Jeff Newelt, who wrote about the meeting in Heeb says: “Here’s a video of a deep sublime conversation between Dick Cavett and Al Jaffee about cartooning… in a limo!”
YouTube Now Offers Custom URLs To Fit Your Branding
YouTube is offering creators with 500 or more subscribers custom URLs. When you have a custom URL, you can give people a short, easy-to-remember web address to find your YouTube channel (like youtube.com/c/creatoracademy). The URL options you can select from are based on things like your display name, your YouTube username, any current vanity URLs that you have, or the name of your linked website. Sometimes, you may need to customize the URL by adding letters and numbers to make it unique to you.
Important: You can’t change your custom URL after you create it, so be sure you are comfortable with your choice before you finalize it.
Eligibility requirements
To get a custom URL for your channel, your account needs to be in good standing and meet a few other requirements:
- 500 or more subscribers
- Channels is at least 30 days old
- Channel has uploaded a photo for the channel icon
- Channel has uploaded channel art
You can also qualify for a custom URL by linking and verifying your official webpage with your channel or +Page.
Get a Custom URL for your channel
Once you’ve qualified for a custom URL, you’ll receive an email notification and a notification on your Creator Studio dashboard. To get your custom URL:
- Sign in to YouTube and navigate to the Creator Studio.
- Look for your “Get a new custom URL” notification and click in the included link
- You’ll be redirected to claim a custom URL.
- You’ll see the custom URL(s) you’ve been approved for. These cannot be changed. You may also need to add a few letters or numbers to make the URL unique to you.
- Click the box next to “I agree to the Terms of Service” then click Change URL in the bottom left corner.
- This URL will be linked to both your YouTube channel and your Google+ identity. Once your URL has been approved, you cannot request to change it. When you’re certain, click Confirm choice.
Change capitalization or accents of your custom URL
If you want to change the capitalization or accents/diacritics of your custom URL, follow these steps:
- Sign in to Google+. Place your cursor in the top left corner for the Google + main menu and then select the page or profile associated with your channel
- Click the About tab, and under Links > Google+ URL, click Edit.
- A box will appear allowing you to make edits to the formatting.
Remember, you can only change the capitalization and diacritics of the URL, not the URL itself.
Infographic: Everything You Wanted To Know About Band Aid
Band Aid’s “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” was written by Bob Geldof and Midge Ure in 1984 to raise money for relief of the 1983–85 famine in Ethiopia. The original version was produced by Midge Ure and released by Band Aid on November 28 1984. Geldof put together a group called Band Aid, consisting of 37 of the leading British and Irish musicians at the time.
The 1984 original became the biggest selling single in UK Singles Chart history, selling a million copies in the first week alone, and passing three million sales on the last day of 1984. It stayed at Number 1 for five weeks, becoming Christmas number one, and has sold 3.7 million copies domestically. Worldwide, the single had sold 11.8 million copies by 1989.
Following the release of “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” in December 1984 and record sales in aid of famine relief, Geldof then set his sights on staging a huge concert, 1985’s Live Aid, to raise further funds. The song was re-recorded in 1989 by Band Aid II and in 2004 by Band Aid 20, again raising funds for famine relief. The 2004 version of the song sold 1.17 million copies. The song was again re-recorded in 2014 by Band Aid 30, to raise funds for the 2014 Ebola crisis.
Check out the infographic marking the 30th anniversary of the original recording and illustrates the movers and shakers that made this monumental milestone in pop history possible.
OK GO’s New Album Will Be Available On DNA…Wait…What?
From Fast Company:
The band OK Go is known for its insanely creative, viral music videos, and now, they are pushing the bounds of creativity again by releasing their latest album, “Hungry Ghosts,” on DNA.
OK Go is working with Sri Kosuri, a UCLA biochemist, to translate their music so it can be stored in DNA and potentially sold to avid fans. Kosuri has previously translated a book into DNA and his work is focused on storing data biologically. “[DNA is] information,” Kosuri told the New Yorker. “Our bodies use it to code for life, but it could be anything.”
When music is encoded digitally, as with an MP3 file, it is translated into binary code (ones and zeros). To turn it into DNA, Kosuri will change the binary code into genetic code—using the A, G, T, and C bases that are DNA’s building blocks. Once the strain of DNA is created in an electrophoresis machine, a fan could buy a vial containing a few nanograms of DNA dissolved in water, comprising over a hundred thousand copies of the album.
“So, if we sell just one or two water droplets, we’ll have the highest-selling album of all time,” said lead singer Damian Kulash.
Hip hop veterans on the scene in the ’70s & ’80s
Members of GroovMekanex and the Black Messengers told KQED what it was like to be there in the beginning of hip hop in the Bay area, boom boxes and all.
Infographic: Spotify Gaining on YouTube’s Streaming Dominance
From Billboard:
The total volume of the on-demand streaming marketplace has increased by 50 percent, as tracked by Billboard, in the past year, from around 274 million streams a week in Nov. 2013 to roughly 413 million weekly streams in Nov. 2014. YouTube and Spotify are the clear leaders in the space, with roughly more than 91 percent of the total volume of on-demand streams in any given week coming from these two services. Over the past year, Spotify has begun to take market share from YouTube for the overall streaming volume of top tracks.
Keep in mind, this is not a market share, but rather a look at shares of top-charting songs. With the exception of the overall volume numbers, the breakdowns and increases are calculated just from the top 50 most-played songs in each period.
In this breakdown, Spotify grows in shares over the year, from 22 percent to 33 percent, while YouTube drops from 66 percent to 58 percent of the total share. Comparing the two time-based graphs, a big spike appears in August, from the week when the official music videos for “Shake It Off” and “Anaconda” were released. Generally, YouTube is much more prone to drastic spikes in activity as consumers rush to the platform for big video debuts (“Anaconda” currently holds the Vevo record for 19.6 million global views in 24 hours).
Kurt Cobain Documentary to Debut on HBO in 2015
From Billboard:
Director Brett Morgen’s long-gestating documentary on Kurt Cobain has found a home at HBO.
It is the first documentary to be made with the cooperation of Cobain’s family and will include never-before-seen home movies, recordings, artwork and photography, plus material from his personal archives, family archives and songbooks. The film features dozens of Nirvana songs and performances as well as previously unheard Cobain originals. Cobain committed suicide 20 years ago at the age of 27.
Cobain’s daughter with Courtney Love, Frances Bean Cobain, is an executive producer with Larry Mestel and David Byrnes.
Watch an Exclusive Behind-the-Scenes Clip of Bing’s & Bowie’s ‘Little Drummer Boy’
David Bowie made a guest appearance on Bing Crosby’s Christmas special in 1977. This excerpt from American Masters: Bing Crosby Rediscovered shares the behind-the-scenes story of the song “The Little Drummer Boy / Peace on Earth,” which was pivotal to Bowie’s participation. The full film premieres Tuesday, December 2 at 8 pm ET on PBS.
In Q3, Facebook Drove 4x More Traffic Than Pinterest
From Shareaholic:
With a $200 billion market cap and an active user base that rivals the entire population of China, Facebook has significant staying power.
For publishers, marketers and site owners, this is especially important because Facebook is the leading driver of social referrals to sites across the web. Also, surprisingly, over the last year, Pinterest has been giving Zuckerberg and company a run for their money as the #2 source of social referrals.
In the 3rd Quarter 2014 edition of the Shareaholic Social Media Traffic Report, we take a look at how much traffic each of the 8 most popular social networks sent publishers’ way. The data reveals “share of visits,” a percentage of overall traffic — direct traffic, social referrals, organic search, paid search, etc. — sites received, for Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, StumbleUpon, Reddit, Google Plus, YouTube, and LinkedIn.
This June, Facebook delivered nearly a quarter of the total visits sites around the web received. While its share of traffic has marginally shrunk since then, the ubiquitous social network still drives 4x more traffic than Pinterest.
Section I: Social Referrals Over Q3 2014
Our first chart observes “share of visits” for each social network over the months of June, July, August, and September 2014. The final column quantifies how much each social platform’s share has changed from June (end of Q2) through September (end of Q3).
Of the eight social networks tracked, only two — LinkedIn and Google Plus — drove a greater share of traffic at the end of Q3 than they did at the end of Q2. The other six each saw their share of traffic decrease slightly, between 1.03 – 0.01 percentage points.
Content Creators Flock to Facebook for Videos
From SocialBreakers:
This just in: social media marketers have done more than just walked away from using YouTube for video content – they have sprinted. And where have they gone? Straight out of the grasp of Google and into the outstretched arms of Facebook.
Socialbakers analyzed over 180,000 Facebook video posts across 20,000 Facebook pages – here’s what we found.
Back in 2012, marketers were not even considering alternative options for sharing video content on Facebook. The standard process was to create a video, publish it to YouTube and share it via Facebook. However, the recent trend is clearly showing that content marketers are directly uploading video content to Facebook, meaning that Facebook is retaining the traffic at the expense of YouTube.
