The Spotify Drama - I released a free 'Full Course' on YouTube... but why?

I recently released not one, but two 'free' and 'full length' courses on YouTube.

The reasons for doing this were a little controversial - on multiple levels - and I received a number of very supportive and kind messages. But I also wanted to explain WHY in a little more detail.

I also want to stress.. this is NOT an angry or accusatory post. Just one where I get to tell a different story and answer some of emailed/DM-ed questions I've had.

In this post I'm going to explain the following:

• Which courses they are, and where you can find them now (for free)

• The story of where they were supposed to be released

• Why they are free

• Why nobody should feel out of pocket

• What makes them different from paid courses

• And hopefully a little bit more!

What courses am I talking about?

You can watch them here - the first is a 90+ minute landscape tutorial, and the second is a series of videos showing 'how to draw anything?'.

So... what is the story behind these courses?

Well, I was reached out to by a company alleging to be 'Jamoe.com' around April.

They were looking to add courses to an 'app with millions of users' and they wanted, essentially, to rip my SketchLoose courses and sell them elsewhere. Their promise was that they would handle all the admin, and for this I would receive a royalty on each sale.

I immediately binned this email... for several reasons.

Firstly, my SketchLoose courses take me months to plan, create and publish. And I think an absolutely key part of their success is that I provide feedback to any question that anybody has on the courses. I can't have unlimited numbers of people join, or I wouldn't be able to provide useful feedback, and removing the feedback element hugely devalues the courses (in my opinion). Running these courses also isn't cheap - and if suddenly I'm only getting a fraction of the course cost AND delivering unlimited feedback ... well, you can probably see that road leads to ruin.

Secondly, the offer seemed WAY too good to be true.

But they were persistent

The company reached out a few more times. And at one of those times I had a week free, so I agreed to a meeting and, from that meeting, they were able to provide a little more information.

I still didn't really believe it - but I thought, if this is all true, then it would be silly not to try and release a couple of courses.

What were they suggesting?

They were offering for me to be part of the initial release of courses on Spotify - they wanted a 60-90 minute course, broken into bite size lessons, and they would handle much of the editing and copy.

So, I got to work and over two weeks (I carved out some time) I produced these two courses and handed them over.

What happened next?

Well - the course was released. And I was pretty delighted.

The initial cost was in the region of £15-20 - which is probably a little high (when you compare how limited these courses are compared to a SkillShare membership or to my SketchLoose courses) - but I had no control over the pricing and they promised to review it.

Of course... there was a hitch...

Now.. the sharp eyed amongst you may have noticed TWO things on the screenshot above

The first is that 'Toby' isn't mentioned anywhere. In fact, in neither of these courses ANYWHERE on the course pages is my name, tag, or anything about me mentioned.

Please excuse the typo!!

You can see above one of a number of emails I sent... this is the first one. Most of them were responded to, but no action has been taken.

So... my spider senses start tingling.

Issue number 2!

You may also have noticed that the course is now free! This is a very recent development - after I chose to publish my courses for free already on YouTube.

Now, I have literally ZERO issue with free access to my courses - it does feel a little underhand to do it without talking to me, informing me. Spotify is still profiting from their existence there indirectly, whilst I am now getting a small fraction of nothing.

And there has been no transparency about the sales or lack thereof. I have emailed a few times about this too, and the response has been that 'there have been no sales' and we 'will discuss how to pay you' when there have been sales.

Now, I must say, that my courses and almost all of the other courses have now been made free does make me inclined to believe them - you can see this below.

Anyhow... I had already released the courses for free on YouTube...

But why did I do this?

Having heard nothing, I checked what was written in the agreements, and it was clear that there was no-exclusivity for these courses on Spotify.

It was also clear to me that I would gain no benefit from these courses - neither financially, nor through 'exposure' (as people seem to think that feeds artists) - and would never actually know if I had been scammed or not.

As you can see from the above email, I explained myself to this company - I hope I was polite, and I am not accusing them of lying, but it's very clear that there are multiple dysfunctional steps in this 'relationship'.

So what have people been saying? And what are my responses?

I have had a number of kind emails about this situation, so I thought that I would respond to some of the frequent points people have raised here and my rationale for making my decisions:

A contract doesn't have to be formal, it can be written or verbal, I could enforce it

Yes indeed, however, I suspect they are not lying and there have been few if any sales. Likely the experiment on Spotify simply hasn't worked. Either way, I haven't any interest in the stress involved to recover what is likely a rather small amount of money. I only regret not having access to the metrics to understand the situation better.

Won't people who have bought the course feel short changed?

Well, maybe. But if you have bought the course then that means two things. Firstly, Spotify/the other company are lying about the sales. Secondly, they have effectively stolen my intellectual property and two weeks of my labour without attribution. So rather than being angry at me, know that Spotify/this company have stolen your money too and complain to them, asking for a refund. This is especially true now that they have made all their courses free!

'I would have bought your sketchloose course, but then you released this for free. I don't see the value in spending £69'

Firstly, that's great - it's your decision, and it's most important you're happy with your decision.

I would suggest that we also think about what we are comparing.

On one hand we have an unsupported, light touch and scene-based 90 minute course (on spotify, and now on YouTube).

On the other we have SketchLoose - a course that covers techniques and challenges across a multitude of scenes, with well over 7 hours of video content per course, unlimited feedback, a 40 page handout and more. They are not the same thing - and I put a lot of effort into ensuring that SketchLoose, SkillShare and YouTube all offer quite different propositions so that people can choose the option that suits them best.

My position is that I never want someone to buy my course, and be unhappy with their decision - so if you feel the more expensive offer doesn't hold value for you, then that's ok.

Equally, I don't want everything I do to hide behind a paywall - there are plenty of people who cannot afford SkillShare, or SketchLoose, and so they can enjoy >700 videos for free on YouTube. I am not unhappy with people who follow me only on YouTube. In fact, I am delighted they follow me at all and I love seeing comments from the names/usernames I recognise :)

For others, they don't want digital at all, and choose to join me in person.

'Isn't this course similar to SkillShare though? Why would I join that?'

Yes, in many ways this is similar to SkillShare courses - it is organised in a similar way, and is a similar length.

The difference is, firstly, it's free - though you can get a free month on SkillShare to explore ALL of my courses there - and secondly, it's not divided into neat lessons like on SkillShare, and it's not got the community and feedback element of SkillShare.

Equally, if you are on SkillShare you have access to a massive array of courses not just from me, but a wide variety of other creators and creative professionals.

So, I am not unhappy that I am giving this away for free based on this either - if you loved this course, then give SkillShare a try as you'll find loads more like it.

If you didn't enjoy this course, then don't try SkillShare - it's probably not for you and I'm really happy that I saved you the fuss and challenge of joining and cancelling your membership.

I've probably missed something...

BUT hopefully I've explained the situation a little more...

Thank you again for messages of support and concern. Hopefully the above clarifies a little of what happened.

I'm really not that upset or angry - perhaps the most negative emotion I can drum up is a little disappointed that the opportunity wasn't what I had hoped. Trying to change anything would, undoubtably, make me feel more negative in some way.

And now that I've released the courses for free I've earned a little bit of money from YouTube, a few thousand people have had access to the courses for free, and around half of them were new to watching my channel. That is a lovely bit of exposure to feed this hungry artist.

Fundamentally, I've lost nothing material and still totally content and amazed that I can earn a living making art!