How much does my organ playing make on YouTube?

Discussing YouTube earnings isn't taboo at all—there's plenty of YouTubers out there that openly share their earnings with their subscribers. However, I feel that this is quite taboo in the music world, and in particular the organ world. Let's face it...to be a musician in this generation is not a way to live a financially comfortable life. We only have to remind ourselves of this pandemic that performers and teachers are struggling to make ends meet. Performers no longer have a stage and audience, and teaching is much the same. Of course, they can shift this to online but the nature of the work is face-to-face.

Alright, let's cut to the chase. A lot of musicians are turning to YouTube to broadcast their concerts and recitals whilst posting them to social media to grab a little attention. The first issue is that this is not "ticketed" and the performer(s) are relying on the viewers to donate or make an offering online. Putting this link behind a paywall like TryBooking will most likely obliterate any chance of an audience (unless you're already really popular). To make any revenue from YouTube, you have to satisfy two requirements. 1000 subscribers and 4000 watch hours (accumulated in a year). For anyone, and particularly a musician, this is pretty difficult without investing a huge amount of time on the platform.

I worked really hard in 2020 and I finally hit both requirements in July/August. My excitement was real. I was ready to received my hard earned rewards:

This is what I made in the last three months after posting on average, one video per day (about 2-5 mins in length). I don't know what to say... The figures are in AUD and YouTube pay you out once you hit the $100 AUD payout threshold. So I still had to wait two months to see something hit my account. I do also make tiny amounts from affiliate sales and streaming platforms (e.g. Spotify/Apple Music), but again, nothing to write home about.

So where am I going with this? I have no idea. Will I be surprised if the rewards on this post are greater than one of my videos? No. The music industry, in particular the classical market desperately needs a tokenised platform where we can be rewarded fairly. Would @threespeak be an option (or a start?). I'm open to discussion. Of course, in general, we are able to share our work on Hive which is great but our "audience" isn't here. We need to get them onto Hive.

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