i had an unexpected crash this morning, and now i am getting distracted.

i've spent the last few days uploading everything to youtube as 128 kbps mp3s. why am i doing this? well, why did i do it in the first place?

i took everything down because i wasn't getting any traffic to the bandcamp site, but i was operating under a different mindset. i know that people think they're going to make money via ad revenue, but there's two problems with this: (1) i'm never going to do that because i'm an independent artist going for a niche market (i.e. i don't write pop music, and don't want to) and (2) even if i could potentially generate that kind of traffic, i wouldn't want to ruin the art with ads.

i mean, think through what we're talking about. i'm putting up music on the internet, and expecting to get paid by letting people sprinkle ads into the recording. that's disgusting as a business model in general, and impossible when you consider that i write lengthy, conceptual records. i routinely write 30-50 minute tracks, or track suites. i don't want any fucking ads in there!

so, the intent was to subvert the thing - they've got this all backwards. i don't want to make money by letting people ruin my art with their ads. fuck them. rather, i want to use youtube as an advertising platform, in itself. there were two ways i did this, initially: (1) via trying to commandeer the comments section and (2) via posting samples to the youtube site, with the intent to direct traffic to bandcamp.

then, they shadow-banned me, so nobody could see my comments. and, traffic from the samples demonstrated itself as a waste of time. so, i shut the site down.

since then, i've been struggling to organize all of this data (while fighting legal battles and trying to find smoke-free housing), but i've finally got a handle on it, so it's time to switch over.

there's still almost 300 subscribers at the deathtokoalas/koala central command site. that's down from around 340 at it's maximum point. but, those 340 people were useless to me because they weren't buying records. part of the time out was to let them drift off. yet, there's still 300 of them there....

i've been planning on this for a while; it was the completion of inri000 in the journal that triggered me to do it, and they're coming up in the order they were finished (over 2013-20118).

am i going to go back to posting? maybe. not in the same way, i don't think - it drew attention to myself, but it didn't work in building a fan base. i think i want to be a little more sincere, moving forwards. regardless, it's time to rebuild that advertising archive at youtube.

but, let's be clear: the videos are ads. they're not a product. the product is at bandcamp. so, they're up at 128 kbps, as teasers, and you can stream them all you want - but they don't sound great, and they can't. buy the record...

and, yes, i'd like to give this stuff away for free. i mean, i do work for free - let's not pretend that i don't. but, i don't want to get a job. i don't want this to be a hobby. this is labour, this is work, this is full-time employment. i need a paywall...