 think the best thing I ever did as a video content creator was signing up over at library I think creating a library account and starting to post my videos over at library was the best thing I ever did but I didn't really think that at the time I signed up over at library about nine months ago I made a video about it and I tell you guys hey I'm mirroring all my content over on library it's a free and open source platform so those of us that don't want to be on YouTube to view content can just go view it on library so that's great I love promoting free and open source technology it's a peer-to-peer technology it's about blockchain based technology they have their own cryptocurrency that everybody's paid in and when I signed up nine months ago though I really kind of treated library just as a backup plan it was just some other place to have my content mirrored other than YouTube just in case right just in case one day YouTube went crazy and wanted to delete my account or something or YouTube as a company just went completely tits up and everything was lost well at least I have all of my videos posted on another platform so that's really what I was thinking initially but it quickly turned into more than that because when I signed up to library nine months ago it was still a small platform there weren't that many of us on it as far as creators and there weren't that many viewers on it I didn't get that many views on my videos I get a lot more views on my videos just nine months later so I know a lot more people are actually checking out library and there are a ton more creators on library I see really big youtubers now starting to move over to library when I first signed up the app was really rough around the edges the library application the desktop app the mobile app also was kind of rough around the edges it was lacking features the website itself library dot TV if you wanted to just view library in your web browser the website didn't look that good basic features that you expected on a video platform were we're missing at the time you couldn't comment on videos at the time which is kind of weird but thinking about really video platforms really being kind of a social platform as well you should have the ability to comment on the videos or reply to comments on the videos you couldn't do that nine months ago you can do that now though a lot of people nine months ago when I first told you guys to go check out libraries said it was slow it was ugly it was just clunky and you guys didn't like it well so much has changed in a very short amount of time if you haven't checked out library recently you really should so let me pull up library dot TV here in my web browser here and you can see the UI just on the website and in the desktop application as well it's gonna look very similar has completely changed it's a lot more attractive now if I actually went and viewed my channel somewhere in here you know that actually looks a lot better this used to be some kind of weird layout where all your videos were lined up in one gigantic column and it just didn't look good this kind of grid layout that they've gone to much more reminiscent of something like YouTube for example I think is a much cleaner UI and now when you click on a video if you want to comment on a video maybe I want to comment on my video about what software I really use I can click on it and you know the videos actually start playing after just two or three seconds for me so I'm gonna pause it I don't want YouTube to potentially strike me for using somebody else's material even though it's my material but you know it's not slow anymore you typically these days when I start playing a video it never buffers it takes two or three seconds for the video to start and it never buffers and now you have the ability to comment people can comment if I wanted to I could reply or I could view some replies and you know I sometimes I get very large threads of comments on some of the more popular videos I post so there's a nice social aspect to library now that wasn't there in the beginning they still haven't added the ability to you know upvote or downvote or you know like or dislike or anything like that yet maybe they will add that soon right now the only basic features that you have is you can subscribe to channels you can follow channels and that you can comment on the videos and that's about it as a creator is still lacking the ability for me to really do any kind of moderation now it's peer-to-peer based technology and blockchain and it's really kind of censorship resistant technology this technology is designed that anybody can post anything they want basically as long as it's not copyrighted material that you stole from somebody else but you know you can post whatever you want you know political religious it can be controversial stuff they allow adult content you can post pornographic content on library if you want to you do have to market as being adult content because there's such a large amount of the population that doesn't want to see that stuff especially if you happen to be at work or something you don't want that stuff to it like appear on the library dot TV homepage so I can tell you that being on library for nine months I've never stumbled across a pornographic video by accident that's never happened to me although I have heard complaints from other people that say that sometimes weird stuff does appear on their homepage of library but I'm mainly subscribed to Linux and technology stuff that's typically the tags I'm following so it it would kind of be weird if all of a sudden you know library on their homepage was recommending me some crazy adult pornographic stuff because I'm not really following any kind of tags that even suggest I would be interested in that sort of thing now I did mention that LBRY has its own cryptocurrency called LBC library credits and you earn LBC simply by viewing videos if I just start watching some of these videos you get LBC by inviting other people to the platform because of course they want to attract new users new content creators new viewers so if you just invite people to the platform you earn cryptocurrency that way if I go into my account here because I am logged in if I go to rewards here you can see that there will be a ton of different ways that I could earn rewards as a creator yours will look something similar like this you know I can watch more content and earn rewards I can invite people and earn rewards I can claim certain rewards depending on how much content I'm sinking over from YouTube because I've got what 776 videos they're currently sinking they pay me for those videos every month daily watch reward again just watching stuff once you get to certain levels of subscribers you get certain rewards so I passed the 5,000 verified followers recently even though I have 16,000 subscribers on library only 5,000 of them are verified I'm not sure why that number has such a difference now when library first started out it really was just a small or alternative platform mainly for people that had been banned by YouTube it was mainly where all the crypto channels went because about a year ago YouTube went crazy they just lost their minds and started banning anybody that mentioned cryptocurrency so they deleted a whole bunch of channels and of course library was around then it was very very small platform but all those crypto guys just went to library so they really kind of jump started library actually YouTube kind of jump started library in a way by banning all of those crypto channels and then of course library being free and open source technology a lot of Linux channels were also starting to mirror their content so in the early days really all the videos were about crypto and Linux that was all it was about now you've got a wide variety of content there's so many more channels on library now and when I mentioned you know they were banning a whole bunch of crypto people they're still doing it YouTube I mean this article was just from two three weeks ago I think September 7th where they were banning people for making videos that just talked about crypto these weren't even crypto channels they weren't even people that were trying to make money with crypto or scamming people with crypto I think that somebody was just doing a news thing and they just happened to mention crypto and they started banning channels for large channels now YouTube reversed some of the bandings because they realized that you know that was the wrong thing to do that they were banning people in some ways for no reason the neat thing about library being peer-to-peer and blockchain is library is not just a website library.tv is not the library library is a protocol meaning library.tv is the front end to library but anybody can make a front end to library and one of the criticisms people had about library for a long time is that there weren't any other front ends to library any other instances using the library protocol but recently I noticed a couple of weeks ago somebody created a second one called Odyssey and it looks really good I mean it looks gorgeous a matter of fact it looks so gorgeous that library.tv recently did a redesign and it looks a lot like Odyssey two weeks ago library.tv did not look like this it still had some of the hideousness the ugliness that it had been going on really since I joined in January but a lot of people when Odyssey appeared just a few weeks ago a lot of people started pushing Odyssey is hey that's where you want to be you want to watch library go to Odyssey and I think the library.tv guys realized that and implemented some of the same design choices and I mentioned how it's exploding in popularity there are sites that track this stuff there's a site called library Nomics that you can go and get charts and graphs and you know see how many people are on the platform see how many channels are on the platform I can tell you this page here I think is the top hundred or top 200 channel and I don't know it tracks a whole bunch of the top channels on library and when I joined in January heck I think by February I was somewhere in the top 10 of this now my channel even though I've got so many more subscribers now I am number 43 as far as the top channels on library and that's a good thing that's where I should be you know because that means a lot more people are on library a lot more channels are on library a lot bigger channels are on library because now you've got huge names that if you hang out on YouTube you recognize some of these channels you recognize you know veritasium for one you know EEV blog minute physics is another big YouTube channel you've got Jordan Peterson and he's right here next to me hey I'm about to catch a Jordan so watch out some other names that stick out sticks hexenhammer another very large YouTube channel main sticks hexenhammer and Jordan Peterson right here by me those guys I'm pretty sure have over a million subscribers to their channels so it's kind of weird that I'm kind of stuck in here with people like that over on library but again in the platform is still kind of in its infancy still a lot of people don't know about library a lot of creators are still not syncing their content to library and they really should be when I mentioned that all I thought library was was a place to put my videos as a just in case well library has been good financially for me I was actually very surprised even early on the first couple of months I joined library how much LBC I could acquire rather quickly through you guys viewing my content and tipping me so when you view something on library so if I go back here and I don't know I'm gonna view old tech book OTB he just put out a new video that was published today over at library and if I go down here let me pause this video I don't want it to play I go down here and I go to support and I can give him some credits here you know five twenty five a hundred whatever it is I want to give him I can send him a five credit tip I confirm and I just tip him five LBC and that's kind of how the platform works you find something you like you're getting LBC anyway just for doing stuff on the platform for viewing content for inviting people for reposting content you know a lot of the stuff that you just do on the platform you earn a little LBC for as a viewer and they give you that so you can tip your favorite content creators because you don't get any kind of ads or anything on library there's no ad network that's built into it or anything like that the people that are posting on library or depending on you guys to donate to them and I think that is a very clean and pure way of doing things if your viewers like you if they appreciate the kind of content that you're putting out then they'll tip you and I think that's a lot better than just bombarding people with ad after ad after ad about products nobody wants to buy I think it rewards good content as well ads can reward everybody when ad can play on somebody's horrible channel that's got just bad content or even content that they stole from somebody else I mean you ads don't discriminate in that way but by having this donation model where people have to tip you in LBC you know the good creators make money the bad creators they don't make a dime and back in January when I first signed up to library you guys know I had just quit my job I was a supervisor at a large retailer I've been working in retail for years I don't work in the computer industry and it was a bad time for retail and it was a bad time for the retailer I was working at I knew that they were really close to bankruptcy and they were about to lay off a bunch of people that they were about to cut a lot of positions including probably my position so I actually quit in January and then of course in February COVID happened there was a lockdown of the whole country so that business was actually shut down for I think two plus months they never even opened the doors during that time so I wouldn't have been paid had actually been there those two months and then when they did open back up after COVID they announced bankruptcy and they eliminated a lot of positions including the position I had held so this entire crazy year of 2020 the only income I have is from video content and of course make money on YouTube as a platform but I was surprised at how much money I have made on library because without library I'll be honest I don't think I could have made it this far into 2020 I have made a few thousand dollars on library about a month ago I converted a bunch of LBC that I had acquired you know in the first seven or eight months that I was on the platform and you know converted it to US dollars and it was like five grand it was like five thousand dollars US not an insignificant amount of money especially for somebody that doesn't have a real job right now and you know that money is crazy because to make that much money on library you know compared to what I'm making on YouTube I make more on YouTube of course but it shouldn't be as close as it is because I get 10 times the views on YouTube maybe 20 times the views on YouTube that I get on my library videos because again library just hasn't exploded in popularity yet still the masses have never heard of library library as an application as a desktop application or mobile application is available on Windows Mac and Linux and for mobile it's available on Android they're working on an iOS edition I don't think it's ready just yet that's really the last major platform that they have to tackle is to get an iOS app ready and I think you guys need to check it out I think this is what will one day be my replacement for YouTube once it gets to a certain level now before I go I need to think a few special people I need to think Michael Gabe Corbinian Mitchell Devon Fran arch 5530 a commie Chuck Claudio Donnie Dylan George Caleb devils Lewis Paul Scott and Willie these guys they are my highest tier patrons over on patreon without these guys this episode would not have been possible the show is also brought to you by all of these fine ladies and gentlemen all these names you're seeing on the screen right now these are all my supporters over on patreon because this channel is supported by you guys the community if you'd like to support my work check out distro tube over on patreon all right guys peace