Soft Machine³ - Arts Tech and Other

UPDATE: Re-branding & merge: site is now Demand Media’s “eHow”

 

in a Village of Idiots

you

are the Expert

you

pick a subject

you

make the content

we

keep most of the profit

Part Zero: if you must, click through and watch the video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h60yzDjyZB8

“Learn how to play the piano with a final demonstration from our expert in this free how-to video clip lesson on advanced piano techniques.”

Part 1:

I was looking at ExpertVillage for “how to play piano” videos, and found this.

“Advanced Piano Playing Lessons & Techniques” | Expert Village Videos

Part 2: from Expert Village:

About the Expert: Dani Rhodes is a professional actress, singer, dancer and musician based in New York City. She also teaches all of the above throughout New York. She is a proud member of Actors Equity Association and has starred in countless musicals and show tours all over the United States. She is presently in production on her debut album. You may contact and see/hear more of Dani at http://youtube.com/danirhodes

Part 3: my opinion

The video is visually acceptable, but the piano is horrible and her playing is poor. I did notice she has tap-dancing videos on Expert Village… perhaps she’s more talented at that. Even so, I give Expert Village a permanent, complete failure grade for use of the terms “expert”, “teacher” and “advanced piano” here. Didn’t anyone notice the missing ivories, the horrible de-tuning, or the Broadway stage basement decor? This is the final demonstration in the series, thank goodness. I presume we are to have “learned all about scales” via these awful videos.

Part 4: an analysis

In order to entice people to submit content to their site en masse, it’s clear that Expert Villlage agrees to say not a word about the most absurd claims you might make. Dani thinks very highly of herself, which is healthy - to a point. By allowing this young lady to write her own copy, they prove they are anything but a “village of experts”… unless of course, you’re the “village idiot.”

Notice what they’ve done here. YouTube eats the video hosting and bandwidth costs, the “experts” provide the content free of charge or for a low flat fee,  the videos are un-embeddable elsewhere, and Expert Village makes profits on the large amounts of traffic, which they share with the contributors according to some formula. There are many people claiming large “passive” incomes, and many people angry over content that gets deleted or buried. I find a lot of evidence for content which is duplicate in all but the smallest detail. For example, how to play some chord progression, copied 12 times for major keys and 12 times for minor keys. 

I find no evidence of a “thumbs down”… at the worst, it points sideways somewhat. Everyone gets a gold star! Or a silvery-gold one at least.

Part 5: conclusion, and your reward

You’re better off watching Lang Lang play Chopin with an Orange.

Coda: Re-branding & merge with “Content Farm” giant Demand Media.

What was a “Village of ex-Perts” is now “How to Do all Most any Thing” - Content cited above is unchanged.