Hi all! Just had this random revelation: if you search youtube for “harmonica” and in the sorting select the most recently uploaded ones, you’ll see tons of channels with people playing harmonicas, most getting almost zero views. Now, before everyone jumps in, I get that “fail” is a strong word, since many just use it to show off their skills to the people they know ( I, for instance, make all my harmonica stuff “unlisted” since it’s just for this forum). But back to my point, aside from the 10 or so popular channels, most get almost no views. Even great channels, some with 100+ videos of tutorials with tabs have several thousand subscribers at most. And here’s the simple yet obvious reason: No one who isn’t learning the harmonica (or thinking about learning the harmonica) is searching for “harmonica” videos, in the same way I doubt anyone is actively seeking out ocarina videos (it’s a real thing, not just from the legend of zelda). So what’s my “solution?” Simple. If you already make vlogs on youtube, you could “add it in” as transitions or near the end, like a travel blog where at the end of an adventure you play the harmonica. Or something else, just don’t make it a “I play the harmonica in my room” channel if you want people to actually watch it. [End of random thought I had late at night]
Yes I agree I made one video which was a review of two tremolo harmonicas. I’ve just looked this evening, 30,000 views in 9 years. Maybe reviews is as good a route to go as any? Linked below:
There’s many reasons.
The big one is the way YouTube does their search results. You simply can’t find things anymore. You get shown basically the same videos over and over. So only the video that it thinks you’ll click get shown. This spikes popular videos, and makes it impossible to see new stuff unless you were hunting a specific video.
Many YouTubers comment about this, about how you just can’t get the hits like you used to. Even full timers. Getting the kind of hits that used to be common is now a full time job. The platform rewards people who continuously crank out content, and penalizes those who don’t.
Then consider that there are world class players, true professionals, that can’t get view counts. I’m talking tip top performers. It is not a meritocracy, and I’m often surprised that top players don’t get much traction.
Additionally, I think we hit saturation point long ago. Being online isn’t really very interesting or exciting anymore. It’s just a place where you can do certain kinds of stuff. So people don’t seek things with passion as much.
I’m sure there are other reasons and things you can do. But the thing to remember: it’s a place to share videos. That’s it.