i don't like that i'm constantly bitching about youtube metrics, either, but i wish they'd be more clear in documenting rejected hits. i ultimately remain convinced that their algorithms are broken, but i'm wondering if i'm being throttled in some way.

i've had 94 hits a day - exactly - for almost a week, now. that's one less than 95. or < 95.

i mean, i watched the hit count rocket to 301 from 133 over about 36 hours, from thursday night to friday afternoon. i was averaging close to five hits an hour - just on the track on the front page. that's quite a few hits when you think about it, about one every 12 minutes.

the number on the top track clearly increased by well over a hundred hits over the course of thursday. yet, only 40 of those were counted.

so, what was the problem with the other 60-80 hits, exactly? wrong country of origin? did they not watch long enough? were they using a proxy? tor? adblock?

the counter increased by close to 120. i could see up to a quarter of those (30) being bad hits. but 50-67% of them? it just strikes me as unlikely, and i again have to conclude bad programming....

the flip side of this is that it seems like i'm getting 250-300% more traffic than is being recorded, based on what i observed yesterday and how much of it youtube actually picked up. so, that's positive.

i guess that whatever's broken for me must be broken for everybody else, too.

in the end, the basic relationship of more hits ----> more views remains in tact.

but the numbers are not remotely accurate....

i just wish more of those hits were translating to bandcamp views, because that's the actual point of the exercise. well, sort of. if i end up with a youtube profile with 500,000 hits a year or two from now, i'm thinking that should generate distribution requests. but it would help a lot if i could say "x people actually bought something", and x>0.

it's going to be another full year before i can say "look, my introductory demos generated 20,000 hits, why don't we talk about distributing some of the newer stuff?" and that's really just about all that youtube has the potential to be useful for. for an established artist, it's absolutely useless...

i mean, i wouldn't even consider burning copies of these first two demos. they're only available as mp3 downloads for $6 (the first is a double) and $3, respectively. but i couldn't imagine anybody buying them unless they're fans of the later stuff. they're not very good, really.

what i'm trying to do is demonstrate i can build an audience. it's the whole emulating a natural process of the past thing...

that's why everything's ready to print.

(or in the process of being ready to print)

which reminds me: i'm expecting a nasty surprise in the mail soon, and should make some calls on monday.