Almost exactly a year ago I started a DJ channel on YouTube. The idea was simple: carry my gear up to lookouts around San Francisco and play hour-long deep/melodic house sets. It went…not exactly how I expected.
I’ve been DJ’ing for about 15 years, but when I moved to San Francisco that mostly stopped so I could focus on my software engineering career. And I mean focus. For a long stretch all I wanted to do was code and build systems. I love what I do, but staying locked into the matrix that long wasn’t sustainable.
To get my head out of work, I started playing wherever I could: random backyards, renegades on the beach, shared co-working spaces. Those were a blast, but I wanted to reach more people. Twitch got way too saturated after COVID, so I figured I’d try YouTube instead. I already have background music playing on the YouTube app pretty much all day while I work, so a channel felt like a natural fit.
It’s not low effort, but I didn’t need scripts, intros, hooks, or any on-camera tricks. Just press record and play. And other creators in my niche had grown to tens of thousands of subscribers in what looked like no time. Easy, right? Let’s talk about it.
First 3 months
These were my most motivated months. Roughly half of my whole library came from this stretch. The energy was high, and all I could think about was where the next set would be. Everything I’d read about how to “grow the perfect channel” seemed to be coming together, and then it fell apart pretty quickly. Videos I expected to get thousands of views got a few hundred. The subscribers I pictured flocking to the channel never showed up. I didn’t get my first subscriber who wasn’t a friend until almost 30 days in.
I learned how the algorithm works the hard way. In my niche, at least, you need a lot of luck for a video to reach the right people. YouTube shows a new upload to your subscribers first, then to a small sample of people it thinks will like it, then to a bigger group, and so on. If your title is off or your thumbnail is boring, nobody in that first group clicks, and the video dies right there.
Second 3 months
Motivation took a nosedive here. I only published 6 videos. Views were down and the weather in the city was terrible, but I still had a pile of groovy music I wanted to share. I recorded my first international sets during these months, down in Mexico, and to my surprise they did poorly.
Last 3 months
By this point I’d stopped refreshing YouTube Studio every hour. I quit chasing the “perfect” mix and just had fun with it. I uploaded less, but I was proud of every set I put out.
Funny enough, that’s when things started moving a little. Nothing went viral, but a few older videos started picking up views on their own, weeks or even months after I posted them. The comments changed too. It used to be friends dropping a fire emoji. Now it’s strangers saying they had a set on while they worked, or while driving up the coast.
My most viewed video just passed 16k views, and the channel is sitting at 395 subscribers. Not the numbers I pictured a year ago, but those 395 are exactly the people I was making this for in the first place.
Looking back
So was it worth it? Yeah. Just not for the reasons I thought going in.
I didn’t hit tens of thousands of subscribers in a few months. Honestly, I’m not sure the people I was comparing myself to did either, at least not without a ton of luck, way more uploads, or some head start I couldn’t see. Measuring my first year against someone else’s highlight reel was the quickest way to kill my motivation, and for a while it did.
If I could talk to myself from a year ago, I’d tell him to take titles and thumbnails more seriously than the mix. That one stings, but nobody hears your transitions if they never click. I’d also tell him to pace himself. Dumping half the library in the first few months and then going quiet did more harm than a boring, steady schedule would have. And I’d tell him not to write off a video after its first week, because some of mine found their people months later.
The best part has nothing to do with numbers, though. I’m DJ’ing again. I’m outside, hauling speakers up to lookouts and watching the fog roll over the city while I play music I love. After years stuck in front of a terminal, I’ll take that.
I’m going to keep going. If you want to follow along, the channel is here. See you at the next lookout.