"Brevity is the soul of wit" - William Shakespeare (From "Hamlet")
Just a short message for my musician friends: Please! Do not put long intros and text at the start of your videos on Youtube!
Why?
Think about it:
1) People clicked your video because they either searched for you or saw a short description and thumbnail image... They want to see your image and music immediately. They don't want to sit through introductions that are longer than a few seconds.
2) Youtube already makes people sit through a 5 to 20 second commercial as it is. Just that causes people to click off your video. Don't make us wait even longer.
3) This is the deal-breaker. Even if someone likes your video, do you think that viewers want to sit through another long introduction on their second, and subsequent views? No. They don't.
Think about it. Do you like long text intros on anything? If people want text intros, they'll read a book...
So keep this in mind: "Brevity is the soul of wit." People do not need intros longer than 3 ~ 6 seconds on Youtube. For the reasons stated above AND it already says your band name under your video on the page!
You want lots of views? Cut those intros out!
Ahem...
To give you guys and marketeers a good example, I recently found a band from Germany that I love and think might be going places. Their name is The Merrybeats. They only have a couple of videos so I want to use theirs as an example (and a good way to promote them at the same time).
I wrote to Don Cire, the vocalist of the band and told him the above. I expect he will take it to heart and make the intros shorter (3 seconds? None?) for the next videos! This band deserves lots of plays!
Here is one of their videos. This is a delightful song that, once you get to it, I'm sure you'll enjoy... The only problem is that the text credits at the start are 22 seconds long! Yikes!
