Ali Spagnola – Making outrageous music and videos while trying to befriend the algorithm

Oh, I was using YouTube at that time for a portfolio. I was an art student and so I was putting my animations online. I was definitely not trying to be a YouTube personality.

Well, good for you, I guess you moved on really easily. You found a new girl and it only took a couple weeks. Remember when you said that you wanted to give me the world. Well, good for you, you look happy and health, not me, if you ever cared to ask.

Yeah, Twitter was the main one that I was on and posting, geez, I would post like every hour. Some joke or some sort of question or picture, I don't even know there's pictures at the time but I was heavy on Twitter. I look back and I'm like, geez, I'm good if I get one tweet out a day now.

That was when people were getting on the platform and be like, hey, you might like this comedian weirdo that's fighting in legal case follow her.

Well, I was a musician and realize that selling out of 500 seater would be an incredible evening. But making a YouTube video that gets 500 views would be a pretty crappy level of exposure on that platform, the amount that you can reach is so much bigger online. So I stopped focusing on touring and playing and convincing my friends to show up to shows and started making things that could reach people online.

That was still my space days. I was doing that too. But it seemed like you could garner some attention on the Internet. I think it was Colbie Caillat, who they said came up on my space, which is interesting. I also think she has a family member in the industry which which helped but it's a good story to say, oh, you got discovered online.

Geez, I don't know. Did you look back?

Yeah, that was my pop album.

Well, that's interesting that that one is what I have at first. I did a Power Hour before that, The Ego was more of me being a traditional musician making pop music that's more serious. But before that, did a bunch of comedy music and had a live show. That was an interactive party where I would just invite people to drink.

I was still doing that it was I was in art school and playing music around and realize that as I mentioned earlier, I was begging people to come to my shows but nobody wants to see some boring chick in a coffee shop strumming a guitar to songs you don't know. At the same time, I was also hosting Power Hour parties which were so easy to get people to come to. I would make a mix of one minute songs, this is a drinking game I didn't invent it's it's just that I would make a playlist of popular music and then everybody would come on you take a shot of beer every minute for an hour. Which first seems easy and then seems really hard. It ends up being between six and eight beers. But it's it's just a really inclusive, fun way to play a drinking game and I realized I wanted my shows to be like that. So I turned my show into that same game. I wrote one minute songs they were all funny and jokes about drinking.

09:32

And sounds like a good idea. Take off your pants and climb that sculpture crusher can with your head and yellow bouncer on jewel and sleep at Brett. racer razor shave. Good idea. Sounds like a good idea.

And started playing that live. And it went from begging people to come see me strumming guitar to lines around the block at bars in Pittsburgh, it was so easy to market, it was super fun. Bars would roll out the red carpet and give us free beer for the hour because I knew people would stick around and make a bunch of money. And then I started putting that on the internet.

I did my own my own songs first but I also still to this day play covers as a Power Hour.

It's kind of like a wedding band that gives up after a minute is what I say about my cover show.

I told my group of friends and then word of mouth, I'm not kidding. The first show had a line around the block. It was ridiculous. I was like, wow, why this is so easy. I don't know why I haven't been doing this longer. When before that playing live music felt like such a struggle. But it really was that I was throwing a party instead of trying to get people to care about my art.

Yeah, it was like that. I knew that I wanted to keep playing music and that seemed to be the way to play live successfully so I kept at it. And but that's also about the time that I happened to get into a lawsuit about the Power Hour. And it was an interesting story that this guy tried to trademark the term, which is like saying, oh, I invented poker and no one can play poker anymore and it's my word, which is what he was doing with this drinking game. And so I fought him but that story just happened to go viral on Reddit, which garnered me a lot of attention, which was lucky and awesome and super helpful to my initial growth on Twitter. And it just grew from there that I knew that I should keep putting things online and and creating in that space.

I don't think you can trademark gameplay but the name, yes. He trademarked the term Power Hour within the drinking game realm. The problem is that no one at the trademark office had ever played one nerds. And so they just immediately issued it to him. And then he started defending his mark would which is you're supposed to do if you have a trademark, you have to stop other people from using it otherwise, it will get what's called diluted and you won't be worth anything and you'll get it revoked. And so he was doing what he's supposed to defending his mark, but he should never have been the issue issued the mark in the first place. And I said that in the courts after having paid $30,000 in legal fees. It was interesting, because since he was issued the trademark, I was the aggressor, I was the one trying to get it revoked from him. So instead of him being the bad guy in the situation I was so I ended up paying all these legal fees and not getting them back from him in any way.

A personal email from this gentleman.

Oh, he may have made a fake lawyer email address that I pretty much established was him. But yeah, it was just very formal. It he said you got to stop doing this. And I and that was my full time thing at that time. I mean, I was I was still in college, but I was doing it and making money and it was it was my job and he just took away my income.

Well, everybody loves the traditional story of a young girl fighting an evil man trying to stop people from drinking, don't we? I mean, it's like the perfect setup to go viral on on specifically Reddit. And then a bunch of people just got behind me and I'm like, yeah, fight this guy. And so I spoke to a lawyer and the lawyer in no way had any idea that it would end up being that amount that I said $30,000 it was, it was supposed to be quick and whatever. And, and I knew that I was gonna win so I went for it. But he dragged things out, took as long as possible kept spending my time which is my lawyers time, which is my money and the money is kept ballooning up. But you know, when you're in a tunnel, and you're like, well, I've gone this far. I'm not going to stop now. That was some sort of logical fallacy. I forget what it's called where you've already said.

Sunk cost, there we go, literally costs and I'm sitting there being well, the end of the tunnel is almost here after after $2,000. I should definitely keep going. And then somehow we get to 30k but I won.

I did a Kickstarter, it was on Indiegogo. And I said well, power hours free now I need to do a tour of the country playing them all across the US. Thanks for all the moral support. And I raised 40k and toward the US in an RV getting drunk with America. It was pretty crazy, gosh, and it was, it's so hard to pinpoint. It was really fun too because I was touring with a DJ so not a full band. It was me and my DJ and then an opening act, I would have to say that's the highlight. I found an opening act online I did an open call for any weirdo that wanted to warm up a power hour crowd so that's a pretty wide call. It ended up being an air guitarist and he is so he would play insane 80s music it's like lip synching but physical dance. It's he's so impressive. It was just like an incredible opener to get everyone amped is this weird, performative art thing. And the three of us got an RV and went around the US. It was really fun.

It's all slow and overlapping. There's no one moment where I'm like, this is my big thing that did whatever. And now I'm this it was just continually creating stuff, putting it online, trying different places. I mean, I was even a pretty big Viner at the time, let RIP. And so I can't say that anything was more calculated than just keep making things and putting them public.

Yeah, I mean, there were when I started on YouTube, there were always some pretty big names on there. I mean, pretty big for the time, right? But what was really big was vlogging and jump cuts. And I think that's just because of the medium that nobody's gonna have a two camera shot and make really smooth movements between CameraCuts. But it also helps I think, with the comedy and so I leaned into the jump cut thing to try and make abrupt changes, especially on a joke to heighten the unexpectedness of a video, and basically make it more funny. I honestly will tie my jump cuts to to heighten my own crappy jokes at times.

I had a couple of

jobs

, I worked at a couple of startups. I was in Pittsburgh, I was a lead artist at a video game company. I worked at Google remotely for a while. I sort of definitely did the whole nine to five thing but then from five to nine I was doing music and videos and putting stuff online, is it wasn't until five years ago that it was clear that I didn't, I shouldn't do the normal job thing anymore and devote all of my time to the internet art.

No, I got really lucky. And the company I worked at went under, it was a startup that failed. And so I was laid off and I was on unemployment and it wasn't succeeding at all. I was not making money online, but I had time to keep working on it because of that. So it was kind of making unemployment and then posting a lot of stuff. And that sort of helped me transition because I don't know I'm kind of not a risk taker, even though it seems that I'm so bold online. I don't know if I I would have left my job for quite a while because I didn't that because the internet wasn't supporting me.

Cuz it's awesome. The same reason you're doing this podcast it's so rewarding internally. It's fun to make something and then say hey, look what I made and the internet is created just for that.

Hey best Pal-y, I'm Ali. And what I do for a living is make the world more outrageous through the help of people like you. Sweet. What does that mean? I create cool stuff online, music, comedy, fitness. Basically, I make silly epic decisions in my everyday life because it's funny and spreads happiness and how do I survive by making outrageous full time? How do I pull this up? Because there's an awesome team of people ehem could be you my desk pallies that believe in what I do. It's kind of like these people are my outrageous record label. Like they decided that artists we know she makes cool stuff. Let's invest in her so she can keep making that stuff like are you kidding me? That's dope.

Oh, I didn't know how well it would work goodness that, I guess you could call that a turning point because holy crap it it works people supported me and from then on I was a full time creator. I did it because I don't know I known some people that had and I knew I was making stuff consistently already and I thought it would help me to consistently make more because now I'm held accountable to this page, are the people that are watching and so as an experiment I just launched and tried it and my patrons are amazing, and it's been amazing since then, holy crap.

360? Oh man.

What happened?

I mean it's still good, I'm very happy.

Yeah, maybe like 15,000, 10,000.

yeah,

No, no, that's also not so, because it was really still slow growth. For the longest time I was at 30k for like years, I think. I did have a viral moment I guess on YouTube specifically, that took me from between 30 and 60 to where you see me now.

So this is another luck thing. I made a video, my last video on YouTube. I emailed my editor and said this is it, we're done, I'm never making another YouTube video. And this one was one that I did for myself. I was like, this is fine. I'll just do something that will bomb again but I want to do it so I'm doing it. And I turned to Billie Eilish Bad Guy to a Meghan Trainor song. I really like it Bronx guy just can't get enough guy just always pumped guy. Make your mama sad. I'm the bad guy. Of course. Which is another lucky thing. I was gonna title it. What if Billie Eilish or what if Bad Guy was a happy song and I and I spoke to one of my friends who's also a YouTuber and she said no, put Meghan Trainor in the title that'll help. And I'm wondering if it hadn't. If it wouldn't have blown up had I not just happen to switch it last minute. Anyway, that got 4 million views, which is the most I've ever had on YouTube. And I look back at that time and even my other youtuber friend Christopher bill agrees. He said doing Bad Guy at that time was the cheat code to YouTube, no matter what Bad Guy title you video you had, if you had that in the title, it was just go viral. And I thought at the time, whoa, I stumbled on something great. I'm making things that work on YouTube. I'm gonna keep doing this as a format, which I did now. Now I have a series called What if where I change one song to a different artist style. But really, I do think it had nothing to do with that format. And it was just that anybody who did Bad Guy blew up, which also got me a bunch of subscribers really helpful. And of course, I leaned into that, but otherwise, I was done on YouTube, I was not gonna make anymore there.

Yeah, which wasn't considered a format, I was just thinking that that song was crazy and I wanted to play with it.

Because such the slow growth, I was not being rewarded on platform, it felt like I had no control, I was just making what I thought was really good art that should reach a lot of people and it wasn't going anywhere. And I do have some evidence that that was the case because after that blew up, a bunch of my old videos blew up to which had, for example, my last video where I turn my room into a fur room and I cover Florida ceiling in fur I made that and I was like this is this is great. This is definitely viral potential. This is a good watch, it should reach a lot of people and it just bombed absolutely fizzled, like everything else I was putting on there. So it was really frustrating because I just find myself figuring I don't know what good is. But then when the other video went viral, then that one took off and got over a million views too. And so I don't know what was happening there. But YouTube decided the video was bad, and then decided the video was good. And that lack of control is why I wanted to give up and why I still want to give up at this point sometimes.

Right.

Yeah, it's a slot machine, that they put rats in a cage. And then they they made this button to push and sometimes the button gives them food and sometimes the button doesn't. And it is random. And the rats go insane. They go clinically crazy pushing the button, because they don't have control. And that's the definition of a slot machine. And that's also the definition of how I feel YouTube works.

Yeah, it was that this platform isn't serving me I should do work focus on one that is and it still kind of is a case I do way better on other platforms with something about, I don't know, maybe I just like an abusive date because I focus so much on YouTube when it's not the one that's serving me the most. It's also weird though, to say hey, I'm a Facebooker, no, you say I'm a YouTuber, so maybe there's just some sort of cultural thing in that too, that I want to grow on there and optimize for that platform.

That's where I start my concept where I I start with, honestly the title and thumbnail if I can't think of what would be clickable, because that's the first thing that shows to people even if it's a great story if I can't summarize it in that, it's not worth making. So that's where I put most of my time on my long form videos. And then from there, I'll re-cut and make things fit the language of the platform in other places.

Facebook.

Twitter.

Yes, Tiktok.

No, that's the biggest slot machine ever, oh my goodness. That is all based on luck.

And they're brilliant. You have anxiety without telling me you have anxiety, I got 3, 200 pop sockets and made a giant fidget wall. They're optimized perfectly for Tiktok and speaks exactly the language that it needs to whatever or or I don't know what I'm talking about.

Yeah.

Snapchat then those go to Instagram stories.

Nothing is efficient, my goodness. I definitely need to be faster at my my distributing things.

Well, previously in our conversation we spoke about vine which was a decent chunk of my income at the time. I took a big hit when that disappeared and also emotional hit like what what what okay, I was I felt like I had a sort of personality there and now that that's gone I just didn't want that to happen again. And it almost did right? Tiktok was almost gone which I was kind of like, everyone, so I get I'm such a jerk, like laughing and people panicking.

But yeah, I focus on all these platforms because I've seen them disappear and not just going away but sometimes my Twitter is is just not doing well because it's after the holidays and nobody's on there or whatever and so then you have to focus on another one to to get by but dropping any of them feels unintelligent, business wise.

Healthy business, right? We're not talking about my mental state?

Okay, good.

Funny. Yeah, it's tough because I should be a better business person I think. I should be thinking about 10 years from now, 5 years from now, 5 days from now even yeah, this is again me sort of taking things as they come and and this luck thing about being being open to what happens and opportunities as I see them so I don't know what's the next thing that's gonna go viral on Twitter or Tiktok or if I should change from doing so much music to doing DIY stuff like my art pieces? And I guess it is more reactive which makes me feel like a bad business person. But it really yeah, I really don't have that sort of long term idea of where this is going.

Oh, god, my Patrons are worthless those oh, those jerks like everything I make, they're so sweet. No, I do I have a Discord, I'm very active in it and we all hang out in there. And it's my very close pallies that, join through Patreon. And I will show them early stuff, I'll ask their opinions. It's all very positive and it's tough. And like I said, I do music and I do art. And I feel like that almost screws me in the algorithm of trying to convince the slot machine to show me to people they don't know if they should show me the music fans or our fans. And so they show me to no one. So I should maybe decide which one I should do. But I honestly I'll do a poll and it'll be 50/50 keep doing them both, we'll love it. And so yeah, the feedback loop is fantastic for my ego, but maybe not for my algorithmic discussions. Yeah, it's so tough because you know, it seems like it would make sense the people who already love my stuff, there's got to be just like a ton more of those people, right? So if they love this stuff, there should be a ton of people that love this stuff, why doesn't it get in front of them, but I hear what you're saying about like, the slot machines want specificity and predictability. So that's that's got to be kind of challenging. That's why I started a fitness channel because it's only fitness health kind of things. And I know that that that serves the algorithm better and also it was it's good to get that out of my at least art music channel because it is so different and then I can be so specific over there. And girl that that type of people they want to watch that and not annoy the people that like music with me lifting.

Over a year, I've been doing that.

It seems easier to make stuff it's I can't say that it's grown like crazy after a year plus it's 25k or something it's still kind of a passion project but I it's stuff that I would be doing anyway, you know, I would be experimenting with new fitness tech or doing workouts or whatever so it's cool that I have somewhere to put that.

Hey best Pal-y, I'm Ali. And a 17 year old is having insane success with a hit song right now so my jealous self is here to turn Olivia Rodrigo's creation into something she never wanted. A punk song that sounds like it's performed by naked dude. So welcome to my attempts to turn Driver's License into a Blink 182 song which Olivia wasn't even alive when Blink was popular, which is good music get off my lawn okay joke but actually driver's license is a beautiful piece of artwork from a child. Vocals are just so delicate and lovely and emotional. Oh vocals this musician Alex Melton did a Blink 182 cover of Semi-Charmed Life which I saw multiple times because so many of my friends texted it to me being like hey, have you seen this guy? So my jealous self emailed him saying what I want from you is your voice and he agreed heck yeah, so he's putting his vocals on this track.

I didn't because again, like I said, though, I mean, I was playing 100 cedars in that one and, and I was putting out videos make reaching millions of people. So I went with the millions reach. I know, it's a different, emotional kind of thing but yeah, it just seemed like that was where I belonged, mentally, artistically,

I don't, I just live in it. I'm living in it right now. Are we done yet? I gotta go get to work.

That's a serious answer I'm not okay.

Yeah.

Honestly, it's not a fear of losing my income or like being a bad business person because I know people worry about that and say, well, the money will be there when you get back. That's not what's I'm not motivated by that. It really is a motivated by reaching people and I've heard so many things about, you have to post consistently for these algorithms to serve you. I feel like a lot of my business is trying to figure out artificial intelligence and what it's doing and serve it correctly so I can reach more people, you know, figure out the slot machine, try and create luck that way. And it's tough because I don't feel like I have control but the one thing that everyone says is be consistent in your posting. When I launched on Patreon, I said, okay, well, I'm going to post every Thursday and I haven't missed a week, and now it's twice a week since then, not once. And that is what drives me is to trying is not losing my reach.

Yes, more than once a week, oh, you got an email newsletter too, huh?

Once a month but it should be more that's another thing. I mean, there are YouTubers that are posted three times a week is what I've heard optimal. There are there are gamers that post three times a day and I'm out here working my butt off to the last minute to try and publish every two weeks on my main channel now and it feels like not enough, you know, it's never enough. And I know that that certainly isn't healthy, but you know, that I still am rewarded mentally there's definitely so much positive about it. But the the feeling that I have too, is pretty rough too. And I also feel like even if I didn't have to, I would probably still make it this blinding speed, you know, but the fact that it's there makes it more stressful.

I do not. Once again, my patients are such jerks. And the other day, I think I undercharged for a month and one of them just ven mode me being like, hey, I noticed you trying to not take my money. It's ridiculous but I think this is a result of the community that I built. So hopefully this could help some people that are aiming to launch on a paid subscription kind of thing, or paywall, or Patreon or whatever, only fans. I've built a community that is there emotionally, not for stuff so nothing in my deliverables is a physical thing or something where you could analytically think, hey, is this mug worth $25 it is just all tweeted you will be super excited in a video for you. You get to hang out with all of us in a Discord, there are only emotional rewards. And so I know that everyone is there just because they want to see me keep making stuff and they want to be a part of it and they are awesome. And so even if I don't make things I know they would still pay, they would still support me now no one ever gets disappointed. If anything, they're like, would you take a vacation, they're gonna watch this and be like, stop burning out.

Right, yeah, I do want to consistently move people to Patreon. I don't know any other platform that is more reliable because all of these big ones with their artificial intelligence or the way you get a wider reach of new people so even though I feel like I have this consistent reach on Patreon to grow, you still need Tictok, you still need the algorithm, those those platforms that that are slot machines.

How have you tick growth on podcasting.

I don't know how any podcast girls, honestly.

Yeah, what the bottleneck is me right now I, lands on and a lot of things and I need to build a team to maybe not remove that burnout, but at least make things faster and easier and better. Like you said, I appreciate this, thank you on the production comment, I want to make bigger and better things and more of it. So I the thing to do is to get more people in on it. And that's actually really tough. I'm terrible at interviewing and even

writing roles

so that's, that's been tough for me.

Me and said editor, who's awesome, by the way, she's freaking fantastic. And I've been through maybe a dozen to get to her. That's another thing, that's another barrier. I like it was so hard to find an editor that I liked and that we work so well together, and I may lose her at any point, then finding more people for that team. It's just seems like a really big hole in my skills.

I mean, I want to say my most recent oh, my, my chia pet video, I don't know if you saw how I turned my car into a little living chia pet. That took months, that was a lot of preparation and testing and actually getting the thing to grow. It's funny because in a lot of my videos I just wear the same outfit the whole time so people think I do it in 24 hours. But yeah, that things like those elaborate DIY projects take a really long time, the music stuff, I can crank out a little faster. It's about a week or two, depending upon how crazy I get with a music video. But yeah, it just seems like they're they're all back to back. As soon as I hit publish, I've already started on others and they're all kind of going at the same time.

You know, we just din it in an afternoon, it's fine. I don't think anybody thinks that hard about it. It really is just that I'm I don't want to think about wardrobe more than once for a video so I'll just wash it and put it back on. But that yeah, that was over the course of a long time. She actually came to LA. We did a video for her channel. But it seems like oh yeah, I just emailed her a track and then we finished the song that day. That's not what happened.

Well, Alex was a decision because a bunch of people texted me being like, did you see this guy? And so I just called email. Thanks, goodness, he wrote back. But yeah, it just seems like whomever I feel like it would we could make something cool together. And there are a lot of times where there are people that I know that are creators that I just, we can't think of a concept so we don't do anything.

Yes.

Right now, I have three at various states in progress. That's good, I'm getting better. I'm honestly trying to batch more to possibly be able to have some room to breathe, but it seems more like now I just have multiple projects running at once.

Oh god.

Don't

Oh, yeah. This is not video you're missing some visual gold people. I'm in a full clown costume. Okay, I would say don't, okay, that's crappy. You got to go where the luck is. So maybe try and find the next Tictok be the one that hits the jackpot on a new platform or even Tiktok because right now they're still jackpots happening. I don't know if they're jackpots happening on YouTube, necessarily. If you're growing on YouTube, it's probably because you're famous on Tick Tock and then started doing YouTube stuff.

But also be stupid lucky. Like Charlie D'Amelio even admits this. I was just watching her reality show. It's she's just, she's just a girl that was at the right place at the right time on the right platform and now she's an empire. It's awesome. But yeah, I mean, not saying that she's not talented and etc. because obviously you have all of that, you've listened to every episode of this podcast and you know that you need talent and resilience and habit forming and whatever else that you've learned. But you also need that luck element so good luck.