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Shortly after its launch in 2005, YouTube quickly made its way into popular culture and became a modern institution like eBay, the iPod and TiVo. For magicians it soon became the easiest way to see other magicians and get an instant audience (for better or worse).
Perhaps the biggest downside of YouTube is the over abundance of would-be-magicians performing bad magic and exposing secrets. The upside is that really good magicians can be seen by a lot of people and other magicians can see how big and great magic can be.
How not to use YouTube
Don’t use YouTube to ask people how your trick looks or show your practice session. It’s the most public forum in the world and will be around forever. This will only lead to tears.
Don’t use YouTube (or anywhere else) to do exposures of tricks. Exposing magic is not the same as teaching magic. Teaching requires the student to sit down and make an effort to learn more than just how it’s done. Putting exposures on YouTube hurts magic and also hurts magic creators. It also gets you nowhere as a performer.
Don’t use YouTube comments to try to show how smart you are. I often see comments below videos where someone says how a trick is done. The commenters just look stupid. Do you think David Blaine or Derren Brown sit around watching YouTube videos all day leaving comments about how they figured the trick out? Um, no. At least I hope not.
How to use YouTube
Beyond the obvious magic voyeur opportunities YouTube offers, there are other ways you can use YouTube to better your magic and your business.
Distributing your demo video
In the really old days I use to have to put my video demo on a VHS tape and have them physically delivered around the world. While DVDs made shipping a little easier, the ease of producing DVDs didn’t really come around until the same time video could be reliably delivered on the Internet. Many of your top corporate entertainers put their video right on their web site. This makes it easy for bookers to quickly see what you’re about. I know a few people who are of the school of thought that they’d rather control who sees their video and make clients request a DVD, but I’m not sure how practical that is in the age of instant gratification. I spend tens of thousands of dollars a year on printing with a couple different companies. The one thing all the companies have in common is they told me everything I needed to know on their website. Making your video easily available is the same thing. YouTube makes it super easy to get it uploaded and embedded on your site. It’s also very easy for a booker to email a link to prospective client.
Getting clients
After you got your video uploaded to YouTube and embedded in your web site, now what? If you were smart enough to put in meta information describing your video like “Corporate entertainerâ€, “Company partyâ€, “Trade show†and your name, these will all go a long way towards helping you find new clients and affect your search results. After word of mouth, search results are becoming the best form of marketing period. People are often too lazy about this meta information and don’t put enough in there. That’s kind of like creating a show, renting a theatre and forgetting to put up posters telling people there’s a show going on.
Research
Many of us live in a kind of performing vacuum chamber. Our friends and family have no way of gauging how good we are. We tend to believe the more positive estimations. A careful examination of the magic videos that non-magicians really like can tell us a lot about what works in that medium. While we shouldn’t change our shows around based upon what works in a 30 second web clip, it can tell us something about how regular folks view magic versus us magicians. There’s a lot to be learned from the fact that probably the most famous magic clip on the web is Cyril pulling a hamburger from a picture on a menu: People love highly visual magic using objects they can relate to.
Collaborate
YouTube has a cool little feature that allows you to share your favorite videos with other people. This is a great way to pass videos between other like minded friends and saves you the trouble of emailing links. It allows you to build an audience as an aggregator and subscribe to the selections of people who like the same things you do.
Do something clever
Marco Tempest thought of a clever way to leverage the YouTube phenomena. Maybe you can too. Marco created short clips that worked perfectly for the medium and ended up getting seen by millions. That was just the beginning. Maybe you have a clever idea or a new angle on magic that can get your name out there. YouTube will help you get an audience and pay for the bandwidth.
YouTube has changed everything
YouTube has over 100 million video views a day and has become a giant part of the entertainment industry. It’s the ultimate democratic television network where everybody gets a fair chance at having an audience and some people are even making money with at it. You don’t have to use YouTube to be successful, but understanding how it can be used and how it might be affecting you can give you some insight into where magic is heading. With YouTube now playing on the living room TV via Nintendo Wii’s and Apple TVs it gives you a shot at appearing on the same screen as David Blaine and Criss Angel…