I HATE Motown Schmuck Click Bait

[WaitingWatchingLookingForAChance]

I ask the Man Upstairs to give me strength and patience. I don't think there is a single shred of Motown in this. And don't get me started on the so-called 100 Best Motown videos featuring non-Motown performers and worse [[!) those dratted karaoke-like ringers. Click bait.



https://youtu.be/DycWDcfvNiU

[1382hitsville]

What is Motowm?

[Motown Eddie]

I ask the Man Upstairs to give me strength and patience. I don't think there is a single shred of Motown in this. And don't get me started on the so-called 100 Best Motown videos featuring non-Motown performers and worse [[!) those dratted karaoke-like ringers. Click bait.

I hear 'ya! I never did like remakes of Motown Classics done by performers with No real connection to the music. Marvin & Tammi said it best, "Ain't Nothing Like The Real Thing".

[WaitingWatchingLookingForAChance]

What is Motowm?

AH HA! Now I get it. I completely missed that. And I'm sure this person is counting on others to miss that too.

[WaitingWatchingLookingForAChance]

I hear 'ya! I never did like remakes of Motown Classics done by performers with No real connection to the music. Marvin & Tammi said it best, "Ain't Nothing Like The Real Thing".


So true Motown Eddie!

[splanky]

So true Motown Eddie!

I see that the video was taken down and I'm fine with that because I too don't like
folks pretending to have Motown material and actually featuring nothing close.
That said I have to respectfully disagree with both of you because it would limit my
listening experience drastically. While an iconic and well loved company Motown didn't
exist in a vacuum. Marvin Gaye's What's Goin' On is indeed a classic but if I had adopted
the perspective you seem to be advocating, I wouldn't have been able to enjoy The Ohio
Players cover of it. David Ruffin's Walk Away From Love was a smash for him, but it
was a cover of a song originally done by a non Motown group The Choice Four. Also,
Marvin himself turned in a great cover of 5 10 15 20 [[Years Of Love) first done by
another non Motown group, The Presidents...Are you guys really saying the music made
outside of this one company is not real?...

[WaitingWatchingLookingForAChance]

I see that the video was taken down and I'm fine with that because I too don't like
folks pretending to have Motown material and actually featuring nothing close.
That said I have to respectfully disagree with both of you because it would limit my
listening experience drastically. While an iconic and well loved company Motown didn't
exist in a vacuum. Marvin Gaye's What's Goin' On is indeed a classic but if I had adopted
the perspective you seem to be advocating, I wouldn't have been able to enjoy The Ohio
Players cover of it. David Ruffin's Walk Away From Love was a smash for him, but it
was a cover of a song originally done by a non Motown group The Choice Four. Also,
Marvin himself turned in a great cover of 5 10 15 20 [[Years Of Love) first done by
another non Motown group, The Presidents...Are you guys really saying the music made
outside of this one company is not real?...

I'm saying that if you advertise your video as "The 100 Greatest Motown Songs" my initial thought is that I'm going to hear Motown proper, not covers or worse, material by artists not connected to Motown in any way. I just don't like the genericizing of Motown so that it means any and all black 60s and 70s artists.

Draw your own conclusions from that but don't take it into a direction I wasn't even considering.

[splanky]

I'm saying that if you advertise your video as "The 100 Greatest Motown Songs" my initial thought is that I'm going to hear Motown proper, not covers or worse, material by artists not connected to Motown in any way. I just don't like the genericizing of Motown so that it means any and all black 60s and 70s artists.

Draw your own conclusions from that but don't take it into a direction I wasn't even considering.

Okay, then I'm sorry I misunderstood you. I don't like that use of "Motown" as a generic
term for all black music either. I've seen it everywhere even by professional writers, hell
even on SDF. Again, I'm sorry..

[144man]

AH HA! Now I get it. I completely missed that. And I'm sure this person is counting on others to miss that too.

That used to be called [and maybe still is] "passing off".

[ralpht]

Motowm huh....Pretty slick. Sorry for those that got, or will get, snookered.

[ralpht]

Hopefully this forum will reach many Motown fans and give them a heads up.

[WaitingWatchingLookingForAChance]

Okay, then I'm sorry I misunderstood you. I don't like that use of "Motown" as a generic
term for all black music either. I've seen it everywhere even by professional writers, hell
even on SDF. Again, I'm sorry..

Don't mind me splanky- and my apologies for the sniping. I used to get crabby at my sci- fi friends who would get VERY snippy if you misused any of the sci-fi terms or confused this show with that show. "Purist." Isn't that the word? Well, it galls me that [[sigh), I've become a snippy Motown Purist. I fight it but man, even I'M surprised at how ridiculous I get about this stuff. Like they say, be careful when you do finger pointing cuz there are more fingers pointing BACK at the pointer! Well the fingers are pointing right at me. Yet again!

[WaitingWatchingLookingForAChance]

Motowm huh....Pretty slick. Sorry for those that got, or will get, snookered.

You know, I'm getting it though. If you want to get those views up, you gotta drive traffic to your channel. How? The shrewd figure out the key words that show up in search engines. "Motown" is pure gold. Bait And Switch. "MOTOW M" is as good a bait and switcher as anything. And technically, he can't get called out on it; I was the one who missed that "M"! 1382hitsville caught it.

Oh those sneaky, but, clever YouTubers!

[grapevine]

What is Motowm?

...surely you've heard of 'Mowtown' ...and 'Tamala-Mowtown' too...? :rolleyes:

[calvin]

No, the channel isn't trying to fool you by writing "Motowm" with an "m" at the end, though that's a pretty funny idea. It's apparently just a spelling mistake in the thumbnail - Motown is spelled correctly in the video title, and the same youtube channel ["Funk & Soul"] has another video with Motown spelled correctly in both the title and the thumbnail:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G17FE9Ht0Pg&t=119s

Both videos have a little place tag above the title which says "HOA KỲ" - I looked that up, it seems to be Vietnamese for "United States." Maybe this is just a Vietnamese person who doesn't really know what Motown is?

My understanding is that one needs at least 1000 subscribers to monetize videos - this channel has only 370 so it's not getting any money from this, at least not yet. And the video linked in the original post has only 106 views, which is next to none. [I wonder how many of those were people who played a bit of it out of curiosity because of this thread?]

Sure, people shouldn't misrepresent the content of their videos. Maybe using Motown in the title is an intentional scam, maybe not, but if it's a scam it's not working very well.

[StuBass1]

Looks like an amateur operation based on little actual knowledge...

[Jerry Oz]

I hear 'ya! I never did like remakes of Motown Classics done by performers with No real connection to the music. Marvin & Tammi said it best, "Ain't Nothing Like The Real Thing".
You might want to listen to the cover from Mervin Gray and Pammy Tercell. My cousin bought it out of the trunk of some guy at the nightclub on the corner and said it was well worth the $2 he paid. He offered to sell it to me for $1.

[WaitingWatchingLookingForAChance]

No, the channel isn't trying to fool you by writing "Motowm" with an "m" at the end, though that's a pretty funny idea. It's apparently just a spelling mistake in the thumbnail - Motown is spelled correctly in the video title, and the same youtube channel ["Funk & Soul"] has another video with Motown spelled correctly in both the title and the thumbnail:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G17FE9Ht0Pg&t=119s

Both videos have a little place tag above the title which says "HOA KỲ" - I looked that up, it seems to be Vietnamese for "United States." Maybe this is just a Vietnamese person who doesn't really know what Motown is?

My understanding is that one needs at least 1000 subscribers to monetize videos - this channel has only 370 so it's not getting any money from this, at least not yet. And the video linked in the original post has only 106 views, which is next to none. [I wonder how many of those were people who played a bit of it out of curiosity because of this thread?]

Sure, people shouldn't misrepresent the content of their videos. Maybe using Motown in the title is an intentional scam, maybe not, but if it's a scam it's not working very well.
After replying to others here, I did start thinking it was definitely a way to drive traffic to his channel and now I think you just confirmed it. So, I can see the strategy there. It really is all about marketing.

[calvin]

After replying to others here, I did start thinking it was definitely a way to drive traffic to his channel and now I think you just confirmed it. So, I can see the strategy there. It really is all about marketing.

I didn’t want to go into much detail in my last post, but after 5 minutes of looking into that channel, I doubt that it's using "Motown" as click bait.

The songs in this channel’s playlists come from Epidemic Sound, a Swedish company which gives access to their music catalogue for a subscription fee. Subscribers can use this music for any purposes, including commercial, without any extra fees or royalties - they could play it in a shopping mall, use it in a video production, etc. It seems the person behind this youtube channel has a subscription to Epidemic Sound, for whatever reason, so can upload this music without violating any copyrights.

Epidemic Sound’s website shows they have a genre called “Motown & Old School RnB.” The songs included in these “Motown” videos seem to come from this genre. It looks as simple as this - the youtube channel calls music Motown when Epidemic Sound calls it Motown. Many people outside the US think that Motown is just a style of music. Of course, neither should be calling it Motown and it might be trademark infringement.

On the channel page one can see a list of the videos with their view numbers. About a dozen [of 81] have more than 1000 views, but these are all titled as Soul, eg "Chill R&B Soul Playlist - Top Hit Soul Music 2021", with 2400 views. The channel's "Motown" videos are not among these most viewed. Forum members playing a bit of that "Motown" video with just over 100 views doesn't change that. If using Motown deceptively in the title was a "marketing strategy" to get a lot of views, it seems to be failing. Besides, if that channel ever wants to get paid, what it really needs first is subscribers.

As for Motown in a title being "pure gold", there are Motown videos with millions of views on youtube. There are also loads of videos of real Motown music, titled as Motown, with only hundreds of views despite being up for years. It's not enough to just have Motown in the title - one needs the youtube algorithm to recommend the video and show it near the top of the list in searches.

[splanky]

One thing youtube has taught me is that a single release of almost any number of
artists will be labeled Northern Soul, Beach Music, Low-rider classic or some other thing
not because of any company affiliation or genre specificity but because of where and
how the listener encountered it. That confused me at first on the net. I remember
first hearing someone refer to The Barkays Soulfinger as Northern Soul. I was like...
What the heck is he talking about? They're from Memphis...By the same token, I would
probably never have known how celebrated what my peers always thought of as house
party, basement belly rubbin' hard soul was in the West Coast [[US) Chicano communities..