TBH I know I've mentioned monetization in virtually every post, but it's not actually my endgame here. I don't expect that I'll ever earn much off my channel, especially with the direction Youtube is heading. I did want to monetize, however, because why the hell not? There's ads on every damn thing out there, and a lot of gamers who would actually care about ads interrupting content already use adblockers/noscript plugins.
That said, I wouldn't mind making money off the content. I'm not going to pretend that it's not a horrible thing to gain revenue from doing something I already enjoy, especially when I put a decent amount of effort into producing the material.
I know the legal hurdles, and I know those hurdles will become steeper as Youtube continues to settle with labels, megacorps, and businesses at the behest of interest groups. I do have to admit part of the attraction was seeing just how quickly I would get smacked with ContentID claims.
It took two videos. My first was content created entirely by myself (with music created by a friend) aside from the game itself. That one was fine, no problem at all. I monetized that one to test the waters
The second video was another test. I did a Let's Play of Burial Under Sea DLC and didn't turn off background music, but I didn't monetize. Slapped with copyright claim immediately from what likely amounted to a brief selection of background music. I wasn't completely surprised, but I was a bit taken aback that a channel from a guy with less than 300 views, on a video that wasn't monetized got flagged and actually claimed. I immediately took it down, of course, but it really does confound me how I got hit when so many other non-partner channels managed to stick up Let's Plays of essentially the exact same content, running ads, and not getting hit. Weird. Maybe it was just a fluke, or some sort of error? No idea.
I appreciate all the suggestions, though. I used to stream all the time, but as I said before Twitch kind of lost me because of my inability to get creative with editing and the lack of control over the end product. There's also the fact that I get a rather nasty performance drop running OBS and Dxtory at the same time. I know that there's support for using Dxtory to stream, but I've been a lazy ass about it. I suppose I'll have to work that out if I want to grow my channel.
The channel is here, if anyone cares to have a look. Would love suggestions if you guys think the channel artwork or video quality looks particularly crappy.
JendrykGaming