Get Lost On YouTube

It’s one of my favorite past-times and guilty pleasures.

After all of the work is done and the house is quiet, instead of sitting back and letting the television waft over me, I go and get lost on YouTube. I usually start with some cheesy hair metal bands from the eighties, but it quickly devolves into this amazing world of acoustic music discovery that traipses across genres and generations. It takes me back, it pushes me forward and it moves me into directions I could have never imagined possible back when I was much younger and much more interested in music.

Long live serendipity.

Many people feel that the Internet kills serendipity simply because we’re only consuming or connecting to content that we’re looking for. I think YouTube has done an amazing job of changing that with their related videos. It inspires more discovery and over the past couple of years, YouTube has been the number one reason that I have been purchasing music… and a lot of it. Better than that, it has helped me discover and support musicians I would have otherwise never been exposed to. People like Mike Masse who plays his acoustic guitar at the Pie Pizzeria in South Jordan, Utah…

I am not alone.

Mike’s videos have over five million combined views. He launched a Kickstarter project (Mike Massé will record his first original CD!) and raised over $10,000 for his music project. This isn’t a Blog post about YouTube or the viability of a career in music. This is a Blog post about just how much (and how dramatic) our world has changed in a few short years. It affects everything from culture and creativity to business and technology. It’s simply amazing to think about how much this interconnectivity and access to content is making our lives that much richer. I could go on and on about how much joy I get from discovering new things each and every day because of the Internet, but I’m a little busy right now getting lost on YouTube.

Do yourself a favor: go get lost on YouTube…