“They’re Special…and You Need to Respect That”
- Posted by mariteaux on February 16th, 2020 filed in Tunesmithing
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Yesterday’s post about Various Murky Basements had me running all over, scavenging links, assets, and even digging through a CD-R that would only work on Macs to put it together. In the process, I solved a mystery that’d perplexed me for well over a year now, and it’s kinda hilarious.
So, “Mind Left for Seattle”, as said, has a Mister Metokur sample in the track’s fadeout. It’s from his video on otherkin, more specifically, the bit where he’s riffing on someone wanting to eat raw meat. Because that’s what wolves do, quite literally. This embed skips right to said part:
Can you, uh…can you picture this? A, let’s say, 20-year-old morbidly obese man in a wolf costume drooling at the mouth as he stares at ground beef in the meat aisle of a store…as children run screaming because he’s furiously masturbating. Because that’s what wolves do. Don’t argue with me on this, I know about this, I’ve read enough tumblr to know this. They behead dogs…and they masturbate in the meat aisle at stores. It’s just part of what wolves naturally do. Stop being an ableist, you fucking shitlords, don’t judge them! They’re special…and you need to respect that.
Now, inexplicably, this track started to make me (relatively speaking) a ton of money in YouTube streaming, like $30-50 every month, and I couldn’t figure out why. I thought someone was maybe using my song somewhere in a video, and yet, I was never able to track anything down as RouteNote doesn’t tell you about people using your material. It wasn’t coming from my upload of the song, nor from the automated upload, both of which together don’t even have a three-digit view count. It wasn’t coming from Spotify earnings either.
Well, as I was peeking around for that mirror, I pop the description open and notice this:
Now, the original otherkin video got deleted when Jim nuked his entire channel, but the Wayback Machine doesn’t lie:
Yes, my sample lead to the original video getting Content ID matched, and thus getting me the entirety of the video’s ad revenue. Totally accidentally! I didn’t intend for this, nor did I know it was happening until long after my earnings dropped off.
As additional proof, here’s my earnings according to RouteNote showing a pretty much 100% dropoff in earnings after Jim nuked his channel in late August 2019.
Mystery solved, I suppose. Now, ostensibly, RouteNote screens for this stuff to prevent a fuckup on this level from happening, and yet, in all the voice samples I’ve used, I’ve only ever been prompted on one of them. Ironically, it was on “Kaden”, the one where I had “full clearance” to use it. The Homicide sample? Fine. The Honey Badger Radio samples? All good. This Metokur sample? Kosher.
(I’ve since already spent the $550 on phone bills, web hosting, and CDs. Easy come, easy go.)
