You should see this short video from Davie504 on #YouTube’s sad treatment of content creators, the people who actually pay their bills.

tl;dr: Davie504 got a copyright strike (i.e. a successful copyright claim) for performing Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata, a piece that has been in the public domain for literally centuries. The copyright claim was made by some no-name troll. Three strikes within three months, and his channel will be disabled.

Creating content for YouTube seems to have been enshittified so much that I can’t imagine advising anyone to invest any time or energy into it. YouTube seems to empower copyright trolls. Their algorithm seems to prefer addictiveness to quality, and it changes often. I cannot imagine a smaller channel bearing this kind of business risk up front.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q5L0fycpQZI

PS: Yes I know advertisers pay their bills. But without content creators, advertisers won’t have any reason to send YouTube money.