i've been aware for a while that people seem to be subscribing to the wrong feed. putting a like up on this page or subscribing to me on youtube indicates you're interested in the music - and i've certainly had a few people interested in the music, but not nearly that many, from what i can tell. my channel is an artist channel. if you want to follow my comments, you should be following me on google+, because that's where they get sent from.
so, what i think is happening is that people are liking my comments and subscribing to my artist feed, then interacting with the "wrong" content.
the reason it can be a tad offsetting for me is that it builds up false expectations. i'd like to think that uploading a video with 200 subscribers might mean at least 50 will watch it. but that number seems to be more like 10. i'm getting far more hits from random surfing...
so, i said i don't "get it". i do "get it". i perhaps should have said "i don't see the use of this subscribers thing, but...".
from my perspective, i'd probably argue they should consolidate the feed so that "subscribing" to deathtokoalas is a one-click operation that sends both comments and uploads to the feed. the user should then have the option to subscribe to comments, uploads or both - and i should get the metrics, so i can measure how much interest is tied into what.
as it is right now, i don't really have a clear understanding of how many of the 200 people are interested in reading my comments, are interested in listening to my music or are just subbing out of a sense of solidarity.
i do realize that it's weighted very heavily towards the comments, though, and that the result in most cases is just a dead feed, creating a dead sub.
it's especially confusing, considering that i comment on a lot of social issues. i'm not really that close to either, but i'm closer to deadmau5 than la dispute; most of my stuff is instrumental, so deadmau5 is a better comparison just on that basis alone. there's some possibility that a deadmau5 fan may get something in the feed and dig it. but, there's really little reason to think that the subs that come out of solidarity for a feminist statement or a geo-political analysis or an anarchist rant are going to translate into any kind of interest in the music - that solidarity could be coming from the world's biggest folk fan, or a hip-hop purist, or an older person that listens exclusively to "classical" music. having that all mixed up into a confused user base that doesn't seem to know what they want to subscribe to just creates a number that doesn't really have much meaning, in the context of what i'm creating and what i'm doing to promote it.