News about StudioFD, Frank Doorhof, and more.

A social media tip that saves you a lot of money

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We all have a limited amount to spend each month and let’s be honest whenever you can shave a few bucks every month that’s a good thing right? Especially if you actually get more than the more expensive option.

Now for years I’ve been running my YouTube channel and I love putting material out for you guys. So if you haven’t already please subscribe and share the link with your friends, here is a direct link to subscribe, and don’t worry it’s 100% free.
Subscribe to our free YT channel

One of the biggest problems when uploading videos is music.
Especially in today’s market you get claims all the time, even if the music you use is yours or under fair use, and even when you have a license it’s still not warranty that you won’t be claimed, and in all honesty it’s a huge frustration and a lot of work. So thankfully there are now sites that offer you a humongous library with music that is all labeled and tagged so you will never get a claim again (well at least it didn’t happen to me yet on any of those videos).

One of the sites is called Epidemic.
Epidemic gives you weekly new albums and you can choose from any type of music, vocals or instrumentals and you can download the complete song or even stems, in other words it’s fricking awesome.

Now normally Epidemic charges $13.00 a month which in all honesty is pretty ok for what they offer. But how does $7.99 sound?
A lot better right?
Well I think so too, and that’s why I’ve been using a partner site called Talentsy for quite some time now. I mostly only use Talentsy for the Epidemic link but they offer a lot more.

Talentsy
When you join Talentsy it’s a bit overwhelming but in short for $7.99 a month you get of course the Epidemic subscription but also accounts at for example spreadshirt, a website where you can design shirts/sweaters etc. and host your own store, in case you want some cool Learning with Frank clothing check out Frank Doorhof Merchandise

But it doesn’t stop there.
You also get a nice dashboard with analytics about your channel and although YT also has some cool dashboards options the Talentsy dashboard is a great addition and makes it a lot easier to read when you’re in a hurry.

One of the things that’s also very nice is the “tag creator”, just type in what the video is about and voila, the tag creator gives you suggestions for tags.

But one of the best things next to epidemic is actually TubeBuddy Pro.
With TubeBuddy pro you get a lot of extra information on your YouTube channel and you get a lot of extra options for cards, comments, bulk actions, statistics, ranking etc. this gives you actually an awesome inside into what your video and channel is doing and which things work and don’t work, this is without a doubt a must have if you’re serious about your channel.

Add to this the design options from Talentsy and their boost support and you get a lot of value for just $7.99

Conclusion
You can spend a lot of money for music and real handy statistics and a merchandise shop, but for $7.99 a month Talentsy literally just covers it all, are there any downsides? well yeah, for Epidemic you have to authorize via Talentsy every time you visit the site, but this is maybe a 5 second delay, so in my book it’s more than worth it.

So head on over to Talentsy (use this link and you also support our work) and get going.

Come on YouTube, this is no fun….

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Ok it’s no secret we all love YouTube.
In fact we recently cancelled our TV for the simple reason we never watched it because 99% of what we watch is YouTube and Netflix but as a creator I have to be honest, sometimes YouTube is sometimes just….. well let’s keep it civil.

Over the years I’ve put over 1000 videos on YouTube, ranging from interviews, live streams, educational, vlog, Behind the Scenes and a lot more so we have quite a catalog online. If you didn’t already make sure to subscribe to www.youtube.com/frankdoorhof and hit the bell it really helps us out.

It’s no secret that in reality you don’t earn a lot from YouTube, unless you have millions of subs and/or get sponsored. So we mostly just put videos on there because I just love the interaction with you guys.

Now a little bit of side information.
For most videos we use music, because let’s be honest a behind the scenes video without music, is a bit boring. Now a days we use Epidemic, which is a huge online library of free to use music, and the quality is very good and they have something for everyone, I highly recommend them, but keep reading for a good deal.

In the past however we used something called Quicktracks, or Sonic fire, depending on when you bought it. This is a software app that creates music dynamically from samples, it’s literally awesome, you set the mood, variation and time and it spits out the music, in fact we invested in an app that was working under Premiere that literally made it possible to on the fly create music fitting any time span we needed, awesome awesome stuff, not cheap… but worth it.

Well….. it’s been gathering dust. YouTube started mailing “claims” a few years ago, companies trying to “steal” the income from creators that worked their asses of to get you guys free material are now missing revenue from millions of videos on the platform. Now it’s only a few cents here, and a few cents here so a lot of people, including me in the past didn’t really object, but at one point I had over half of my videos claimed, and that all added up to 50-100.00 a month missed revenue, now that’s not a lot of money, but…. it is a lot of money when you add everything up, now also realize that I’m just a very small creator compared to guys with millions of subs.

So we started to object and dispute the claims, thinking it would be a lot of work and we would never win…. much to our surprise often within an hour you will get a response from YouTube that the other party had 48 hours to reply but they didn’t so the claim was lifted…. now if that is not weird? Unless it’s some kind of Star Trek time mess-up.

Anyway, ever since we are filing disputes, stopped using quicktracks and went for Epidemic, and much to our relieve all claims stopped on the new videos. On the older ones however we still get weekly, sometimes daily claims. But todays claim just triggered my “funny bone”.

Really YouTube.
3 companies claimed my music?
In the same clip? and in fact it’s the same music, just a different variation…. now if it wasn’t so annoying it would actually be funny.

Am I angry, no not really?
But please guys realize that people on YouTube literally work their asses off to get you guys free videos to enjoy.
YouTube revenue is almost nothing, so most creators are running Patreon websites (www.patreon.com/frankdoorhof starting at $1.00 a month) or other forms of sponsoring. Having companies with huge amounts of money claiming the channels of creators is in my book absolutely ridiculous and should be stopped.

Now let’s make one thing clear.
I don’t want to use songs from an artist without permission. That goes without saying, you can’t just use a song from an album under your video for free, the artists created it and should be compensated.

However it doesn’t stop there.
As a guitar enthusiast I follow some YouTube channels about home recording, guitar lessons, best riffs etc. And what’s going on there is even worse. If you follow certain channels you’ll see that there is a lot of complaints about YouTube claiming riffs that are played by the creator him/herself as an example, solos that are played for education, and a Dutch guitar educator (Paul Davids) even had his own music claimed because someone else used it….. Or spectre studio who got a claim because he used some samples in a video on autotune and that fans deserve better.

Again if you just use music from a band under your video, guys that’s wrong.
But using riffs, solos etc. for lessons…. that’s the whole idea of YouTube, you can’t claim a I,IV,V chord progression… well it happens.

Now with our channel the claims are solved pretty fast, although I did lost some disputes totally unfairly but I just gave up because otherwise my channel would get a strike (yeah talk about being with your back against the wall). But it can be much worse.

Recently I listened to a podcast about a musician that created a whole YouTube channel with backing tracks, and I love those. For people not knowing what it is, a backing track in essence is a track where you as a guitarist (bassist/vocalist etc) can play over. Now some backing tracks are from well known songs and they for example removed the guitar parts, now with those I can imagine that they get a claim, it’s a full song and money is earned so yeah… pretty clear. However in this case it was about a musician that created ALL tracks himself, drums, bass, keys, rhythm guitar etc. He even has the masters to prove it.

So what happened?
Well these backing tracks are used by other musicians to play over, I’ve done it countless times myself (it’s an awesome learning tool), but I never uploaded them but countless other people do, and somehow in a weird algorithm YouTube was claiming the creators channel, and I mean a total claim. Meaning the guy couldn’t earn a cent from whatever he uploaded, he tried to contact YouTube several times and getting an automated reply, at one point he just gave up and was thinking about starting a new channel and just try what went wrong.

And that’s the main problem.
In the past I’ve had HUGE problems with my videos being demonetized the moment I uploaded them, like 99% of what we uploaded got marked right away. This means that the videos were not visible in certain countries and were labeled inappropriate for the general public. In the end we “I think” found out what the problem was, in our keywords I used the term “modelshoot” as soon as I took that away…. voila no more problems, same with “Photoshoot” in all honesty I’m a bit stunned because it makes it even harder now to label my videos, because in essence I think a lot of people will search on modelshoot or photoshoot, but I also don’t want my channel to be cut off completely. We tested this a few times and every time we used those words the same thing happened, maybe it’s the term “shoot” we don’t know, and YouTube doesn’t answer the questions we asked, you just get a response back in the form of “your video is labeled inappropriate for certain audiences”, yeah but WHY???? tell me WHY???  😀 as so many things, we just gave up and removed those keywords.

Anyway long story short…..
Sometimes it sucks being a creator…. so join our YouTube channel and make it a bit more fun.

Ok and I promised something cool for you guys.
So here we go. If you create videos and want some really cool music but don’t want to spend a lot of money for services like Epidemic, there is a shortcut. I’ve been using talentsy for a while now and for $7.99 you get a lot of extra goodies, but in all honesty I just use it for epidemic, so if you’re also active with YouTube, or other video stuff check them out, use our link to also support our work… This is the link

50% off on my tutorials

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Want something cool to watch over the Easter weekend?

Well this is your chance.
surf to www.frankdoorhof.com/videos and download ANY of my full length tutorials and use the code “eggs” when checking out for a stunning 50% discount.

I’m sure you will be inspired for the coming months.
The tutorials are all filmed professionally with clear and in depth information on lighting, working with the models and a lot more. Don’t waste money on videos that are filled with “b-roll” these videos are jampacked with tips and techniques.

Enjoy easter and be inspired 😀

Bye Bye Dropbox old friend….

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Well ok that’s a bit over the top, we will still be using dropbox but in one move dropbox actually became unusable for us and I think many others. Now let me make one thing clear…. money has to be made, and I get it, but this is I think a huge mistake from dropbox.

So what happened?
The last two weeks I’ve hardly been online, out with the flu and still recovering (it’s a nasty one), so I did miss something apparently. Dropbox free changed their policy to allowing only 3 connected devices….. THREE!!!! are you kidding me?

Ok that was my first reaction, and second and third….
If you want more, the option is paying $9.00 a month for 1TB.
That’s more than we pay for Netflix to put in perspective.

So ok I get it, you have to earn money, but let me explain why I think this is very wrong from Dropbox and will essentially hurt them a lot. We have been Dropbox users since…. well I think almost forever. We’ve brought in a lot of friends so we have a rather large space online, but even that is actually for today’s standards not that impressive app 70GB.

We use Dropbox for the syncing of files between our devices.
I have my presets on there so that on whatever device I work I have the same presets, we have some documents on there that we always seem to need, and we simply use it to store files that I need for my laptop at home while working in the studio. So we are not “heavy” users.

So if Dropbox would limit storage to 25GB we could live with that.
If Dropbox would limit the daily download limit to let’s say 10GB I can live with that too.

And these are also the things that actually cost money. Data traffic is not free, data storage is not free, so yeah I get it, of course it’s not fun, but I understand that maybe to a free plan there are some limitations…. but what did Dropbox do….. limit the amount of devices to three. Now why is this stupid?

Let’s only look at myself.
1. Studio PC
2. Laptop at home
3. Phone
4. Tablet

On all these devices I use the same dropbox account, so now I have to let one go… well ok that’s doable, however Annewiek and I work together, so for us it’s actually.

1. Studio PC
2. Laptop at home
3. Phone
4. Tablet
5. Annewiek’s phone
6. Annewiek’s laptop
7. Annewiek’s tablet

So we use 7 devices connected to dropbox.
Which from now on….. will not work anymore……so we have to decide which ones have to go.
I really need the link between my Studio PC and Laptop, and Annewieks laptop and that would actually be it, but I also want to be able to connect via my phone or tablet to share some images to social media, well that’s not possible anymore.

Now again this is not nagging that something should remain free, again I get it, you have to make money. However limiting the amount of connected devices is a very weird move in my opinion, we live in a world where everything gets connected, our sat receiver for example has settings that are stored on dropbox, you can connect your gameconsole to dropbox etc. etc. in other words, in a modern household 3 devices to dropbox doesn’t cut it. Of course you can create more accounts… but that doesn’t make it easier and good to work with.

Now why will this hurt Dropbox in the future
When you use something and you love it and you run into limitations the change of upgrading is there, because you already have everything on that platform and it works. What Dropbox is doing now is limiting the amount of connected devices to only 3, if you are looking for a new online storage solution the market is overflown with options, some cheaper, some free, some more expensive, but there is a huge amount of choices, meaning the chance that someone STARTS with Dropbox is now limited, meaning that if less people use it, less people will upgrade, especially seeing the alternatives.

Alternatives
Take for example OneDrive
We have 1 TB storage online because we use Office 365 and this is 1TB for every user (max 6).
It’s not less usable than Dropbox,so why not just use that?
And it’s a lot cheaper because for $9.99 a month you also get the whole office 365 suite (sweet)
At this point we already have much more benefits by using one drive compared to dropbox
Although that’s not completely true. Dropbox excels that it works on all platforms, but let’s be honest in our household there is a mix of Apple, Android and Windows and MacOS, and all those systems OneDrive works fine.

There’s also still Apple with 50GB for 0.99$
There’s also Google Drive with 19.99$ a year for 100GB
And of course PCloud which also has a free version
Box is also often mentioned but they have an upload limit per file, which can be frustrating with today’s file sizes.

In other words there are a LOT of alternatives that are essentially cheaper although often giving less space, but let’s be honest how much online space do you really need? for us as a studio 10-15GB is enough and I guess for most people it is. When I discuss this with people I always make the joke, it’s 10-20GB or unlimited, nothing in between. Meaning for what we do we would not need more than 10-20GB, but if we want to backup and store stuff we would need a LOT more.

Conclusion
We love Dropbox, it works, it’s stable, it’s fast, it’s very handy, but limiting it’s free service to 3 devices is something that doesn’t work for us, and in all honesty the monthly fee is just too high seeing the alternatives, and the fact of course that for a long time there was no limit to the connected devices. We never really used OneDrive because we used Dropbox, at the moment we are switching everything over to OneDrive.

Something to think about.
I know a lot of you guys out there will think “come on Frank, can’t you afford a measly $8.99 a month?”
Well it’s not that in reality, it’s however 9.00 here, 10.00 there, 12.00 there, and before you know it you spend a large amount of your income per month to subscriptions.

Now I love Creative Cloud, so that’s a no brainer (and it’s cheap)
I also love Netflix which is relatively cheap.
But it doesn’t stop there, in the future Disney is starting and taking away the Marvel series, meaning we also have to pay Disney, YouTube is getting more and more annoying with the constant nags about YouTube Red so at one point they will probably cripple their own platform to a point that people will leave or also take the Red subscription. And of course you want to be able to play a game, so you need a PS4 subscription, and of course Spotify, and in the states you of course want Amazon Prime… it REALLY starts to add up compared to let’s say 10 years ago.

And yeah it sounds like not a lot of money, but adding it to the pile really will make a difference for a lot of households and I think a lot of people can’t really afford 10.00$ a month extra.

So in short, I would prefer Dropbox to limit downloads or uploads or storage, but not connected devices.
What’s your opinion?