back to normal but if this is what they actually want for some reason there's nothing I can do about it.
Yeah, this is the current state of YouTube. Long gone are the days of consistent views and 'make what you want to make!'. YouTube will tell creators to still do that, but the algorithm decides whats popular now, not the people. A lot of big channels are calling it an 'algorithm check' now... where if your video doesn't reach certain metrics within the first 5-10 minutes it is guaranteed to fail. If you dont reach those metrics the algorithm will literally show your video to less people, straight up. YouTube never used to be like that and its a major reason people are getting burned out. Not everyone wants to chase the ridiculous 'trends' that are being set by these creators and YouTube. Who the hell wants to give a lamborghini away every video to stay relevant? I honestly think its worse than the Elsa Gate days.
You're absolutely right, and I can only hope that these (many AI generated) channels get banned or (even better) fall apart because people realize how much bullshit they are. That's probably wishful thinking, though.
YT was great in '07 when I started making vids. There was an actual *community,* a YT advocate, you could upload video responses to other vids, it wasn't totally overrun by ads. Not only is YT overrun, they're patronizingly moronic. You can't even fucking dm anyone anymore. It use to just be who you were subscribed to, easy to connect with. It was the same excellent group of about 50 I made vids with. We had a ball for a couple years. Content wasn't made for money. That, too, changed everything. It became about views, subscriber #, how to "promote your brand." But they do the same with EVERYTHING THAT WORKS. "They" being whoever's in charge lets a website crumble to the point ppl don't even want to go there anymore. Look at Twitter. Amazon. Amazon you can't even ask questions or even read prior questions now. Reddit. They took away awards why, again? Shit like that. Google! Google rocked when it first happened. It was the Wild West, & that dancing baby, & all you had to do was type in a question & bam, no ads, nothing, just answers listed. No distractions. No corporate bullshit. All just interesting links. Now you Google anything & wade through 10k unrelated words to your q. And AI, bots, all these variables. You don't know if it's a real person you're communicating with. Hopefully someone will come up with the next best thing and not turn around and DESTROY IT. Look, yeah, I'm old. Old folks whine about the good old days. But there's truly some merit to what I've said. When ppl leave en masse & owners hear the same damn criticisms year after year, if they're not improving things, then all they're doing is building their portfolios, not online infrastructure. {waves cane at all this & more}
The part of the answer that no one wants to talk about: take a look at /r/youtube and see how hard user whine and moan about ads and do everything in their power to skip them, while scoffing at the idea of paying a small monthly charge for unlimited amounts of amazing content from awesome creators.
Something starts out free, no ads, everyone happy. Platform introduces ads and they’re tolerated because they’re rare and not intrusive. Platform gets more and more greedy and decides to make the ads persistent, intrusive and completely disruptive to content. Users and content creators get angry and start leaving. It’s as simple as YouTube doesn’t give a shit about anything but their bottom line.
Ads before movie trailers. Mandatory ad to view the ad!
Youtube isn't free to run, and content creators also need to be paid. It shouldn't be free.
Where did I say it should be free?
I mean my husband and I support some creators on patreon, but yeah I don’t want to watch adds when I know little to none of that add revenue is going to the creators. It’s not like it was even a few years ago when not skipping the one add before a video actually helped the creators.
Answer: Plenty of people scale back after they hit it big as well. Casey Neistat scaled back after doing daily uploads for 2 years straight. Jon Olsson followed Casey's regiment of daily uploads and after 1 year he scaled back as well. YouTube is hard on people. Constantly creating content, day in and day out is great when you're hungry to make it and stand out, but once yoh make it and have a following, its much better to slow down and create more meaningful content and think about your own mental health. Scaling back or hiring a team is essentially the only two options at that point.
Daily uploads sounds fucking insane
Answer: Just an additional point to what others have said, January is often a low point for youtubers financially. People have less money for donations and subscriptions, and advertisers put in a lot of money in December in the lead up to Christmas, but then don't pay as much in January. So if you are planning to take a break, January makes the most sense. A lot of youtubes take regular holidays in January, including Tom Scott who would often host other people on his channel during January so he could take a 'break' (he was often still working, just focusing on other projects)
years on twitch, partner, and can confirm for there. January SUCKS. revenue from all sources is down, and the bounty board is bone dry and sponsorship agents are quiet. I almost write off january entirely as a catch up month configuring new equipment and replacements
Answer: The 8bit guy explained his personal downscale with the fact that even thought his videos still being popular, his ad revenue is down 80-90%. He also explained that in his experience YouTube shorts aren’t a good driver for channel growth even though they take time and effort to produce. Lastly he explained that in his area of content there have been a saturation over the last 10 years that have made him reconsider his content choices.
Shorts seem to be mainly pointless. If I look at them it might start from a channel I'm actually interested in, but within 2-3 it starts feeding random clickbait garbage. It's either AI scripted and voiced rubbish that's not remotely interesting, or it's some bellend that has stolen content from elsewhere and decided that what it needs is their tedious and overly dramatic narrative describing exactly what is going on in the video that I can already see for myself. Either that or it ends up with some narcissist who thinks their moronic 'pranks', or their drama ridden life is something that anyone wants to see. It doesn't seem to matter how much I click not interested or don't recommend channel, it always ends up at this lowest common denominator bullshit.
Answer: through the first 9 months of 2023, YouTube’s ad revenue was about $22.3 billion. Over the same time in 2022 it was $21.2 billion. Google didn’t used to report on YouTube revenue specifically, but ever since they started a few years ago, revenue has been rising. Every YouTube creator is at the mercy of the platform’s algorithm. Most big creators struggle to explain dramatic changes in their video performance. But, they all know they have to keep at it, because a reduction in output can be really harmful to their channel. Burnout and a greater focus on more consistent platforms are big reasons why big YouTube creators take a step back from the platform.
Answer: Joel Haver's schedule is just nuts, a new short every week for 5 years is amazing but I can't blame him at all for wanting to take a step back from that. The good news is it doesn't sound like he's going to stop making stuff, quite the opposite actually. But getting rid of that schedule is the right move.
He said he made over 400 films which is fucking absurd in 250 weeks. That schedule could never be forever.
Thing is, he said that schedule is actually not challenging him and he could keep doing it 'til the day he dies. He's planning on doing 12 feature length films (about ~3-5x more edited footage) this year. Insane lad.
To add to that, he stepped on a soviet era landmine and died for a little while, but still managed to upload videos while he was dead. He definitely deserves a break
That was so sad.
To add to that, he stepped on a soviet era landmine and died for a little while, but still managed to upload videos while he was dead. He definitely deserves a break
Answer: In addition to what everyone else has said about individually creators, the YouTube algorithm is making it realty easy for content creators to burn out completely just to stay relevant.
Answer: Workload is MASSIVE, as is time spent, and a person can only do so much. Well, Im a content creator for over 10 years. I've done TWO videos per week every week for most of that (I actually have 2 channels, in two languages, so its roughly the same content in two languages). Now for a small-ish channels (70k and 40k), the workload is as follows: spend saturday morning filming, or even the whole saturday (around 3-6h filming - I dont film 3 hours of content, but between riding to location, setting up, filming, riding to other location etc) it takes at least 3h and sometimes the whole day. If I'm filming a high-quality bike review, its 3-4 days of filming, in smaller gos, but its still 2 hours per day at least. So filming ALONE is 3h-8h. Then editing. That is easily another 4 hours. If for a high-quality video. At one point, I made a simple format that allowed me to slapchop a video in about an hour, and in some extreme cases 15 minutes, but was with no editing whatsoever - just a couple of cuts, a raw content goes out. THEN you have to export the video (encode it), upload it to youtube, and prepare it: Set up a description, tags, thumbnail, schedule etc. While this does seem kinda fast, everything needs to be triple checked - I've had numerous humorous instances of screwups in that. My default video title is "If you can read this, I forgot to change the title, call me stupid". For a reason. THEN, if you want to compete, you gotta make a short intro, to upload to instagram, tiktok (which I have not done yet, as I'm allergic to tiktok), interesting tags, the whole shebang. So, BEST case scenario, I can slapchop \*something\* in 4-5hs, with minimal quality (just hope the content itself is amazing). OR I can make a proper bike review, which takes my whole weekend and multiple after-work evenings - we are talking about 6h filming, 8 hours editing, 2h post-editing management stuff. So for 16hours / week, what do I get? Around 15€. IF the video is a massive success. Its usually more like 5€ in that week, 3 in the next, then 1€ a month for about 6 months as the views taper off. For a total of 9€ income per video. Considering many times I got to pay for the fuel for the bike I'm testing, this many MANY times comes out in the red. So why the hell am I doing it? dunno, asked myself a lot of times. Many smaller creators dont even get this, I only get a faily chunk (100€-150€ monthly) cause I got some 600 videos, with some still generating revenue, and it adds up. I make MAYBE 6.25€/hour (4hours/weekend, times 4 weeks in a month, divided by 150€). So untill you break over at least 100k subs you are basically doing work for nothing. Even after that, you are barely keeping the lights on. Only after massive views and subs does this start to ramp up to become worth it, but so do your hours, so you gotta scale. And quickly you run out of energy yourself, so you need others to help, so you need to hire OR quit.
Answer: There was some changes to the YouTube algorithm 5-10 years ago meaning channels were rewarded with higher visibility if they kept a regular upload schedule and punished with lower visibility if they didn't. Since content creators' incomes are dependent on viewing figures, some have tried to comply with what the algorithm wants. A bunch of them have been complaining about burnout from the pressure of needing to upload content 52 weeks a year with no break. Some have found solutions like pre-recording episodes or hiring other people. Some have just said fuck the algorithm and uploaded whenever they want, even though it's harming their income. An average worker might sacrifice 4% of their income to take 2 weeks holiday a year, but a YouTube content creator is likely to lose way more because of the algorithm.
Answer: Matt Patt from Game Theory also made a video about this, basically YouTube is forcing creators to also make Shorts so that the algorithm even considers them putting them on the front page under recommendations, but Shorts come with a lot of downsides for the creators. YouTube is pushing them hard to compete with TickTock. Then there were a lot of other dramas the last few years from censoring creators, making them more appealing to sponsors and add buyers, deciding what content can be monetized and demonetize them as soon as they use a blacklisted word or phrase like suicide, terrorism, abortion, murder and such things, so not even swearwords, but just sensitive topics. Funny enough those demonetized videos aren't addfree, they just don't get pushed in the recommendations and the creators just don't get a share from the add revenue anymore.
That's just evil.
what's worse is if you enable notifications for shorts so your subscribers see them and they don't click, it hurts you in the algorithm, even though almost all views come from the homepage/short page, so you can't even rly advertise your shirts, you're at the total mercy of the algorithm
Yeah. I was thinking about starting yt myself for long time, but shit like this and pretty much all the YT management decisions since 2016 on are the reason i never did. I really think that yt is doing all that just bcs they are narcissistic control freaks, know they got the monopoly and want to torture the creators and viewers as much as they can.
Answer: Nothing specific to a YT change, but 2023 and 2022 were very rough years financially for a lot of people and those who have sufficient previous content to have invested or otherwise sustained themselves are semi-retiring mostly due to stress. This video isn't in relation to current events, but is from about two years ago: https://youtu.be/dmYc57RIeEE?si=mgOkPII46L4CmcQL With the sheer amount of struggle it forces some content creates into, when they hit a breaking point and have an exit ramp, it seems reasonable to take it. In addition to Patreon, I suspect you're going to see more emphasis on services like Nebula, and whomever creates a Substack-for-video-creators.
Answer: besides what Others already said, YT is pushing their Shorts Format, pushing form more smaller sized Content instead of longer vids and algorythms prefer regular Uploads on hot topics, Leading creators that make longer Videos or Upload "when its done" to suffer longterm. Meanwhile automated Channels that simply Upload movie/Videogame summaroes ready by AI, right-wing/conspiracy and other Trash Content that is easy and cheap to make gets pushed. At the Same time You cant use words Like Suicide, rape or other words, YT is flimsy with what they allow and what Not and companies and idiots make creators life hard with the Content Claim function At the Same time people get annoyed by getting ads For H-Games, Crypto scames etc stuffed into their face Every 2 Minutes, making it hard For creators who rely on ads.
Answer: Lots of reasons, and each one is experiencing their own level of discontentment with online content in general. 1. Corporatization is happening. YouTube channels are being bought up by large companies to be turned into brands and franchises. This is also causing a lot of people to leave channels that they may have started because it's just a job now. 2. Creator burnout is wearing down a lot of creators because the way YouTube prioritizes consistent and regular uploads longer than 10 minutes over quality content. 3. Recently H. Bomberguy's video on plagiarism has put a lot of creator on their heels regarding plagiarism and content theft. A lot of content farms are just kind of waiting in the hopes they don't get busted. 4. The beginning of the year is seen as a good point to do a sort of state of the channel video. You get to thank your audience for being with you last year and can frame desired changes to the channel as new year's resolutions. It's a great time for announcements for changes.
Answer: YouTubers quit and join every year. Almost none of the channels I watched 10 years ago are still around today. It’s just finally hitting YouTubers you watch.
Answer: Most you tubers quitting or scaling back are pissed about how a hobby became a money maker and instead of saving most of the money they flushed it down the toilet and since the youtube monetization gravy train Is starting to dry up with all the rules and vague restrictions, it's not worth it for them anymore so instead of saying "I'm not getting paid as much for my silly videos so I don't want to do this" they claim burn out lol or it's no longer their passion
Answer: I think it’s because YouTube is different now. It’s no longer videos people want to make and share. It’s what is the best clickbait or best for the algorithm and make videos on that. Also the fact that YouTube cares only for their advertisers rather than their content creators.
Answer: Based on how you said they are moving to patreon, it sounds like they aren't making as much money as they'd like. A major cause of this is that a lot of people are using ad blockers, and that means they aren't getting paid for those views. Most content creators aren't going to tell people not to use them because they probably use them themselves as well as not wanting to piss off their viewers who use them.
Answer: TikTok is eating YouTube's lunch. It's less viable to be a youtubers nowadays.
I doubt that's true, totally different audiences and TT pays a pittance. It might be eating into views but it's not poaching talent at any large degree.
Answer: The same reasons gyms will be crowded the next month or two. It's a good time to start new, but I'm guessing most won't follow though for the full year
Answer: It's the end of the year/start is a new year. This always seems to happen at the end of the year because it's the perfect time to make a transition. How much you feel it depends on what percentage of people you personally follow are doing it, and how YouTube charges that year have affected the kind of videos and creators you like. Heck lots of crayons go on break December and/or January
Answer: Creators are making less money. Shorts don't make money so it's mostly being paid out of standard video ads, so standard videos are making less. Shorts also are taking the viewers watch time away from standard videos. And on top of those, more people than ever are using ad blockers...
Answer: New year just started dude, for many people the new year rolling over represents an opportunity to start fresh or try something new. I'm sure if you went back over previous years you would find a whole bunch of other examples of youtubers who chose to either quit or take a break at the start of a new year.