Answers/Problems & answers/Original research
Problems & answers
Original research: Every Question, Answered
First-party studies built from my own data — numbers nobody else can publish because nobody else has them. Every question below is answered here in full — the link takes you to the page it came from if you want the working behind it. 14 questions.
I Tested 40+ YouTube Titles Against vidIQ's Scoring Model — One Clause Moved the Score 24 Points
Across structured title-testing sessions against vidIQ's title-scoring model, the largest single lever was not the headline formula but the specificity of the middle clause. Holding the opening and closing beats identical and changing only the middle consequence moved the score from 73 to 97 — a 24-point swing from one clause. Two further findings: the best architecture differs by subject matter rather than being universal, and 97 was a hard ceiling that no amount of word-level revision broke.
Is this measuring actual video performance or a scoring model?
A scoring model. These are vidIQ title scores, not view counts, and a high score is a prediction rather than an outcome. The findings are about what the model rewards, which is useful for drafting but is not the same as proven view lift.
How many titles were tested?
Over forty across several structured sessions, including deliberate controls where only one clause was varied while everything else was held constant.
What was the single biggest finding?
That middle-clause specificity outweighed the choice of formula. A named, concrete, personal consequence scored 24 points higher than a systemic or abstract version of the same claim in the same title structure.
Why did 97 turn out to be a ceiling?
Six word-level variants of the two highest-scoring titles all tied or scored lower. The model's own diagnostic indicated the format category itself was capped, and that reaching higher would require a structurally different hook rather than further editing.
Does a higher vidIQ title score actually mean more views?
Not by itself, and I want to be careful here. vidIQ's score is a prediction generated from patterns in titles that have performed, not a measurement of how a specific video did. A title that scores 97 has the shape of a title that tends to work; whether the video behind it works depends on the thumbnail, the first thirty seconds, the topic and the audience. What the score is genuinely useful for is comparing two drafts of the same idea, which is exactly how I used it.
Can other creators use these architectures?
The specificity principle should generalise, since it is about concreteness rather than any particular phrasing. The exact templates were tuned against one channel's subject matter and one scoring model, so treat them as a starting hypothesis to test rather than a formula to copy.
Full explanation: I Tested 40+ YouTube Titles Against vidIQ's Scoring Model — One Clause Moved the Score 24 Points
What Music Platforms Actually Pay Per Play — 42 Million Plays of My Own Royalty Data
Across seven years, 45,894 royalty lines and 41.98 million plays of my own catalog, the spread between platforms is far wider than the per-stream debate suggests. Apple Music paid $0.0066 per play and YouTube Premium $0.0092, while Facebook paid $0.00000088 — about 7,570 times less. The headline number: 98.7% of my lifetime plays came from social and short-form video, and they produced 1.6% of my money. Facebook alone delivered 41.3 million plays and $36.14.
How much does Spotify pay per stream?
Across 186,519 of my streams from 2019 to 2026, Spotify paid an average of $0.0033 per play, or roughly 301 plays per dollar. In the US specifically the rate was $0.0039, about 259 plays per dollar. My yearly Spotify rate has been remarkably stable at around $0.0038 since 2020, apart from a dip in 2023.
Which platform pays the most per stream?
In my data, YouTube Premium (listed as YouTube Red) at $0.0092 per play and Apple Music at $0.0066 per play were the highest-paying at meaningful volume. Apple Music paid me $1,110 from 175,162 plays; Spotify paid $613 from 186,519 plays — more money from fewer plays.
How much does Facebook pay musicians per play?
$0.00000088 per play in my data, which is about 1.14 million plays to earn one dollar. My single largest line item was 3,368,798 plays of one song in one country in one month, which paid $1.36.
Do YouTube Shorts pay artists anything?
Almost nothing per view. 51,461 Shorts plays of my catalog produced $0.17 total, roughly 308,000 plays per dollar. Shorts are a discovery surface, not an income surface.
Is this the same as total music income?
No, and this is the most important caveat. These are recording-side royalties reported by my distributor only. Performance royalties from a PRO, mechanical royalties from the MLC, and SoundExchange money are all separate pots that do not appear anywhere in this data.
Are these gross platform payouts?
No. These are net amounts reported to me as the artist. Rates are normalised for team percentage, so split tracks do not understate the platform rate, but they still reflect what reached my account rather than what the platform paid at the top.
Full explanation: What Music Platforms Actually Pay Per Play — 42 Million Plays of My Own Royalty Data
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