Lessons learned producing a short-form YouTube series
It's all in the buzz.
In June of 2022, I wrote a story entitled The Never Ending Showcase about how modern-day musicians are trapped in a perpetual cycle of (unpaid) showcasing to promote their art, and how covid put a sudden stop to this practice (which many dislike). The pandemic led me to create a little series of videos called Sur le Bout du Banc (On the end of the bench), titled after a traditional Québécois song.
In the beginning, it was a coronavirus-fueled promotional strategy to keep my band on the radar. Somewhat to my surprise, it went on to become an entity of its own – one that continues to this day. To date, I’ve produced 209 episodes, published weekly on Saturday night or in the wee hours of Sunday. The series features my partner Claude Méthé, a veteran traditional musician, playing old and new tunes and songs with guest musicians (and on occasion me) joining him on a rustic red bench (made by Claude). While the original intent was to prove that we were still alive and kicking during a time when live performance venues were shut down, the series quickly transformed into something bigger – an informal, unplanned archive of the many musicians who are keeping Québec’s oral traditions alive “bouche à oreille” (mouth to ear), including quite a few Québec trad afficionados from outside Canada.
We have welcomed guests from France, Denmark, Scotland, the US and across Canada. The visual style remains relatively simple and is purposely not subject to too much polish. Musicians get together (often at our home) just prior to filming, decide what to play and do some warming up. The goal is to illustrate the way that all kinds of folks – not necessarily professionals – learn and share musical repertoires. What counts is feeling, not perfectionism. There are no second takes – human error is a part of the charm and the only requirement is to enjoy the moment.
For this time-consuming production, I am not supported by grants or any private funding (except my own), and not a penny is made by anyone from publishing this series. Guests are volunteers – the only thing they receive is a sticker I created for those who brave the bench. For anyone involved, and especially me, this is purely a passion project, and it is a lot of work. Since 2021, I’ve filmed upwards of 300 videos. I did this with my own equipment, bought and paid for by me alone. Each episode typically involves three (occasionally four) cameras, lighting (if shooting indoors), C-stands, tripods, clamps, plugs, extension cords, portable power (when off-grid), chargers, lenses, filters and hours of setup and take-down.
When filming away from home (I’ve filmed in New York, Vermont, New Brunswick, Québec and multiple regional locations), I have to load the truck, bring along a power source (sometimes it’s my EV), set up, deal with wind, rain and sun – then pack it all back up for the trip home to be unloaded and put away. After a shoot, I have to transfer the footage (one video for each camera) to a hard drive, match up and identify the footage and verify the titles for each. Each filming session can vary from three to twelve or more tunes, so you can imagine the amount of media this generates!
Once I’ve decided on the week’s content, Claude writes an initial description for each tune in French. I spend a minimum of six hours per week compiling this info, editing each episode, editing the accompanying text (including an English translation) and creating a thumbnail for YouTube. Then I create a second video using a snippet from the full video, a teaser that will be published to Instagram and Facebook. I upload the full video to the YouTube playlist, create a post on Claude’s website, and publish the teaser to Instagram, which shares it to Facebook (where I have to go to add details to that post that are not options in Instagram).
Social punishment
I upload the full video to YouTube, because viewers can subscribe and receive notifications as soon as I publish it and most watch the video the entire way through. As explained in my earlier article, I learned the hard way that directly uploading the whole video to Facebook would get lots of views – but only for 6-10 seconds – with no way to know by whom and without any way to connect with those viewers. All I could see was who had “liked” it, but I couldn’t export a list of those folks, and they rarely left Facebook to subscribe. If I shared the YouTube link directly to my profile, this triggered an algorithm that would hide my video from an unknown number of my 1800 followers (there is no way of knowing who). I’m also fairly certain that anything we upload to the platform is “scraped” for their LLM (AI model). Thanks to the brilliant writer Cory Doctorow, I’m pretty sure by now you’re aware of the ultra-enshittificatory techniques that are the trademark of the platforms that have us in a death grip. My current strategy to get people, subscribed or not, to view my videos is to upload a 15-second “teaser” to Instagram, which I then set to automatically share to my Facebook profile. My post includes a short text that does contain the actual YouTube link, but this doesn’t seem to trigger the hiding of this post, perhaps due to its being a secondary link. This way, there is some Meta-hosted content, since Facebook has made it clear it doesn’t like links that might take one of their hostages (us) away to another platform. It’s the modern, digital version of a Mafia-like “protection” fee. My teasers do get a lot of views, probably because they’re so short – social media feeds are fast food for people’s ever-shrinking attention spans.
The short-form dilemma
Because we accept what “free” actually means when we resign ourselves to being hostages of these mega-platforms, there is no way to avoid “being the product”. On Facebook, there is no direct benefit to me in uploading content I care about there. Despite also being part of a monopolistic giant, YouTube offers more hope. If (ever) there are enough subscribers and views, my videos become eligible for monetization (clickable ads that pay a small cut to creators). Of course, the downside to a career on YouTube is that they can theoretically “disappear” your channel in a heartbeat, without explanation (because once again, you are the product and not in control). It happens. But unlike Facebook, quite a lot of ordinary people are making actual money with their work. I’ve never met anyone who could say the same for Facebook. I’m not qualified to debate whether the Instagram part of Meta is worthwhile financially – maybe it is for some who are marketing there via paid ads. For me, the joy of it was instantly ruined when it was bought by Facebook.
After my videos evolved into a weekly series, I soon realized that channels featuring short-form content (under 15 minutes) rarely become eligible to earn money. Only very famous musicians and major network TV shows garner subscribers with short content (such as songs or show snippets). Think The Late Show with Stephen Colbert or artists like Taylor Swift. Very few people subscribe to channels with content that is mere minutes long – even many well-known artists have surprisingly low subscriber counts. Short videos like mine – despite there being LOTS of them – will take years to accumulate enough public viewing minutes to become eligible for monetization, even if there are enough subscribers. On top of that, advertising must be inserted at the beginning or end of this type of video since it isn’t realistic to break up a musical “performance” that is three minutes long.
Alternatives – are there really any?
On a personal level, I am essentially off Instagram and Facebook, except when I have to promote my band’s gigs. Frustratingly, this is an unavoidable task, since nearly everybody who will ever see a performance at any venue is a Meta hostage. Presenters expect that bands will use social media to support the fact that they’ve agreed to hire us – in fact, it is increasingly a contractual obligation. We have to create custom videos and ads, work that would have been the presenter’s job in the not-so-distant past. Artists are spread thinner and thinner and playing less and less jobs. And there is literally NO OTHER OPTION for this kind of promotion, nor will there be until people abandon ship for federated social “networks” – as opposed to social “media” – gathering spots that don’t run on algorithms.
In 2023, I republished 30 episodes of the Bout du Banc on Medium.com as free “stories” (imported from blog posts). There was a tiny bit of positive feedback, but not enough for me to keep doing it (I didn’t try publishing via the Partner Program and maybe I should have).
In 2024, Substack seemed like a new possiblity – I already have a podcast there that I haven’t updated in ages. I posted a few times, but I’ve found it less compelling than Medium in terms of the interface and how it all works. Both platforms do allow you to export your follower’s emails, so there’s that, but it is increasingly difficult to find the kind of content you’re interested in, and always a bit random. I feel like randomness is becoming an issue on Medium, too, but I find the interface more compelling.
This year, I began occasionally publishing my weekly teaser and YouTube link to the Mastodon instance I’m on, to some positive feedback, but I think this particular content isn’t really compatible with the more tech-driven crowd I follow there. I may need to join another instance (art, music) and see where that goes.
For 2026, I’m toying with the idea of turning this weekly musical adventure into an audio/video podcast. It makes sense as in theory it is all ready to go. Extra steps would be to separate out an audio track (so there is a choice of video or audio), then upload both to the host platform (I’m currently considering Captivate.fm). I will, of course, have to manually upload hundreds of past episodes – although this is generally considered a good thing in podcast circles - it’s always good to launch with lots of content, especially when it is very short. Then I’ll have to add the “show” details, which isn’t too difficult since I work with a template (in Obsidian) that will make it fairly straightforward. Repurposing existing content (like radio often does) seems like a no-brainer, a “why not?”.
From an artistic viewpoint, I continue to be excited by the wonderful experience it has been thus far to document the transmission of traditional music in this very organic, relaxed and unpretentious way, and in the knowledge that I’m capturing a little piece of this important living tradition and sending it out into the universe to continue on.
In addition to more about this series, there is also an index of episodes on boutdubanc.com.
Here’s a sample episode you can watch right now :