Er, make that Bootleg Tube. OK: YOUTUBE.
You're surfing (flexing, schmoozing, burglarizing) to find a favorite song you're too cheap to buy. But ten or twenty precious seconds are lost as you rummage through rubbish.
There's blurry cover versions done by dubious amateurs in their own homes. For some reason, they sit at a keyboard or strum a guitar, obviously STARING AT THE LYRICS, singing badly, playing badly, but they think YOU would like to watch.
Some are psycho.
Most of these YouTube mice could scare roaches.
A few, though, have been told they're PRETTY ENOUGH TO BE THE NEXT TAYLOR SWIFT.
Oops. Yeah, maybe the girl isn't bad looking, but after she starts singing, you hit MUTE.
And that's not all you want to HIT.
I mean that in a friendly, pushy, trollish, Trumpish way, of course. Since she's attractive and clueless, you figure you can hit on her by leaving a "nice" comment. Chicks dig a compliment, like: "you sing SOOOOOOOO beautifully. Really. I'm on Facebook and Twitter. I am rich, have connections in the music industry, and I'm not too old for you."
If you have a pointed head, just point the camcorder down a bit.
If you don't know how to work a camcorder too well and can't get the lighting right, well, maybe that's a good thing. See the unsightly guy below.
Something about YouTube draws the dregs of the world. This is their soap box. Or their toilet. They want to be discovered, and they should be; by the men in the white jackets.
Some people are just delusional egomaniacs.
WHY would they think YOU have nothing better to do than hear them plod their sticky, gecko-like fingers along the keys, barely hitting the right notes and singing in a thin, off-key voice? Especially when it's some song that you absolutely HATE?
Make sure your idiots sign up with a valid credit card. Make sure that if somebody RED FLAGS the video, you tell the idiot, "This will be taken down unless you can show us PROOF UNDER PENALTY OF PERJURY that this is YOUR ORIGINAL WORK."
"If it's a cover version, SHOW US PROOF IT IS AUTHORIZED."
I just released my new album, HA HA HALLOWEEN and it's all originals. I discovered that my record label and all the suspects distributing my album (iTunes, Spotify, etc. etc.) required AUTHORIZATION for cover versions.
No problem about covering anybody's song, BUT the songwriter and publisher MUST KNOW. That's just a courtesy, even if the royalties are gonna be a very small hill of beans.
I was told, "You will have to go to the Harry Fox Agency and fill out forms, and let them know you are using the work, and submit records annually to show how many copies were sold and what their royalty is..." Huh?
YEAH. There's even such a thing as performance fees. Play a song in public, even free, and the writer and publisher STILL get paid.
On GooTube, it would be a good idea to enforce this law, if only to cut down on the amount of clutter on the site. It's pathetic enough that most every artist now is willing to settle for chump change on GooTube. In fact, they don't even GET chump change until a certain amount of "hits" are reached. You ain't seeing a nickel, literally, if your fantastic song only gets a thousand plays. Or is it five thousand.
Just as I can't do a cover version on an album unless I jump through a lot of hoops, GooTube singers should NOT be covering songs and torturing people (most of this stuff is barely worth one "so bad it's good" chuckle). If somebody is out of work and has nothing better to do than cover a song EVERY DAY, even if almost none of them are viewed beyond a very, very SMALL circle of friends, THAT person should do something else.
GooTube would be doing a public service in telling some of these people, "Nope, you can't cover peoples' songs without payment. Go work in a soup kitchen. Read to the blind. Or just go F- yourself."
As Bob Dylan sang it (and I can quote him as long as I'm only using a phrase), "Too much of nothing" is NOT a good idea.
This is TOO MUCH OF NOTHING
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