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Week 1 out of 8 of the acoustic cover songs: Perfect by Alice Cooper, the future of YouTube, an extra special LIVE performance video, Better Than The Book lyrics finished, new webpages + more!

18/1/2018

7 Comments

 
Hello everyone and hope you've had a great week whatever you've been up to. It's been cold here, with a lots of snow and sleet over the past few days (for England at least...), but I've been keeping super busy since the last post developing the website, working on Better Than The Book, and uploading the next 2 months of cover songs to YouTube (more on all that later). There's a lot to report this week, plus some extra special things that don't come around often to share, so let's get straight to it!

First of all this week, I'm excited to introduce the first of the eight acoustic covers I recorded as Christmas presents for people last year. This one is the first of the tracks for my parents, "Perfect" by Alice Cooper, a song sang back when we were living together. I hope you enjoy it, and tune in next week for some more Blink-182; an acoustic cover of "Aliens Exist". Happy listening!

While we're on the topic of YouTube videos, I'd unfortunately like to share something with you all that I received this week which, to put it lightly, pissed me off a great deal. After uploading videos to YouTube for over 7 years (and that's 159 videos as of recent), YouTube sent me a notice saying it will no longer be monetising my content. Why is this? Well as of their new standards, in order to keep my content monetized I must have over 1000 subscribers and over 4000 hours of viewed videos in the past 12 months, and if I haven't exceeded these standards by this time next month, I will no longer be eligible to make money from YouTube. Now being realistic, I know I'm not going to make megabucks from my videos, but the fact of the matter is, whether I receive my due pennies or not, YouTube will likely still be running ads on my videos and making money off them. Needless to say, I'm not the only person unhappy with these changes, and after last year's Adpocalypse which severely effected many of the people I work with, it really seems like YouTube mastered the art of how to disappoint the people which create content for its communities. I'm not sure what the future holds for YouTube, but I sure as heck hope that they realise soon the effect they're having on content creators, especially new ones. If you're reading, what are your thoughts on the matter? Do you agree with the changes or do you feel the same as me? 

Anyways, enough ranting, let's get back to the nicer topics at hand:

Secondly this week, I have an extra special treat to share with you all. A throwback to last summer, and it's a crime this hasn't been put up sooner, here's a video of my good friend Sam Brown and I playing an unrehearsed, spur of the moment "Don't Fear The Reaper" by Blue Oyster Cult during one of Sam's gigs at The Woolpack in Burgess Hill. It'd have been my first public performance in probably over 2 years, and Sam and I's first performance together in about 9 years! For those who don't know, Sam is pretty much a brother to me, a fantastic dude and friend since my early teens. We started our first band "Crow's Wing" together along with my twin brother Eamon, and another great friend Andrew Gelnar, Sam on bass and myself on guitar and vocals, and recorded and played gigs together until about 2008 when we parted ways for University. In 2007 I started a metal band Lupus Atrum as the lead vocalist and guitarist, and after my departure, Sam took the mic and rocked the vocals in my place. Later on in 2012, I took the place of Sam on bass in the pop-punk quartet Lights, Camera, Attraction! until my departure in 2015. Indeed we've had an intertwined musical path throughout the years and I hope it stays that way. Love you, bro, and it's always a pleasure to share the mic with you. We should definitely do this more often! (In case you don't know what I look like, I'm the long haired one playing guitar)

Next this week, some more awesome news from Better Than The Book. As of the weekend just passed, lyrics for all 10 songs on the new album are complete! Horray! Now just a little disclaimer: there is still a chance that some of the lyrics may be altered before the final recording, but it's at the stage where they're all fully fledged songs you could sing and play on the guitar without having to mumble that one verse where you don't know the words. Progress! The project flies have been cleared up too with only material for the new album in the folder and all the unused ideas moved to the ideas collection ready as riff fodder for the next album. Recording is still scheduled start next month, though before that I need to service my guitars, work out some of the parts in more detail and practice them, and generally prepare for what looks to be an exciting and high energy recording session this spring! Hope you're as pumped as I am and I look forward to sharing the journey with you as I go!

Finally for this post, the main thing I've been up to over the past 7 days has been working on the website, and again progress has been made as this week I'm happy to present to you the brand new and updated VIDEOS and GAMES sections of the JabunAudio portfolio! As well as that I've also completed behind the scenes the main Portfolio and Music pages too, though I'm waiting for some permissions on artwork on those before I can make them public. Hopefully I'll be able to share them next week, but we shall see! All that's left to do is the Services and Home pages so with any luck it shouldn't be long before the website is all finished and live. Hope you're liking the new design and please let me know if you spot any broken links or errors on the site in the mean time. Many thanks in advance for your help!

And that about wraps things up for this week! What's in store next week? Well there's the next cover song "Aliens Exist" by Blink-182 to look forward to, and hopefully the website will be complete or at least close to it by the next blog post. I'm away this weekend for my brother Eamon's graduation to Dr Standing though so there may be some delays over the next few days, but I'll do my best. Next on the audio projects list, the A P O T H E O S I S  final boss theme is on my plate to compose so I'll be starting on that as soon as the website is done, and as for what else is happening, I'll see where the wind takes me! Hope you have a great week whatever you're up to and thanks as always for supporting JabunAudio and my projects. See you next time, and take care.
7 Comments
Cyber link
22/1/2018 19:36:58

Sounds like a similar week. :) Cold, snowy, busy...

Regarding the YT situation, I thought this WAS the Adpocalypse. Gotta read up on earlier events, then... it really makes it a whole new ball game for newcomers to get to the elite fraction of the site now. Disappointing indeed. I feel the same as you, and considering I've been considering getting more active on YT, if only to make a few bucks... I'm feeling like with this going on maybe I'll ditch that idea. It's not so much the fact that I won't be earning anything though as much as the fact they'll be earning more off of ME, and as you say not giving anything back at all. I really don't like their tactics. Too impersonal. Too business-minded.

I AM hoping this will open up for other venues though, and give a chance for competing (more humble) video hosts to grow, and maybe some positive traffic to NG as well. They've always been giving as much as possible to the artist, no matter how little available... well, end of rant then. :P

Oh wow, a masterful Don't Fear The Reaper duet rendition out of nowhere! :D Great stuff! In video, too! This was just the kind of live/acoustic content I was pushing for earlier. Great to see/hear. Enjoyed the other cover too btw, and looking forward to next week especially!

The portfolio's growing! :D Grand news; work overall; looking forward to the next one!

Reply
Jabun
22/1/2018 22:09:50

Such is the way :D

Nah, the Adpocalypse was around April 2017, though IMO this is much worse. I agree with all your sentiments here. The only useful thing about YouTube at the moment to me is that it's effectively a free and unlimited video hosting service for my portfolio, but all the changes really suck. I think things started to go downhill and overall "businessy" after it merged with (or was it bought by?) Google. I guess these things happen when things get too big.

That would certainly be nice too, and agreed, I think Newgrounds has been nothing but great to its community in terms of support and valuing its contributors. Not to say that it hasn't got its own problems, but it feels like a much more honest and community rather than business driven website :)

Hehe, very glad you enjoyed the video and I did think of you when I put this up :D Happy to say there is more to come, so hope you enjoy the subsequent stuff! Happy to hear you liked the usual recorded covers too :D

Yup, still growing, and already there is much to share for next week's post. Looking forward to sharing it! Many thanks :D

Reply
Cyber link
22/1/2018 22:31:56

The very particular ways of these winter days! :D

That is true! If you want to get video material out there, and need a platform you can rely on to be around a long time, and remain free... at least, then there really is no other alternative quite like it. Not for all forms or content, anyway. Vimeo seems alright for more artsy stuff. Yeah, they did get worse as soon as Google took over, but it feels like it's only in the past two or three years it's REALLY been getting worse, and Google's owned the enterprise for something like a decade now, guess they might be trying to really turn things around and make things profitable now, somehow... I don't think these tactics will work as well as they think, but not sure what other reasons they could have there. Does seem to be the way!

Yupp, exactly that. :) Tom's put in so much time into that place it's incredible, not just tending to the admin aspects but posting comments on regular user posts, really interacting with the community, helping out... smaller communities really build stronger bonds that way, but do hope they get their finances back in check too. Seems pretty much all community-driven sites that aren't straight-up commercial are having a hard time with that right now.

Awesome to hear! :D Particularly cool since Don't Fear The Reaper was one of those old favorites I'd forgotten I had, pretty much, real surprise seeing that there! Totally overshadowed the other one when I skimmed the post, but both were GOOD. XD

All good!

Reply
Jabun
23/1/2018 11:28:28

Indeed! :D

True dat (Let's just hope YT doesn't start charging to have an account!). I didn't realise that Google has been pulling the YT strings for THAT long, though admittedly I agree that it's only in the few years that things have been going downhill significantly... I guess business strategies change, especially if a new person fills the management role.

Very true too. It's not like he's even taken a backseat in terms of being involved with the site, he's always at it helping people out as a user as well as an admin. Sounds like hard work for sure, but I certainly agree with all your comments.

Hehe :D Again, very happy you enjoyed them! I wonder which will win out this week (video vs audio cover)?

Reply
Cyber link
23/1/2018 12:44:57

Hope so. Yeah they've been pulling the strings since November 2006 apparently. Time flies! For sure.

And for sure!

Oh there's a video coming this week too! :D Interesting indeed, whatever it is it's going to be tough competition against Blink 182...

Reply
Cyber link
23/1/2018 12:45:40

I mean tough COMPETING against Blink 182. XD

Reply
Jabun
24/1/2018 11:02:35

Whoa!

There is indeed :D Hehe, I'll be interested to hear your preference. Hope you enjoy them!

Reply



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