I borrowed the idea of ONE MAN ONLY from the Movie “Yesterday” because it fits with what I am doing on Youtube.
If you are unfamiliar with my “ONE MAN ONLY” recordings, they are productions in which I am the only person on the recording. I play all the tracks and sing all the parts including the lead vocal. I also do the video portion (if I include one) and in some cases the songs are original.
This actually started when a friend on FACEBOOK suggested that I record songs and put them on YOUTUBE. When my daughter saw it, she thought it was a great idea saying, “Dad you have to do this!” She also sent me a list of songs she’d heard me do over the years. So I did a couple using karaoke tracks that I found on Google and people really seemed to be enjoying them. Then I made a discovery. Technically, I was doing something illegal.
In my defense, my thought was, if I’m doing them “free to the public”, (in other words not selling them) and put the original artist on the credits at the end with the link where the song could be purchased (from that artist), that all would be well and good. Everyone benefits. The artist gets free publicity and I get people following my Youtube Channel and Web Page.
Now, no one from YOUTUBE contacted me threatening prison, but just to make sure I did a little research and I discovered something. Even though YOUTUBE has an arrangement with about 95% of the artists whose songs are performed on YOUTUBE, (they actually send a portion of advertising dollars back to the original artist) the people who make the karaoke tracks don’t have the same arrangement with the artists. Most tracks are illegal. So if I want to continue I would have to do all the tracks myself.
Now initially that seemed like a death sentence to the idea of recording previous hits until I decided to try doing all the tracks and vocals myself.
The first song I did was “Can’t Help Falling in Love With You” the old Elvis hit. The channel link is:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/CHDZbF4BLMyJj1gZtJT0emw and that came out really well. So I added another–Poor Wayfaring Stranger, and that came out even better.
So that brings me to the latest “One Man Only” song going out soon.