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For a reported $8million YouTube have acquired a new tool to attract and help musicians by turning their popularity into a way to effectively make money. BandPage lets artists who off their music as well as advertising gig tickets and new releases. BandPage was mainly used for Facebook pages, where bands could create a tab to show off concert tickets and things to purchase. The price the app was acquired for seems incredibly low, given the app received over $20 million in funding and once had over 32 million active users and was the second most popular Facebook page app, but has since dropped to only a few million, which may explain the cheap acquisition price. However BandPage adapted, and is now integrated with many famous platforms such as Spotify, Soundcloud, Twitter, and Shazam. It maybe for these integrations that YouTube sees possible potential to really push this concept of BandPage forward into the future to help bands make money from their profession much easier. BandPage used to allow limited use for free, with a Plus option for $2 a month but recently made all features free with a 15% transaction free on services.

When it comes to YouTube and being successful, watch time is one of the key metrics. Watch time is a key indicator of whether your video is performing well and how engaged your audience is. If your watch time is high, you know it is a good video, but if they abandon the video after less than 10% viewing, you know you have problems. Is watch time important? The official term for Watch time is audience retention This can be found within your your YouTube analytics. The videos which are watched the longest tend to rack up those crazy view counts and are the ones which bring the most CPM! Four ways in which your Watch time can be improved: Create high-quality, original content. This may seem like an obvious tip, but it’s one that really needs repeating! The better the quality of your content, and the more original it is will only lend to a higher view count, but more importantly a longer Watch time. Viewers will continue watching videos which are highly entertaining and of the likes they’ve never seen before. Viewers are more likely to share such content as well! Get the viewer excited! If your videos take half the run time to get exciting or interesting, the viewer will have likely clicked away before the good bits start (now isn’t that a waste of effort!). Intros should be short and sweet, and the aim of your video should kick within seconds. With attention spans being lower than ever, immediate action is key! Keeping your energy consistent throughout videos is also vital. The fastest growing YouTubers, Jacksepticeye being one example, follow these steps to a T and serve as prime examples. Never mislead the viewership. In a world riddled with click bait articles and videos with sexy thumbnails:  titles which trick viewers into clicking the video, only to find the content to not match will only lead them to click away from the video, looking for the content they’re actually after, so tricking your viewers with click bait and suggestive thumbnails will only lead to a reduced watch time, and therefore a reduced income. All of your video metadata should accurately reflect the video content and this will lead to a longer Watch time! Watch Time is the KING metric on YouTube. If you can increase your watch time rates, you're almost guaranteed to increase your viewership and revenue. Link the old to the new! After running some viewer tests, annotations correlate between watch times on older videos.  It is proven that placing annotations on videos see’s a 15% increase in Watch time. Make sure that you annotate all of your videos, and enjoy the extra views! YouTube watch time is so important and you should start working on ways you can improve it today. Slight changes in watch time can really help your videos get recommended more and you'll soon start to see them views increase! Get Inspired To keep up with all things #YouTube including tips, tricks and interesting articles, head over to to the Ritual Blog. You may even find yourself inspired to create and grow your own audience! You can also sign up for our FREE academy and get expert guidance on all things YouTube.

A problem which most content creators encounter, and a tough challenge all of us have is coming up with that quirky yet cool video idea which will hopefully rake in the views. But others find it much harder, and more frustrating, to invent a catchy video title, which they are happy with creatively, and one which helps you appear in any search results. There is a clever trick to this which is more obvious than may first appear! Let us share this little secret trick with you. A large proportion of your video views will actually stem from user search. Especially if your subscriber count isn’t in the hundreds of thousands, you will get more views from searches than your subscribers. The trick is; to tailor your YouTube titles to what the viewers are currently searching for. This will indicate the most popular searches for your content. For instance, if your video is on a Headset unboxing, then type this into the YouTube search bar and study the results. As you can see in the image, “test”, “review”, and “microphone” are shown as some of the more popular results. To craft a title, simply take these key words to form something similar to “Tutrtle Beach X12 review an unboxing, including microphone test!”. This method will make sure you hit those key searches and incease the maximum amount of views you will receive. This next trick isn’t as vital as a good title which hits all of the buzzwords, but should help gather some attention from the user searches! This is video tags. Video tags are obviously not as vital as the title, but never forget to add them to a video. important as the title. Having a good combination of tags will lead to becoming easily searchable in user searches. A good combination of tags which follows our example would be; X12 Test, X12 review, Turtle Beach, Headset, X12 Unboxing, Headset unboxing, Turtle Beach unboxing. Make sure not to overflow your tag box with a thousand tags however. YouTube considered a long list of tags to be spam, and this goes againt YouTube terms of use and service. This can lead to a strike against your own account. Also make sure to keep tags out of the description box! This will only put off potential subscribers and will also lead to a YouTube strike. Good luck in titling your future videos, and we hope to see your channel flourish and grow!

2016 will be a year jam-packed with new games and exciting experiences. Here are just two we've picked out as highlights to lookforward to for 2016 which you might not expect, and certainly add some new flavour to the gaming sphere. Mirror’s Edge Catalyst The prequel to the critically acclaimed Mirrors Edge is finally on the tip of the release tongue, with fans waiting 6 years for a new game. With the DiCE team, we know the 6 years wait will most definitely be worth it. We see footage of a familiar face, the games’ female protagonist Faith Connors gliding through the City of Glass, fighting against an oppressive police state and fighting for the people’s freedom. The original Mirrors Edge offered very strict, scripted levels, with the only mobility being a few different ways to traverse the limited environment, however, with technological advancements and the new Frostbite 3 engine, players will enter an open-world which will give the player more freedom, and opens doors to new puzzles and scenarios. The combat system has been heavily overhauled, focusing on the pacifistic narrative of Faith, removing guns as a weapons choice all together. Prepare to run across this beautiful city on May 26, 2016 on PS4, PC and XBOX ONE. Doom DOOM is a series of games which needs no introduction. The godfather of FPS shoot ’em games is set to return with a gore fueled bang this year, brought to us by id Software. The game tears away from the survival horror of DOOM 3, a game which failed to live up to the high expectations of many fans, and instead returns to a bullet storm hell scape in which you tear apart enemies with your bare hands and blast them into a thousand pieces with signature weapons. The unofficial motto of the game appears to be “”badass demons, big effing guns, and moving really fast”. The Revenant, Mancubus, and Cyberdemon return from previous games, and with slight redesigns look as scary and fun as ever. The game ignores modern cover mechanics to try and adopt a fast paced run and gun system, in an attempt to please old fans of the original games. Multiple multiplayer modes return to DOOM, such as four-player deathmatch, domination, freeze tag, and clan arena. A new addition to the game will be the Doom “SnapMap” where players can construct new game maps and modes and then share their content online with other players. The game will be hitting XBOX ONE, PS4 and PC later this year.

YouTube have introduced a Trending tab on their homepage and apps that shows a list of videos currently gaining traction. YouTube announced on their blog yesterday a new Trending feature to coincide with the release of their YouTube Rewind 2015 video, a recap of the year on YouTube. With YouTube Trending it’s now easier than ever to find the hottest new videos that are quickly gaining views. As YouTube say on their blog: “It’s the best way to catch the videos, creators, and trends that people watch, share, and talk about each and every day. See ’em as they take off and before they appear in YouTube Rewind 2016.” The Trending tab uses an algorithm that examines videos based on their comments, views and “external references”, assumably how much a video has been shared. The tab will vary slightly depending on your location, for localised content, but won’t relate to your viewing history in any way. On the YouTube Android application you can also select from a number of categories including music, gaming, and news, for specific viral videos. My personal experience of the Trending tab so far has shown a slightly mismatched feed of news clips, celebrity moments, sports and famous YouTuber’s videos. Whether this feature is likely to appeal to people is yet to be seen but whether it does or not, having only been released for a day I’m sure we can expect to see improvements especially if YouTube curate the feed to a greater extent.

After a long sabbatical which started on September 1, 2014, Leslie Benzies, the Rockstar North President has resigned. The famous studio employee worked on each Grand Theft Auto installement sicne GTA III and also contributed to projects such as Red Dead Redemption, LA NOIR, and Max Payne 3. The news comes from Kotaku, who published the following statement; “We can confirm that Leslie Benzies went on sabbatical on September 1, 2014 and has decided not to return to work for the company. We are very grateful for Leslie’s contributions to Rockstar over the last 15 years as we worked together to make some amazing games,” the statement says. “Leslie helped us build an incredible team that will continue to create great experiences for our fans. Leslie will always be a friend to the company and of course we are going to miss him but we wish him the absolute best for the future.” Benzies is often cited as a key compoent of the Rockstar team and one of the many reasons why GTA III was a success. He received the BAFTA Special Award for Games for their contribution to the videogame industry in 2005. It is not known what Leslie Benzies plans to do next, but we can surely expect big things from such a giant within the gaming industry.

Viewing patterns released by entertainment research groups. The enmxt generation of parents, people aged from 18-25 claim they would rather stick to internet based entertainment such as YouTube and Netflix than fork out for TV liscences. It is already common knowledge that Sky and ITV are two companies seeing profit drops because of streaming services, but what will happen to such services when the new age of "millenials" become the largest customer base? Will Sky and ITV still have customers? With news, entertainment, and live fun available so readily on the internet has traditional TV passed its epoch? Ofcom are sceptical to give legitimate weight to such claims, but do claim that patterns are emerging supporting the concept of traditional TV being overtaken by internet services. LEK media also claimed that such behaviour of the millenial generation is not waviering, and that these people will not simply revert back to Television once they have their own homes and family, but rather will stay fixed to internet entertainment. One can look at YouTube success stories such as PewDiePie who's famous YouTube channel pulls in more daily views than multiple highlight evening TV shows with million dollar budgets. What do you think the future of Television is? Leave a comment below.

Three years ago, YouTube, our beloved video sharing platform was undemocratically blocked in Pakistan, as a video seemed to show insults to Islam. The telecom branch of Pakistan has now lifted this ban, as Google have worked hard to produce a Pakistani version of YouTube. However, in a statement Google have said, "Google/YouTube will accordingly restrict access to the said offending material for users within Pakistan." Is this fair? Should the young minds of Pakistan have limited access to YouTube and its content? Or should the content be blocked? Over 12 people died in the riots in Pakistan after the film "Innonce of Muslims" seemed to portray the prophet Mohammad in a mocking, satirical manner. What do you think of this newly formed "censored" version of YouTube? Is it better than no access? Should there be full access? Let us know in the comments.

Footage has gone viral after a pair of Aussie blokes hilariously attemp to stop a robbery. The two men, named James Ross-Munroe and Kane Wiblen, were minding their own when one of them noticed an Oporto shop at Arundel service station had been broken into. When they go over to investigate they notice the theives vehicle outside – which had no license plates – and then decided to take the keys from the ignition. When the theives came out and jumped in the car one of the aussie blokes jumped in after them and throw a few punches. Only in Australia right? The thieves decided to make a run for it on foot – with Ross-Munroe giving chase. Unfortunately they where not able to catch them. The investigation is ongoing, with police confirming that the car was stolen. Ross-Munroe was quoted as saying: “When the driver came back to the car he realised his keys were missing, the passenger jumped in and I managed to land a few punches. I chased them but because I’m fat they got away” Seriously, only in Australia....

Over the past few months, the hard working team of Ritual have been compiling a comprehensive growth guide which will be sure to help your channel flourish within a world of heavy competition and every-growing channel bases. With over 50 years of collective experience, the guide is an excellent companion to any YouTube channel. The folks at Ritual guarantee a significant and noticeable growth in 3 months. And judging from the channels we have worked with since our inception, one thing we excel in, is helping our channels grow, whether it is one of our glamour, gamer, ASMR, or viral channels. The contents of the guide boast an eclectic selection, from simple Rules of engagements, to things such as forging your channel identity which include things like banners, logos and introductions. Also how to choose great video titles, improving video watch time, channel consistency, and an overall summary of how you, as a channel, can grow. Channels under our supervision have seen growths from 100 subscribers to 100,000. However, we have also seen channels that have struggled to get off of the ground and ultimately failed. It is from this failure that we have learnt, grown, and adapted to know the rigorous ins and outs of YouTube success. Our promise to you, as a RITUAL partner is that if you follow this guide, and put in as much as effort as possible (which is required for any kind of growth), you will see a change within 3 months. There will be greater consistency with your channels and thousands more active viewers.

Months after its release I am finally in a comfortable position to share my views on Fallout 4. This will be a review, first and foremost, so I am attempting to cast aside any personal bias I may have toward the Fallout franchise and Bethesda as a studio I have held adoration for, for most of my gaming life. The game tries to leap forward in the genre of open world action adventure. Please note my hesitation to call it an RPG. The most vital point of any open world action game, for me, is the environment in which Bethesda have managed to craft one of the best worlds they have created to date. It is interesting, exciting, different, and very engaging. Morrowind was very alien, Oblivion held an aura of generic fantasy but was still fascinating to explore, from Anvil to Cheydinhal. Skyrim was breath-taking and captivating, harsh and wondrous. Fallout 3 was destructively unique. The feeling of wondering and exploring was captured in these worlds as both immersive and captivating. Fallout 4 takes this concept and almost perfects it, combining all of their previous projects into a world that you can lose yourself in for, literally, days. The rolling hills of the landscape is a wonderful change from New Vegas, the winding broken roads help the world feel much more organic rather than a world crafted by people in a studio. The world of Boston boasts fantastic house designs and the villages are unique and varied, Lexington felt like a sprawling village and downtown Boston actually felt like it may have well been a bustling city, before the Great War. The world has good pacing of locations, you’re not bombarded with locations but it’s also not too far to walk into you encounter the next thing to explore. To elaborate, the world is so fun to explore, that whilst on an important quest you can spot something in a distance and explore this area first. I didn’t need to save Oberland Station from Super Mutants anyway. You want to go inside every building, every hospital, and every factory, just to see what mysteries are held inside. My only reservations about the world are the Anti-Aliasing options which are quite weak and blur textures when you move, which can sometime spoil the environment. Things like wires and tree branches shimmer and it just doesn’t look good. So there are a few things to be improved, but the graphics of the world are solid, they are by no means the best, but they beat out the earlier games, which to be honest, is expected. However, with the lighting and the graphics combined the world is one of the most beautiful created by Bethesda, if by any developer team. Approaching this game with the knowledge of a voice protagonist bothered me. A Bethesda game was usually centred on you sculpting a character, making them your own and experiencing the story as this character. The voices protagonist takes this essence of Bethesda games away. Instead of being able to completely imagine a character, you are given a voice which is not yours. However, this is a personal issue. As far as the implementation and delivery of the voices protagonist goes, it is excellent. The dialogue options can be a little vague but the responses are always fuelled with story-driven elements and can often be quite intimidating or scary. If one takes Fallout 4 as its own game, the implementation of the voiced system is excellent. It rivals games such as Mass Effect and The Witcher 3. Despite this, it is a feature I would gladly remove from the game with mods, and hope to see an abolition of this feature in the next Elder Scrolls game. To discuss more features generally, the shooting mechanics of this FPS have been greatly improved. The animations are enriched and there is definitely a feeling of weight and “oomph” behind each shot. The pistols feel like pistols and the missile launcher feels like you did actually just blast 5 kilograms of explosive destruction into that horde of ambushing ghouls. The weapon customization could use a better user interface, it isn’t very intuitive at first but once you get the hang of it, the process becomes really fun. Turning a useless pipe rifle into a 50. Calibre sniper rifle to blast off the heads of your enemies has never been more pleasing, especially with the gratification that comes with, “damn, that was my weapon that did that”. The armour customization is much simpler, but also offers some cool features which improve upon Skyrim’s very simple armour upgrade system. Moving onto the general interface of the game, it could be a lot better. The UI was clearly built specifically for consoles and controllers, with little consideration for how a PC user with a mouse and keyboard might have navigate. Sure, it is acceptable and doesn’t cause any problems, but the pipboy hides certain menu’s unless you click to the end with your mouse or move it along with arrow keys, a tiresome task when all it should take is a seamless click, but this isn’t a problem for console users who can simply lightly press their analogue sticks. Apart from that, it was nice to see familiar features return like the ability to collect and play holotapes as well as picking up notes and letters from around the wastes. These were implemented in what I thought was a very tasteful fashion. This next area kind of links in with the user interface, but is a double edged sword. That is the settlement building system. I both love it and hate it. I love it when things go according to my creative plans, but that seldom happens and instead I spend an hour trying to create something which should be incredibly simple and intuitive, but instead I am blocked by the game for seemingly no apparent reason. The main problem is Bethesda’s need for clipping. Why can I not simply clip these two walls slightly together to create my bass? Why must I be greeted with an obnoxious red block which tells me, “no, you cannot do that”, even though there are no technological restrictions given that mods, without the G.E.C.K can easily fix this issue. The builder is very restricted and boring without mods after a couple of hours, and yet again Bethesda have allowed the modding community to finish their game for them. The AI sees a dramatic improvement for other games. The animations and diversity of the NPC characters makes the game feel more alive than any Bethesda game previously. The cities/settlements/villages tend to boast more interesting characters which always have something interesting or witty to say, albeit some of the dynamic randomly generated quests are quite generic and repetitive, but on your first play through you would surely get great fun out of them. The voice acting is a mixed bag, some great voices, some familiar voices in the guise of Wes Johnson, and some new voices, and some voices which didn’t quite keep in terms of quality, some felt like they were just voice actors, which breaks immersion. However, Bethesda have done a good job as always with the NPC’s of their games. The story of the game is arching and complicated, it allows you to take a very direct path, however there are multiple ways to go down this path. Well, actually, two ways. As a nice, loving father or as an angry, bitter father looking for his son. To withhold spoilers, there is a big choice at the end of the game, but this is similar to FO3 where the only real choice which mattered occurred right at the end. This lacks the depth and replay value of the main story, something which New Vegas seemingly mastered, however, for a single story, the writing and production is Bethesda’s best yet. Side quests and secondary faction quests are some of the most fun I have had in a game in years. There are completely unique story lines which have never been explored and go much further than go to point a, then b, then grab XY, and bring to me at z, and this makes the game more replay-able, with multiple outcomes to most side quests, adding to the unique feel of the game. Overall, the questing of the game is fantastic. Fallout 4 has achieved so much, and improved on even more than that. However, there are improvements left to be desired. The game is not perfect, and I am afraid to say it is not my favourite Bethesda game because I feel the Fallout Franchise slowly creeping away from what I originally loved about Bethesda as a studio, but the game itself, on its own standards is truly amazing. It is one of the best games I have played in recent years and I am sure I will pump hundreds of hours into it over the coming years. If I had to rate Fallout 4, I would give it a 8.5/10; in its current, vanilla state.

Over the past few days, you will have obviously have heard the commotion around the Fine Brothers channels and their attempt to place licencing on their brand of "react" videos. Whether or not they wanted to brand any sort of reaction videos of their own, we can look at the over-arching complications of popular YouTubers, especially ones with a specific style of entertainment, trying to assert some form of control over their entertainment demographics. With channels such as PewDiePie, Jacksepticeye, and the Fine Bros, it is very hard to compete with their level of success. However, Felix nor "Jack" (not his real name), have ever tried to make licence claims on their content, and neither have they been known for being tyrannical YouTubers who file copyright complaint after complaint, even for slightly similar content. What I want to say is, why did it take the Fine Bros so long to be criticised? For years they have been filing complaints and copyright strikes against any video or channel which has even vaguely resembled their own, effectively taking down any competition. Is this fair use of YouTube's Copyright system? The Fine Bros have been bleeding subscribers, rightly so, for trying to assert their authority over certain brands they could never control, but we should not wait for such events to happen before we taken action and act over these kinds of predatory channels. If a certain YouTuber with a lot of influence and power is abusing that influence, we should work together as a community of entertained consumers to put an end to such aggressive discrimination and abuse of copyright and licencing systems. Some may say the Fine Bros wanted to protect their content? Okay, that is fair, but bear in mind that they have held trademarks for their Teens, Elders, and YouTubers react shows for many years. They simply wanted to try and make a profit from anyone trying to delve into the react entertainment industry, thus rather than losing out on the competition, they share in the success of the competition. But what do you think? Were the Fine Bros in the right? Were they in the wrong? Let us know.