https://www.facebook.com/notes/atmospheric-black-metal-albums/atmospheric-black-metal-albums-channel-deleted-official-statement/2101579606722751/

It's horrible. I have 14 liked videos that are now deleted and I don't remember their names through which I would be able to find bands.

New channel is up: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCDLkzWN1rHY4eYkGnVruHVw/featured.

If you don't remember them, they might even been not as good as you thought

I wanted to hear them from start to finish in order to make a final decision (to download or not). Alrakis' new album is the only one that resurfaced from my memory, it's good. I also love their previous album.

Certainly interesting reading. I had no idea that YouTube worked this way (i.e. that copyright holders, i.e. labels and bands, can claim ownership over aspects of an uploader's video without the uploader having any say in it, and choose to run ads). The music industry sure got weird quick!

Anyway, I'm in no position to say whether this channel did more harm than good in terms of helping out musicians, but I think it would be a huge stretch to claim that it didn't do a lot to put more music into more people's ears.

Uploading anything that is not 100% yours to YouTube can result in a copyright strike, forced monetization, takedown, or even legal action, and he was aware of this from day one. If someone requests a takedown and you don't comply asap, there are consequences. This is DMCA 101 and this guy wasn't organized or intelligent enough to run his channel properly. Some of the most frustrating things in the world are ignorance and false victimhood, and he's guilty of both.

Spend an hour browsing tags on Bandcamp and you can find almost all of this music, legally, and directly support the bands. I have zero sympathy for people who rely on third party YouTube channels to tell them what they should like instead of putting in an ounce of legwork looking for music they claim to love. If you like music, support the bands directly. If you can't afford to, that's fine, but don't complain when an illegal rip is removed and you couldn't even be bothered to write down the name of the band in the first place.

While I was subscribed to him amongst other chanels I barely even "watched" a video of them. Just to browse my subscription box and risk an ear on anything that seems to be interesting. I have dozens of ways to discover music, so I don't rely on stuff like that, but it's still pretty usefull, even though I prefer Black Metal Promotion since that guy at least knows what he's doing and got enough reputation in the scene to stream Marduk and Immortal on behalf of the labels.

I'm more the "gravedigger" type of music listener, though.

Oh sure, YouTube has a lot of issues, not just with music. As someone who subscribes to a lot of outspoken, critical people I've seen my fair share of issues.

People can not only claim ownership, but they can also "strike" a channel for spam, pornography, malevolence, but more importantly copyright infringement. In theory this is a good thing; if a hopelessly small creator is victim to a larger channel it's great that such securities are in place. However, sometimes the strikes are uncalled for, such as a game developer using it to take down negative criticism towards his game, and unfortunately YouTube (their algorithm, or their staff, whoever it is) isn't good at discerning what's copyright infringement and what's fair use, so unfair strikes get through pretty easily.

Content creators can contest these claims, but it's little more then asking YouTube to double-check and praying to whatever God they believe in... this doesn't work either. If you get a response against you, there will be no way to further contest or explain WHY you fall under "fair use" instead of "copyright infringement".

Many of these incidents have popped up before but I can only think of a couple off the top of my head: TotalBiscuit's review of the terrible game Day One: Garry's Incident, and I Hate Everything's review of Cool Cat Saves the Kids. IHE's channel was eventually removed for an unknown reason, supposedly a video mistaken as "hate speech", and he couldn't contest the account termination. Luckily many popular YouTubers flung to his side and YouTube realized they had messed up.

Oh, and he talked a lot about demonetization, but some YouTubers have been scared because demonetization is also automatically set to anyone that appears to be not family-friendly, meaning any video with swear words, and even anything with words like "kill" in the title, no MATTER the context are instantly struck down via algorithm. A negative example of this is an animator/storyteller called "shgurr" who wanted to talk about the time she was accidentally abducted by her neighbor and thought she was being kidnapped, but in fear of the algorithm she called her video "Surprise Halloween Adoption" (her video on blood drives was demonitized for having the word "blood" in it).

For many, YouTube is a full-time job, but if your videos don't align with what YouTube thinks is family friendly, either you'll be demonetized or the algorithm won't even feature your videos on "suggested". There's a conspiracy theory that YouTuber LeafyIsHere was specifically avoided by the algorithm on purpose so that his channel would decline in popularity (he subjected his videos to what was essentially bullying children, but deflected any strikes under the argument that "it counts as satire"). But when YouTube is looking to make up most of their content with James Corden, Ellen De'Generes, Jake Paul, Shane Dawson, etc., why would they WANT to feature YouTuber's like ThuleanPerspective on their site? And it sucks, because sometimes YouTubers can put weeks and weeks of work into making quality videos and not even break minimum wage. And the demonitization and lack of protection against copyright strikes just makes it harder and scarier.

Sorry, that was a long rant.

tl;dr content creators can easily get screwed over by false copyright claims and demonitization for stupid things, making YouTube an unstable job

This guy is not a content creator, so none of what you said applies here. Literally nothing he ever uploaded was created by him. He was uploading music created and copyrighted by others, and that violates US and EU law. You can complain about YouTube's business model and all you want but that is completely unrelated discussion.

It will be impossible to make a distinction between YouTube and TV in the future. Big channels on YT will have their ''shows'' and the rest will sink/become invisible if they don't find a retreat on other platforms.

I was not a subscriber because 'ABM albums' was putting too much low-to-medium quality music. Instead I would go through some videos from time to time in order to find something valuable. Usually other viewers "filter" music and give more views to better albums. I remember listening to Mgła's Exercise in futility when it had below 50.000 views and now it has almost 3 millions. (Although it's not on ABM channel.)

I'm glad that I don't use Youtube as a primary listening platform, otherwise I would have hundreds of liked videos deleted if channels went down.

Pretty sure that the views he was generating for the bands for free is something in return. I doubt he was doing this to fuck over the bands rather than help them reach more viewers thus generate more buys, but whatever

In his post, he continually mentioned how he sought permission from the labels and bands before uploading videos and/or music.
If this is the case, and in this instance, with Pest Productions, what was the guy from Pest's issue?

I didn't fine tooth comb all the youtube examples he posted and i'm no lawyer by any means, but if he had permission from the labels and bands to post stuff, then he got railroaded by some vindictive little 'pest'....If youtube's guidelines were that much more strict, then it's on him for covering his bases and for disclosing to all the parties involved with the stuff he uploaded about the monetization process going forth.....

What Pest productions did is legal, but possibly not legitimate, considering the agreements they had with uploader who would've deleted the remaining videos if they'd asked him. Instead, Pest was very strict and silent for some reason. It seems to me like they were led by anger and sense of betrayal for some reason. Who knows?

Pest can do literally whatever they want with their content, no matter how or where it is hosted, or what agreements were previously in place. Emails and Facebook messages are not legally binding contracts, and no legitimate company is going to side with a kid with screenshots over a record label formally declaring copyright infringement.

Than he should find the way to legalize this because the channel will be dead anytime someone gets mad. It's a slippery ground, especially when you depend on Youtube.

agreed. i doubt his permissions were any more than back and forth emails....

shitty considering how much work and time he put into it, but a hard lesson learned about business at the same time...

I didn't even notice the channel was gone. I subscribed to it years ago but rarely watched any of the content. Some decent stuff was posted here and there but I realized quickly that the majority of the music he was posting was bargain-bin basement black metal with no originality whatsoever. But it all had tons of likes, making me realize that some people will get excited over anything and everything.

On one hand it's great channels like that exist; they help spread the music around to people who maybe wouldn't have heard it otherwise. But if the people listening and liking the music don't go and buy the music or support the band in anyway, then that's a real problem. Plus it helps keep people lazy, bringing new music right to them without them having to dig around at all.

As someone who has various music from various projects on various channels, ranging from 5k views to over 200k views, the return on those views is abysmal to non-existant. Most people just hit play on Youtube and never bother to look for links, much less even care about going to their bandcamp or anything like that. The only advantage you'd get out of that is if you can monetize the views yourself.

Stoned Meadow of Doom next please.

Could be, but I was saying that from my experience with the channel. I am in no way a black metal fan, but I found a few bands with the help of the channel. I realise that I could be a minority and that I could be wrong, but the way I see it, is that it did more good than bad, especially for casual fans like me who would have no idea that a given bm band has released an album

I must be real old at 38, because this concept is completely lost on me. Get a real fucking job (not you specifically, obviously, just old guy shouting into the ether).





Bingo.



Of anyone on this board, this guy knows.

Alright, enough curmudgeonly grumbling from me.

Yeah I know what you mean, I'm not trying to begrudge you of your personal experience as a fan. I am very happy to know you found some bands from his channel but I would be even happier to know if you bought any of their music (assuming you liked them). The sad reality is that this is a very rare occurrence when it comes to Youtube channels uploading music of other bands, which leads me to my real, salient point: musical artists should control their own content and put it on Youtube themselves to reap the full benefits of having their material streamed by others. At the very least, if you can gain some traction and a decent following, you will start to see a return on those streams. Not to mention, you can control how the content is presented (such as front-loading embedded links on the videos themselves, something many "fan" channels don't even think to do) and do it in such a way that maximizes that platform's value to you as an artist.

I've personally given out DMCA take downs of my material on other channels and websites simply due to the fact that they don't even have the courtesy to reach out to me first to ask if they can upload it. There are some channels who actually did reach out to me, and guess what? I let them upload it. A lot of times it's about respect.

Well, you obviously never did what they did. They are sound engineer, video editor, visiul effects, actor, director, PR manager, graphics artist and many more, often combined in one person. That's a freaking fulltime job if you're actually putting effort into it like Buttered Side Down (VFX), Epic Rap Battles Of History (music videos) or all those other great yt-artists and if you're not some stupid dude vocally masturbating at the camera like Logan Paul or shit.

As soon as money gets involved, you got to make sure you know what you are doing. This guy didn't, and it bit him in the ass.

The one thing I find highly suspect is how something like Violet Cold got like a million+ views. For comparison, Black Metal Promotion's upload of TRoB's Exuvia barely has 150k views. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MOiy9Mf-cWA

it's a good thing that good black metal is ridiculously easy to find regardless.

Why not both? I search through Bandcamp, forums, etc. for quality music recommendation and such, but it's nice to put a YouTube music channel on autoplay on the Roku downstairs while cooking/cleaning and just passively listen and not be tied to actively sitting at the computer 100% dialed into music exploration mode, ya know? This is particularly useful with genres like Atmoblack since it's swarmed with one-man-band releases that tend to be incredibly hit or miss. If something catches my ear I'll pause it to catch the band name and then dig in later on Bandcamp, otherwise they're forgettable and you do nothing. Having this kind of genre curated in an easily accessed format is an incredibly useful service.



My understanding is Pest took issue with him monetizing videos from other labels while the channel owner's agreement with them was for him not to monetize their videos. Last I heard Pest has since retracted their claim but YouTube is the one not backing down at this point. My overall guess is there are multiple people at Pest getting their wires crossed and acting independently of one another. Seems even more likely with the whole situation:

-Pest gets upset even though he kept their agreement
-Channel owner removed the videos at their request but asked for them to let him know if he missed any (turned out he got most but missed ~5)
-Pest replies saying they will let him know if they see any videos from their label he missed removing.
-Rather than let him know he's reported to YouTube despite the prior amicable interaction.

Something seems off with Pest. Either way though, the channel owner shouldn't have been taking 'donations' from the bands/labels and if anything should have made a Patreon and had the listeners donate as to not raise any suspicions of 'pay to play' whether true or not.

boohoo. nothing of value was lost.

Shame. I discovered some great stuff through this channel.

If channels like this valued underground music as much as they say they do, they'd be coaching bands on how to make the most of YouTube instead of profiting off us.

I had the same problem. I was waiting until a better time in my life to enjoy them but they were gone and it is hard to remember the titles. I'd put many interesting titles or cover art in my favourites for the right time.

But I found by scouring related channels I was able to get pretty much all the ones I really wanted back and if there were some I missed, I don't remember them and replaced them with equally intriguing titles.

Violet Cold has gotten pretty dang popular recently. I hardly see any discussion of them on this board, but on other places they seem to have a pretty big following. Their album from last year got a lot of good reviews and has a ton of supporters on Bandcamp, and they have over 50% more likes on facebook than Beverast.

totally get why they took it down but it's still a bummer. used to love to put this channel on while laying in bed trying to get to sleep.

Still suspect to see that their stuff has just as many views as one by the black metal pop stars behemoth while having 1.5% of Behemoth's fanbase on facebook. Even Behemoth's Webshop got 10k more likes than they got. And that is the most liked page of all their social media. Might be the "they are shit, you gotta check them out" phenomenon, or the views are bought. Anyways....

Wrong or right, its advertising for a band. A channel of this size is definitely advertising for their label. Complaining about it and getting it closed down in the long run will be a big mistake.

Sorry, but this is the same tired justification that people use to take advantage of artists since time immemorial.

"Just do it for the exposure! It will be good for you."

No.

For the super big bands, it seems they cap out at a certain point on Youtube (unless it's an official single), probably because they tend to get taken down.

I'm just saying I can see the Violet Cold video going semi-viral, as it got a lot of hype, much like that Batushka album from a few years ago (which is sitting at well over a million views on YT iirc).

Then bands/labels should get together and do it for themselves rather than have someone outside take advantage. The key being a centralized, sub-genre curated sampling experience. Bandcamp is great if you want to actively look for music, but don't underestimate the power of YouTube autoplay as it can expose potential buyers to underground music in a more radio-like format. Liking underground music isn't necessarily synonymous with enjoying actively digging through forums and Bandcamp pages all the time.

While it's true that promotion and exposure can help a band make more profit by becoming more well known, in the end, it's their music, and if they feel like they're being taken advantage of, they have every right to shut down whatever streaming/illegal distribution is going on.

That, and where's the evidence that these channels drive sales in any meaningful fashion? As evidenced by some posters in this very thread, people either rewatch the same video or illegally download. Sure, some people do buy after sampling on YT-as other have admitted in this thread as well-but whats the correlation between a million views on YT and how much product is being sold? I'd guess minimal at best.

I don't buy that channels like this exist for altruistic purposes one bit. They're leeching off of the work of others for either notability/notoriety/fame (don't think for one second that the channel owner in question here doesn't love the fact that they got a plaque from YT) or monetization.

And calling it a "full time job" because of time spent on software mastery? Laughable. I spend a lot of tedious hours on my hobbies too, but I don't have this sense of entitlement (the most key issue in the entire thread discussion) for recognition or money. Fuck off with that.

Flipping burgers is a far more honest and respectable profession.

The people who didn't want to buy it in the first place, won't buy it now, sure, and those who don't want to pay for it, won't pay for it now. But the more people know it, the more people who didn't knew it before will listen to it, and some new listeners might stick to is and actually pay for it. The number of illegal downloads is actually declining since there are so many cheap legal download/streaming options.



Just because you don't have the will or the skill to make it become your main income generator, doesn't mean they can't do that.