I'm far more interested in embeddable mp3 files. Not podcasts but similar to Wordpress - upload 1 or more mp3 files and get a player for each. I recently wanted to show a song I'd written from the first phone demo (voice recorder), a 2nd version/iteration - also recorded on the voice recorder, and then finally a 3rd, more complete version recorded in my DAW half a year later.
I wanted 3 distinct players for each version. Instead I created a video for each, uploaded them unlisted to youtube, and then embedded them. Not really the solution I want.
As for video: I could see exclusive videos for paid subscribers only. I don't want to use an unlisted video on YouTube. I suppose I could use Vimeo's paid, embed on a domain feature. But that means one more platform to publish on a platform I'm already on.
I love how Substack is innovating and listening to what its writers want, but video troubles me. It's a huge resource hog and the copyright violations alone could lead to huge support headaches. But then there are all the issues you raise. Honestly, I thought video would be too messy for Substack to deal with (especially since it's a platform for writers first and foremost) but we'll have to see. Hopefully it doesn't become a 1st Amendment sh*t show.
The thing is, Disney/Sony etc are really big on DMCA challenges when people use music or videos on YouTube that they claim violates copyright. Speaking as someone who used to deal with DMCA claims elsewhere, dealing JUST with that could consume a healthy-sized support team's time. And that's before all of the other TOS complaints that will likely surface. But again, we'll see.
Great points, Jackie! I love the way Substack is writerly and writing-focused. That has been a surprise and I hope the Substack team will go forward with their mission and focus in mind. Thanks for opening up this discussion, Scott!
There seems to be three separate issues with video - content censorship, copyright, and privacy. None of these problems arrived with video, but they are all exacerbated and amplified by video. I'm not sure Substack is big enough (read well-staffed enough) to handle all three of these issues in all their many iterations.
For myself, I can see the appeal behind having a natively-embedded video; it's tempting to put more personal stuff behind the paywall. What I mean is, I think most of us are aware that Substack is a public-facing platform and so limit how much of ourselves we reveal. Being able to put a video behind the subscriber wall (presuming pad subscribers are a fraction of non-paying readers) might tempt people to reveal too much of themselves, which, in turn, raises the issue of privacy and accountability.
So, I can see the appeal, but I am apprehensive. I'll be using it sparingly and cautiously, if I use it at all, until I see how the trend lines are evolving. It might be a while.
There is nothing femme, queer, fat, disabled, POC, or international members have ever been able to do to keep vitriol out of a platform. They will flourish anywhere because it’s under the guise of honest discourse and really, platforms protect them while disproportionately silencing the above groups, just like in real life. As such, I’m going to do what I do as I’ve always done and curate my experience. Be blocked and blessed. May the mute be with you.
Well, this could be disastrous, and maybe I deserve a few calls of 'calm down, Josh' or 'this is how these things always go', but here goes:
Substack wants to introduce a video posting tool for Substackers, and I suspect this will be the death knell for its original purpose.
Hear me out on this first, please. I'm an author, a writer, a storyteller; the written word is the method with which I am both most familiar and most comfortable communicating with the world. Sure, yes, I make plenty of audiobook presentations for my Bitchute channel, and yes, these 'videos' get a much larger audience than do my written posts on Substack.
But I find doing them both taxing on my time and my psyche.
For creators like myself, Substack was a godsend, a viable method of sharing written material without going through the longstanding and insufferable gatekeepers that have always presented indie storytellers with little more than blockades to their endeavors. It was a return to the vitality of the written medium.
The introduction of audio/podcasts was in and of itself one hell of a shakeup, and that didn't happen too long ago. Yet already, because of audio options, a lot of Substack creators have pivoted from written material to audio.
And now a whole host of folks will come rushing to try and pivot to video. Folks in digital media have been pointing to video as the end-all be-all of online production; much as I enjoy Ian Crossling, his constant insistence on the superiority of video over text is irksome, because he argues that 'tone can't be conveyed in text format'.
Perhaps he never read any talented storytellers in his life. That, or he forgets that some folks treat comminicating in written form as a toss away format. My advise? Find someone who can text better, my good hippie.
Now, there's a very real possibility that I'm just being a bit of a Luddite here, sure, I'll cop to that as a potential explanation for my trepidation. But more likely, I think, is that I've seen what this is going to look like in 3 to 6 months already. I know very well what's likely going to happen.
Firstly, if you have subscribers signed up with a Gmail account, they're gone. You cannot count on them to stick around and watch your videos, because Google already hides your text and audio posts in Gmail users' 'Promotions' tabs. I'm personally dealing with this problem already, so what do you think the owners of YouTube will do to links to a platform that will now directly compete with that outlet? You'll be lucky if they don't get auto-categorized as Spam instead of just Promotions, the next step up the ladder of 'Ignore This Shit', which most of us do out of long habit.
They're counting on Gmail users not to bother checking, trust me.
Secondly, if the cost of hosting video catches up to Substack, or rather, WHEN it catches up, they're going to likely start requiring a larger cut of Substackers' subscription payments to cover those costs, whether they opt to use video or not. And I can almost guarantee that they won't allow Substack writers to offer video to their subscribers at the free level; Substack can't absorb the cost of video hosting like a giant such as Google/Alphabet can.
I don't want to leave Substack or cease my support of it, but more and more I am watching it leave behind its original mission statement, to be a place for independent writing to flourish. Between YouTube, Odysee, Bitchute and Rumble, don't we already have plenty of options for video?
I get the desire to have it all in one place, but isn't that centralization exactly what has turned Facebook and Twitter into garbage fires?
I don't think you're being paranoid. Maybe the problems won't be quite so bad. But I'd say it's always reasonable to prepare for both expected and unexpected consequences of changes to services on the internet.
All very interesting, Scott! Love that you are exploring the range of content on Substack. It'll be really intriguing to see how this impacts the journalism and writing space, in light of the excellent comments here. Will stay tuned. Thank you!
I'm far more interested in embeddable mp3 files. Not podcasts but similar to Wordpress - upload 1 or more mp3 files and get a player for each. I recently wanted to show a song I'd written from the first phone demo (voice recorder), a 2nd version/iteration - also recorded on the voice recorder, and then finally a 3rd, more complete version recorded in my DAW half a year later.
I wanted 3 distinct players for each version. Instead I created a video for each, uploaded them unlisted to youtube, and then embedded them. Not really the solution I want.
As for video: I could see exclusive videos for paid subscribers only. I don't want to use an unlisted video on YouTube. I suppose I could use Vimeo's paid, embed on a domain feature. But that means one more platform to publish on a platform I'm already on.
That would be my use case.
I love how Substack is innovating and listening to what its writers want, but video troubles me. It's a huge resource hog and the copyright violations alone could lead to huge support headaches. But then there are all the issues you raise. Honestly, I thought video would be too messy for Substack to deal with (especially since it's a platform for writers first and foremost) but we'll have to see. Hopefully it doesn't become a 1st Amendment sh*t show.
I was thinking about mentioning the copyright issue. But I figure it's basically the same problem whether it's on YouTube or Substack.
As for resource hogging, I think Substack has a video size limit. But it could still be a problem for some publishers and users.
The thing is, Disney/Sony etc are really big on DMCA challenges when people use music or videos on YouTube that they claim violates copyright. Speaking as someone who used to deal with DMCA claims elsewhere, dealing JUST with that could consume a healthy-sized support team's time. And that's before all of the other TOS complaints that will likely surface. But again, we'll see.
Great points, Jackie! I love the way Substack is writerly and writing-focused. That has been a surprise and I hope the Substack team will go forward with their mission and focus in mind. Thanks for opening up this discussion, Scott!
There seems to be three separate issues with video - content censorship, copyright, and privacy. None of these problems arrived with video, but they are all exacerbated and amplified by video. I'm not sure Substack is big enough (read well-staffed enough) to handle all three of these issues in all their many iterations.
For myself, I can see the appeal behind having a natively-embedded video; it's tempting to put more personal stuff behind the paywall. What I mean is, I think most of us are aware that Substack is a public-facing platform and so limit how much of ourselves we reveal. Being able to put a video behind the subscriber wall (presuming pad subscribers are a fraction of non-paying readers) might tempt people to reveal too much of themselves, which, in turn, raises the issue of privacy and accountability.
So, I can see the appeal, but I am apprehensive. I'll be using it sparingly and cautiously, if I use it at all, until I see how the trend lines are evolving. It might be a while.
There is nothing femme, queer, fat, disabled, POC, or international members have ever been able to do to keep vitriol out of a platform. They will flourish anywhere because it’s under the guise of honest discourse and really, platforms protect them while disproportionately silencing the above groups, just like in real life. As such, I’m going to do what I do as I’ve always done and curate my experience. Be blocked and blessed. May the mute be with you.
Well, this could be disastrous, and maybe I deserve a few calls of 'calm down, Josh' or 'this is how these things always go', but here goes:
Substack wants to introduce a video posting tool for Substackers, and I suspect this will be the death knell for its original purpose.
Hear me out on this first, please. I'm an author, a writer, a storyteller; the written word is the method with which I am both most familiar and most comfortable communicating with the world. Sure, yes, I make plenty of audiobook presentations for my Bitchute channel, and yes, these 'videos' get a much larger audience than do my written posts on Substack.
But I find doing them both taxing on my time and my psyche.
For creators like myself, Substack was a godsend, a viable method of sharing written material without going through the longstanding and insufferable gatekeepers that have always presented indie storytellers with little more than blockades to their endeavors. It was a return to the vitality of the written medium.
The introduction of audio/podcasts was in and of itself one hell of a shakeup, and that didn't happen too long ago. Yet already, because of audio options, a lot of Substack creators have pivoted from written material to audio.
And now a whole host of folks will come rushing to try and pivot to video. Folks in digital media have been pointing to video as the end-all be-all of online production; much as I enjoy Ian Crossling, his constant insistence on the superiority of video over text is irksome, because he argues that 'tone can't be conveyed in text format'.
Perhaps he never read any talented storytellers in his life. That, or he forgets that some folks treat comminicating in written form as a toss away format. My advise? Find someone who can text better, my good hippie.
Now, there's a very real possibility that I'm just being a bit of a Luddite here, sure, I'll cop to that as a potential explanation for my trepidation. But more likely, I think, is that I've seen what this is going to look like in 3 to 6 months already. I know very well what's likely going to happen.
Firstly, if you have subscribers signed up with a Gmail account, they're gone. You cannot count on them to stick around and watch your videos, because Google already hides your text and audio posts in Gmail users' 'Promotions' tabs. I'm personally dealing with this problem already, so what do you think the owners of YouTube will do to links to a platform that will now directly compete with that outlet? You'll be lucky if they don't get auto-categorized as Spam instead of just Promotions, the next step up the ladder of 'Ignore This Shit', which most of us do out of long habit.
They're counting on Gmail users not to bother checking, trust me.
Secondly, if the cost of hosting video catches up to Substack, or rather, WHEN it catches up, they're going to likely start requiring a larger cut of Substackers' subscription payments to cover those costs, whether they opt to use video or not. And I can almost guarantee that they won't allow Substack writers to offer video to their subscribers at the free level; Substack can't absorb the cost of video hosting like a giant such as Google/Alphabet can.
I don't want to leave Substack or cease my support of it, but more and more I am watching it leave behind its original mission statement, to be a place for independent writing to flourish. Between YouTube, Odysee, Bitchute and Rumble, don't we already have plenty of options for video?
I get the desire to have it all in one place, but isn't that centralization exactly what has turned Facebook and Twitter into garbage fires?
Or maybe I'm just being paranoid. You tell me.
I don't think you're being paranoid. Maybe the problems won't be quite so bad. But I'd say it's always reasonable to prepare for both expected and unexpected consequences of changes to services on the internet.
All very interesting, Scott! Love that you are exploring the range of content on Substack. It'll be really intriguing to see how this impacts the journalism and writing space, in light of the excellent comments here. Will stay tuned. Thank you!