Clean and Sober Stoner 1000 SUBS is something I can’t believe I’m writing. We’re a sub-niche within a sub-niche: Not exactly the kind that pops up in a casual keyword search. We don’t deal with music that makes it on to huge lists or charts, and a big band is usually one that gets 1000 streams on Spotify. More than one colleague thought I was nuts even trying.
A YouTube Channel dedicated to Stoner/Doom is hard enough. One that is also Recovery-adjacent and deals with mental health and addiction? The odds were clearly against us. In general, this scene gets no respect at all aside from Sea of Tranquility. You’re far more likely to find reviews and comments hostile towards this form of Heavy Rock/Heavy Metal, even from stand up guys like Finn McKenty.
(I’ll have a reaction video to this infamous take sometime soon.)
And yet, here we are with 1000 people clicking the button. Some are for music playlists, others watch the Interviews and some even dig the reviews and the occasional rant. From all of us on the YouTube Channel and blogs: Julie, Jipsy, Blake, Rev, Joe, Nick and myself: thank you so much for letting us do some weird shit!
Clean and Sober Stoner has deliberately chosen a niche that simply can’t stand the majority of content on YouTube. No matter how we spin it, no matter what clever thumbnail we come up with, no matter how intriguing the title, if we do our job well as a YouTube Channel, we’re going to turn off 90% of the potential Stoner/Doom audience.
So, as far as YouTube goes, we’re truly not chasing the algorithm. As a team, we rely on all of you moogerfoogers to make this thing a success. When we put up click-baitng thumbnails, it’s a parody of that crap: Clean and Sober Stoner can not and does not rely on the things that make other channels work. It’s a painfully slow way to go about it, but I think we’re all proud that we don’t take shortcuts and we don’t try to insult your intelligence.
The downside to this approach is that interviews that might be of interest to a few thousand fans gets buried in a channel that does things this way. An interview with Mike Scheidt and James Romig getting only 246 views is pretty sad. At the time we only had about 500 subs, so it makes sense. But it is disappointing, and I hope this interview gets some traction, especially from hard-core YOB fans, since this is a chance to watch Mike in a different way.
And yet, I apologize for nothing. If our (my) content was fucked up in some way, it was genuinely and authentically fucked up. My mistakes are in real time, with little effort to hide them. But I put A LOT of effort into fixing them. Editing was by far my #1 weak spot for the first year, and I’m just now getting close to Mid. We all know that the interviews need to get a bit shorter and tighter, and we need to focus on content you want to consume. We all plan on getting better!
In the meantime, thanks for giving us a shot and a few moments of you’re time. We’re crazy enough to believe we can get to 20K subs or higher, and delusional enough to make that happen. We also believe that Stoner/Doom and the Heavy Underground is in a Golden Age of both quantity and quality, and better than it’s ever been.
We intend to cover it all!
For those of you interested in supporting the channel, we have a Buy Me a Coffee page set up. We’re not monetized yet: we need a few thousand hours of more watch time. There are expenses that go along with what we’re doing, and every bit helps!
Regardless, thank you for all the support that we keep getting. We’re gonna do our best to keep earning it!
Way to go! Growing because you deserve it and your sub-niches love it!!!