Our Evolving YouTube Channel – An Update
The blog audioreviews.org was established in February 2019 and our YouTube Channel followed in March 2020. Whereas we are up to 8 contributors to the blog, only I do videos. The idea of these videos was to draw a large viewership to our written reviews, according to my “tongue-in-cheek” motto: “YouTube videos are for people who cannot read by people who cannot write”.
Written articles have advantages: the reader can come back anytime to look things up quickly (specs, box content etc.). But a reader has to be attentive to extract and digest the information.
YouTube is more “eye candy” and easier to consume, but once the clip is over, it is water down the bridge. The information is buried and hard to find again. There is also more style over substance in YouTube, window dressing and marketing play a much bigger role, simply because videos attract much larger crowds than write-ups. Many YouTubers are first and foremost influencers.
We at audioreviews.org see ourselves as tech geeks on one hand, and as consumer advocates on the other. We like the intellectual challenge of writing and we want to have fun. The written medium fits us better. I first used YouTube for unboxing spoofs, as unboxing is marketing and irrelevant for the performance of a product. My co-bloggers did not follow suit, so I have remained the blog’s only YouTuber and pose in character as “Dr. Schweinsgruber”…a name that goes back to 2010.
You have to structure a written review, you have to lay out your arguments, and you have to give good reasons to back up your conclusions. In YouTube videos, you get away with rambling as long as you can distract from your lack of depth with optics.
This does of course not mean all YouTubers lack substance or that reviewers with fancy setups are bad. But window dressing is not necessary at all considering that superstars such as Steve Guttenberg of the Audiophiliac Daily Show and, previously, Tyll Hertsens of innerfidelity lead the pack without it.
These guys are down to earth, it is entirely their knowledge and trust that attracts crowds. They are true role models. But they have been around for decades, maybe even for centuries. It obviously takes time to create a relationship with your audience.
So how did I approach YouTube? Really cluelessly but very enthusiastically – and on a shoestring budget.
I used an iPhone SE (first generation) without even a Tripod, and deployed the microphones of the remotes in earphone cables (Focal Spark worked quite well), had no artificial lighting…and all that in the worst lit places of the house. My videos were grainy and sounded tinny. And the crowd stayed away. No surprise.
I then ordered some microphones (partially financed by you Paypal supporters – thank you very much), a phone rack, a stand, some LED lights…and I started moving around the house to find the perfect spot. It took some time until I found my current setup. Now we had good sound and ok picture quality.
And the viewers still stayed away.
On the other hand, our blog has taken off and is attracting more and more interest.
From the start, I have based my videos on my written reviews, which can be a bit of double dipping. But you, the reader, can always look things up in the respective article – very fast. And I try to keep my videos below 8 minutes, which should be enough to convey the message.
With my academic background, I will always prefer written reviews even if this genre attracts less attention than moving pictures. As a consolation for us blog writers, an attentive reader has more depth than the average YouTube consumer.
The future looks bright and I will become a better YouTuber with time. Please subscribe to the audioreviews.org channel and push the like button. For now we remain “the world’s smallest quality Youtube channel”.
Until next time…keep on listening!
THE LAST FOUR YOUTUBE VIDEOS
