in the future - u will be able to do some more stuff here,,,!! like pat catgirl- i mean um yeah... for now u can only see others's posts :c
So, the channel is on the ropes. Critical levels. I hoped it wouldn't come to this, and I've worked incredibly hard over the last few weeks to find any kind of solutions that would be the least disruptive for everyone. .. but here we are. Heck, I've put probably 50+ hours a week for the last 8 years of my life into this channel. It's the second most important thing in the world to me, and I know it means a lot to a lot of people.
First things first. Don't blame Youtube and don't blame the artists. I'm certain that this situation is no fault of Youtube, and that no individual band member from any band actually asked for this to happen. In fact, a lot of very supportive bands are getting caught in the crossfire here. Dragonforce, for example, have publically stated support for this content in the past, and yet I still got struck over one of their songs. This is the result of a complex tangle of people more powerful than we can ever fathom.
..That's what makes this situation so difficult, because it is impacting so many people .. but I have to do everything I can to save and protect the channel for the future.. and that means I'm going to be deleting a ton of videos today. Basically anything that could remotely even possibly pose any kind of threat has to go. Some of it can then be re-uploaded, but everything going forward needs to be cleared before it gets posted. It's the only way to go. It's not required by Youtube, but it's the only way to best avoid this situation in future.
I know this means a lot of people's playlists are going to have a ton of stuff go missing .. and people who subscribed to this channel for songs and bands that'll no longer be available. Some of it will come back, but there's a chance that a lot won't. I just don't know yet. It's not up to me. I'm really sorry for that. I can't look at this any way and think that it's good for everyone, ..but as ever, maybe now more than ever, I appreciate all the support.
The next 2 or 3 days will be critical. After that, if there's no further complications, things should be OK going forward, though it'll be a long climb back to having a robust selection of tracks available. If things are not OK, well, I'll keep you all posted and we'll cross that bridge if we get there.
All the best to everyone, and again, my sincere apologies for stuff you won't be ble to sing anymore, and great appreciation for all of you who have enjoyed it over the years and will in future.
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After several weeks of 12 hour days, the majority of everything that is moving over to the new channel has been re-uploaded there :)
youtube.com/@CCKaraokeEx
All the videos are now in HD (if they were not before), and there's a new thumbnail design. I'll start replacing the thumbnails on this channel with the new design in the coming weeks.
There's about 70 videos I want to fully remake for the EX channel, and those will be the next ones posted over there (also in the coming weeks). Everything else, if it was originally posted from 2017-2019, is going to go on a 3rd channel that I'm calling Dusty Karaoke. That channel is not active yet, but I'll get to work on it soon. I may move a few more things over to the EX channel in future, but hopefully that can be done one band at a time if I decide to, and I can announce it before hand in a community post so people have time to be aware of anything on their own playlists.
This channel did come under threat, and that was a motivating factor, but the idea to split the channel into three pieces is one I've been intending on for a while now. Basically, it was getting to be a major stress and pain trying to juggle 5,000+ uploads on one channel. Youtube has a nice enough UI in some areas but it's still a real challenge trying to dig through so much material. Also, every band is an individual entity with their own philosophies, and that presents additional challenges.
..so everything that can keep food on my table is going to be here and get the most of my attention. Kinda important lol, both for living, and if I ever want to pursue that ultimate dream of being a husband and father. Everything that won't, goes onto the EX channel. This doesn't mean that I'll ignore the EX channel. A few of my favorite bands are there .. and so I'll be sure to give it some attention .. but at least now I don't have to click through thousands of videos trying to identify everything all the time. The third channel is going to have all those really old 2017-2019 vids that I haven't remade yet. This way they'll all be in one place and easy for me to identify, and scroll through, and people can leave comments telling me to get at this track or that. Most of them are deep cuts at this point.
Otherwise, I've got 120 tracks mixed to be remade for this main channel. I want to tear through making the videos for these and getting em posted. This will be priority #1 over the next 4 to 6 weeks, and you'll see more tracks than usual getting posted each night. Once that's complete, and I have the Dusty channel up and running, I'll finally feel like for the first time in years, that everything is well organized π .. and then I can look at starting on requests/commissions. .. and also really pushing the channel further into where I want it to be in the long term with new stuff.
FINALLY! The algoithm really hates me right now π. This is to be expected, but at least since last week, the vast majority of you are finding and interacting with the channel manually .. by searching for me and choosing to click on CC Karaoke. So thank you to all of you. While I do hope that the algorithm forgives me in the coming weeks, I generally feel that no matter how many times YT recommends that someone click on a video, none of this works without so many people choosing to click on a CC Karaoke video over the other options. As always, I promise I'll keep workin on all this as long as I can. This whole splitting the channel move is meant to try and help ensure that for the long haul. π πΆ
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I'm working to restore the playlists :)
Hey everyone. My apologies for any confusion over the last week or two. I know a bunch of songs suddenly disappeared from the channel. The short version is that I'm working as quickly as I can to restore those tracks, but it will take a bit of time to get at everything.
You can find the tracks here as they are uploaded
youtube.com/@CCKaraokeEX
You can also just find them through the many playlists on the channel's main page. I'm going to add them back to those playlists and also make the playlist collection available on the EX landing page as well.
...But if you had the old uploads on your own playlists, you'll need to re-add the new ones. I'm sorry.
The longer version of this story is a bit more complicated, but I have been thinking of creating an 'EX' channel for a long time now (or maybe even a couple of them but one is good for now). Ideally I would have rolled this out more slowly, without so much confusion lol. .. Though in reality, it's something I just kept putting off and maybe never would have gotten around to doing. If you're wondering why do it at all... the best answer I can probably give right now is 'categorization'. There's a lot of bands in the world and every one of them is an individual entity under a larger umbrella. It's a kind of complicated mess that the Karaoke community at large tries to make sense of behind the scenes, but it's never easy. This channel had ballooned to over 5,000 videos and it was getting really complicated to manage, frankly.
Anyway, the EX videos have blue text instead of orange because hey, I felt like chaning the color lol. There's also a new thumbnail design. Some stuff will now always go over there, and some over here, though bands on this main channel will tend to be more of a focus. I can't say that's exclusively the case because I really want to put a focus on The Tragically Hip (for example), but there's just so much music out there that I can't do everything in a lifetime, so I need to keep it organized and pick my priorities. Everything still over here and anything that will be that hasn't got enough attention yet (Opeth for example), is where I'll look to first when deciding what to make next. If/when I start taking requests, then obviously, the request will supersede that. I need to finish getting all this organized first though.
Sometime down the line I'm also going to create a third channel that I'm tentatively naming 'Dusty Karaoke'. This is where I want to put all the older videos (2017-2019 era vids) that need fixing but I don't have the time or technology to fix yet.
If you subscribe to the EX channel, just be aware that your subscriptions feed will be overloaded with videos posted next week, but once the big overload of tracks is done, the pace of posting will become more normal lol.
Again, sorry for the confusion. In all though, the plan is that within the coming days/weeks, most of the stuff that was here before will still be accessible on Youtube as it was before, either through search or on the playlists. If you want me to prioritize a certain band or track to restore, just let me know :) If it's something I can't bring back (there's a couple things), I'll let you know!
All the best, and happy singing!
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A channel update! (For those wondering what's up and where I'm going) π
The development of AI technology over the last few years has been pretty meteoric. While some parts of that frighten me (machine overlords), it has been pretty awesome for the Karaoke community. 'De-mixing' AI has allowed the many dozens of new Karaoke brands to make all these videos in recent years. Basically, using 'AI' to remove the vocals from any song, or isolate backing vocals etc.
For my own part, I've remained extremely conservative about this technology. I began this channel before de-mixing AI was a thing, focusing on stems and instrumental mixes, and have moved very slowly on adopting the new technology compared to my peers. This is because I thought that the quality of the de-mixing AI results just wasn't good enough on most things for a long time. It has gotten substantially better over the last five years though.
I began really adopting it about three years ago in earnest to isolate backing vocals. I mention this because the 'Updated videos' are for sure still a big part of my immediate channel plans. Back when I started all this in 2017, there was no AI to effectively remove vocals or isolate backings vocals. I began the channel working with stems and instrumental mixes, and when there was no backing vocals stem, I just settled for posting the Karaoke without backing vocals. Now that there are AI models to isolate backing vocals, I want to make sure I add them to as many old videos as possible, and include them in all new videos. I've been taking careful notes on this .. and there's a couple hundred tracks that I still can't isolate .. (thinking of some Blink 182 tracks in particular among others) .. so those videos will remain with the old thumbnails and low resolution until they can be fixed. For the rest, I am working on updating them. 'Red Hot Chili Peppers - Otherside' is the most significant recent example of this. There are currently several hundred videos on the channel for which de-mixing AI was used to help with the backing vocals, either from splitting vocal stems or pulling them from the official finished mix and them splitting them.
Second, all of the videos with the little 'Neural' UVR logo in the bottom left hnd corner of the thumbnails were made exclusively with de-mixing models. No original instrumental mixes or stems aiding. There's a 'UVR' playlist on the main page of my channel that lists all of the videos done this way. I've dabbled in this full on approach over the years but never committed to it because I felt there were still too many quality issues with the final results.
Well, the latest and greatest AI model has me sold. It's not perfect .. and there will be better models in the future, but this new model blows all past models out of the water. It's a revelation, frankly. A massive leap forward .. and it produces results that make me want to really dive into using this technology more significantly going forward. This was always going to be the long term future of the channel, and I'm pumped to feel like that future is finally arriving.
First things first though .. I'm going to focus on updating the existing tracks from the UVR playlist for a little while. They are already on the channel and being used and I want to clean up the audio on them. From there, I'll expand out to do tons more stuff I've been wanting to do for a long time. Rolling Stones, AC/DC, Black Sabbath and more.
Also, I've still got thousands of instrumentals and stems collected in many folders and drives that deserve attention. Up front, I've got about 300 more tracks from stems that are mixed and just need the video work finished, so those will get a higher level of priority in the coming months. Everything from Queen to Smash Mouth, Linkin Park, Megadeth and more.
Once I've got the main house cleaning a bit more settled, I plan to FINALLY start taking requests ... I know .. been a long time coming .. but it's in the plans. I need to sort out how and where I'll organize that, but it's coming. I'll update more on that here in the new year :)
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I have begun my 4th summer road trip! I got going a bit later than usual this year due to bashing my bones skiing back at the end of April π They seem to have healed just fine though! So I'm off and headed up the North Coast of Canada for the next 82 days. Starting on the Sunshine Coast and Vancouver Island, and then the Great Bear Rainforest and Yellowhead HWY. Most places along this route have suspect cell signal, but I got Starlink, so hopefully that'll cut through the tree canopy and deliver me internet π There has been a ton of packing and upacking and general trip prep over the last few days, but as I get settled into the summer flow, I expect to do plenty of hiking and channel work. Summer is always great for cranking out tracks LOL. It takes a lot less electricity than gaming. β‘
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I have reached 300,000 subscribers! π₯³π
I never set out thinking this is how things would turn out. In the beginning I just made some videos so I could sing them at my local Karaoke venue. Then I thought maybe I'd throw them up on Youtube so others might get some use out of them too. Knowing that you're all out there singing and maybe having a better day for it keeps me motivated to continue working on this project. πI fully intend to keep building this Karaoke collection for the rest of my life; So thanks to each and every one of you!
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I'm OK ... mostly. I crashed while skiing at high speed on hard pack snow today. My left hand is fractured and immobile for 8 weeks. My right Clavicle is broken in four places and displaced. I'm out of the hospital and with family. It was a glorious last run of the season though; First person down uncut corduroy.
Still, with neither of my arms in good function for some time, I'll be taking a break from streaming, and new videos may not be posted as frequently while I recover. I will return as I am able :) There's a ton of stuff; years worth; that I am excited to work on!
Best wishes and happy spring to you all.
CC
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youtube.com/@LemmyCautionKaraoke
Lemmy Caution has returned with a new Karaoke channel after his previous channel was so cruelly deleted by "Tyler, The Creator". If you were subscribed to him before, or are just looking for more great Youtube Karaoke channels to discover, head on over and add him to your subscriptions! πΆThere is a limit to how fast he is allowed to re-upload his Karaoke videos, so keep in mind that it will take a while to get all 3,300+ videos back onto the platform. Go show him some love, and welcome back Lemmy!
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For those of you who have tuned into my livestreams, I'm wondering how much advertisements have impacted your viewing experience. Especially in the last couple months, Youtube has gotten more aggressive with their ads and that has been a big conversation with channels I interact with. The moment I run Copyright audio on my livestreams, Youtube will start running ads on the stream. If we only sing non-Copyright audio, then there will be no ads. This is more restrictive with regards to what we can sing on air, but it still includes a lot of great stuff like Acoustic Lounge. So we can start doing this, and still run a great show.
I'm just curious about how intrusive these ads are for you all. ..So I'm running this poll to get a sense of that. Do they only run at the beginning? Or do they constantly interrupt live performances in the middle of a song? Do these ad-interruptions cause you to go watch something else? Do they make it harder for you to enjoy the stream? Any input is hugely appreciated on this. If the ads are a real issue, we can just sing claim free stuff and work around it.
The first 3 choices are about when the ads interrupt your viewing experience. I included the 4th because if the ads are causing you to exit and watch a different show, then it doesn't matter when the ads are airing, they are causing the greatest disturbance. What I'm really looking for is how many of you answer in the 3rd or 4th options. Ads running during performances or causing people to leave is something I don't want. I'd rather run claim free content in that case. If they only run at the start of the show or during our in-between song rambles, then maybe it's a bit less intrusive.
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I'm 88 videos into the new format now, and though I will be continuing with the new text, I'm looking for some feedback on the frame. I've got a notion from comments that the majority like the new frame, but I figured it's worth taking a poll. I'm going to include an option for 'No Frame', and if that wins a majority, I'll go forward without the frame. Personally, I do like the frame, but there's more than one way to go with it, so I'm going to provide choices on that.
First choice is to keep going exactly as is. Different colors depending on the band, at the current level of brightness.
The second option is to dim the brightness significantly so the frame sinks into the background, but keep using a variety of colors.
The third option is to only use the off grey border. I wanted to have a brighter and dimmer option for this but I'm only allowed 4 choices lol. That being said, the off-grey is dimmer by default.
The fourth choice is to ditch the frame.
Thanks for the feedback! :)
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I started going to Karaoke nights at my local bar back around 2008-ish. It was awesome, but I began to realize that that the audio was often awful. Well, I suppose sometimes the only way to fix something is to fix it yourself ... so I started up CC Karaoke with the objective of making better Karaoke. I never imagined it would grow this far, but I'm very grateful it has, and for everyone who has benefitted from it. It's a long process, but this project will continue for as long as I'm able.