I now have a YouTube Channel, although I haven’t publicised this yet. I’ve published the first three videos on a playlist called Asset Management. The audience that may be reading this article is not likely to appreciate the content of the videos as they are very much related to my Maximo work, and if you are not into Maximo or Enterprise Asset Management, then you are likely to find it all a bit obscure. Nevertheless, you can link to it from here Maximo Secrets YouTube Channel

I need to be on 100 subscribers and have passed other stipulations before I can apply for a custom URL, currently it is a 24-character string of random letters, numbers and special characters that has no chance of being remembered (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCSNw7i88pAowiIimV_plLfg).

There is much still to do on the YouTube site; finish the banner, add video thumbnails, add subtitles and/or captions, work on the video end screens so that there can be “call to action” links, create a trailer, etc. Plenty to do and during the week hopefully some of these will have been knocked off the list.

I am aiming to start the publicity for the YouTube Channel and accompanying Podcast on 1st August, and by then I want to have included a further two videos. There is a big Maximo conference on 8-11th August in Austin, and so having both of these launched beforehand seems like a good idea.

At the beginning of the week, I had a breakthrough on the music front for the intro, outro, and sections of the video, and it does look as if I can use the same music for the podcast episodes. This is great because in the series of podcast episodes and videos that I have planned there will be several playlists, with about 12-15 episodes per playlist. My aim was to have the same music for the episodes in each playlist, then change the music for the next. It does look as if the YouTube Studio music can be used in non-video form, and it also does look as if I can use the music elsewhere (not on YouTube), although I will spend time checking, and double-checking, and triple-checking this.

Anyway, this was not the breakthrough I was referring to, although that was a significant point in its own right. I naively thought that if I found an artist that I liked that I would like all the music they produced, not so. As I spent hours on other websites, I came to the conclusion that you might like one or two tracks, but the beat or feeling of others may not be what you want for the podcast or video. Therefore, if you were to have a monthly subscription somewhere, then you had better be pretty certain that there were plenty of artists with at least a couple of tracks that you liked. Well, I have found that this takes hours of listening, and without making notes along the way you are no better off.

So, the breakthrough was going back to the artist of the music I was using for my first videos – TrackTribe. What I found was that randomly selecting from their ten playlists, the vast majority I liked, and some I really liked, and this is from such a wide range of genre, many of which were new to me, or just a term where I had no idea what the sound would be like. It was an amazing find. I also found that there were other artists on YouTube Studio that I liked and none of these require attribution. Quite a breakthrough moment, settling on one artist, with potential for others, and with no chance of the videos being taken down by YouTube for contravening copyright rules.

During the week I completed the second and third videos and added subtitles to all of them, and I have prepared the Keynote slides for the fourth video. I won’t say I have added the captions yet. Captions, Subtitles, Transcripts they are all the same things aren’t they – No they are not. Transcripts is the raw text of what has been said, which you can load from an RTF file into YouTube Studio, which probably also makes it downloadable and searchable. Subtitles aligns the transcript words with the spoken word and can be shown at the bottom of the video obscuring other elements, normally me as the presenter. I understand a lot of students especially students where English is a second language use subtitles when watching YouTube. Captions is adding to the subtitles, an explanation of sound elements on the video, which is used by the hard of hearing. So, next week I will add the captions, I think in square brackets. You can do all of this, and easily in YouTube Studio including using the translation service to have your subtitles translated to other languages, although I won’t be going that far.

The video thumbnails are rectangular, and so the podcast episode artwork, which is square, does not work. In the end I opted for an adaption of the opening title slide with the Maximo Secrets logo in one corner and the podcast episode artwork in the other corner above it. It is perhaps a bit busy, but it will do for now. I wanted to use the podcast episode artwork, because I want to find a way of linking between each video and the Maximo Bite Size post for which the artwork is the Featured Image. These posts are on the Maximo Secrets website, and at the bottom of each post is where there are links to other related articles, often detailed descriptions of a “How To” nature, on the elements discussed in the video.

The double and triple checking that I did during the week and at the weekend on whether the TrackTribe music found on YouTube Studio could be used on my podcast lead me round and round in circles and on Friday I emailed TrackTribe.

I have no worries about using their music for the videos as in YouTube Studio this makes it all clear and whether attribution is required or not. If attribution is required, then it even gives you the text to include in your video description. The videos I loaded to YouTube automatically added the attribution, which was great, I wanted to provide attribution, but also worrying, that if I did use the music elsewhere, then perhaps I would be breaking the rules. It said that attribution was not required, so why did YouTube add the attribution automatically? Was I wrong to be worried about this?

I couldn’t find anywhere which explained whether YouTube Studio Audio Library music could be used elsewhere outside of YouTube. What is confusing is that there is an Audio Library channel on YouTube which I don’t think is the same thing as I couldn’t find TrackTribe or some of their tracks on this. But when you use Google the most often found answer to the question either comes from another company peddling their own set of “free music” or “subscription music”, or it links back to the Audio Library channel, but rarely the YouTube Studio – Audio Library.

As an example, the site from Social Pilot https://www.socialpilot.co/youtube-marketing/youtube-audio-library talks about the YouTube Studio Audio Library and then goes on to talk about the limitations in its use, but this is coming from the YouTube Audio Library channel, which I have doubts is the same thing.

When I went on to the TrackTribe channel on YouTube, the About – Description says “We make copyright free music for video creators. Founded by life-long friends and guided by the principles of collaboration, innovation, and charity, TrackTribe is owned and controlled by a collective of artists. We are 100% independent and dedicated to giving back to our global community through what connects each of us to each other – music.”. Fantastic, copyright free, this should let me use their music elsewhere.

If you then look at their play lists a lot of the playlist descriptions says, “Copyright free music for your video needs.” Why use the term video!? This still doesn’t answer the question can I use it outside of YouTube as a video, and can I use it on an audio podcast? https://www.youtube.com/c/TrackTribeMusic/featured

I’ve spent hours on this going round and round in circles. I have concluded that if TrackTribe want a music track to be used on a video then they are probably happy with the music track being used on an audio podcast, they use the term “Copyright free music”, and they are being charitable in their endeavours, and I honestly believe that.

The other consideration I am using is that a lot of “free” music is covered by a Creative Commons license, for which there are some rules, but for the rules that affect me, it basically boils down to giving attribution – which is what I have wanted to do all along, if someone uses my material on Maximo Secrets, I want them to say who the author was or where they found the article, my website.

So, that made me start to think, how do I give attribution on a video or a podcast? With YouTube remember it is given automatically, but if I wanted to add the video elsewhere, for example on my Maximo Secrets website, where do I do this, on the same post page? And what if the video was placed on a site for which I have less control, for example a website at IBM? Perhaps, it is safer to embed the attribution in the last part of the video. Similarly, I had the same question for the podcast, attribution on the post, or the post’s excerpt which goes through to Apple Podcasts, and I presume other platforms, or embed the attribution in the spoken word?

I came across the Creative Commons wiki and here they do talk about audio mediums where providing a link is not possible and they suggest embedding it in the narration, which is what I now aim to do. But I have asked the podcasting community at WordPress for their expert advice. https://wiki.creativecommons.org/wiki/Best_practices_for_attribution#Attribution_in_specific_media

I am going to publish this article early today; it is Sunday afternoon, I’ve done nothing today but track around the world-wide-web trying to get an answer on the attribution questions and I have not received an answer from TrackTribe, not yet anyway. Posting this early, will put a line under the topic at least for this week, to be honest I am fed-up with the whole subject enough to make me think, I’ll not bother with music at all for the podcast, but I know I probably won’t do that.

I’ve spent so much time on the music attribution this week that other items have slipped, but I shouldn’t beat myself up about this, as I have made good progress.

The objectives for week 30 will now be:

• Catch up on the recent missing transcripts for The Diary of a Digital Nobody, I think there are now four weeks missing (and five from earlier in the year)!
• Add the fourth and fifth videos to YouTube and add subtitles and captions for all of them. The new videos will use the Lavalier microphone.
• Investigate End Screen and Cards settings on YouTube.
• Add music to the three Maximo Bite Size podcasts including the attribution.
• Create the podcast episodes for a further two weeks of both The Diary of a Digital Nobody and Maximo Bite Size.
• Keep searching for the background to the YouTube banner.
• Write the transcript for both the podcast and YouTube trailers.