What is this Insight and How Do I Get Some?

I couple of days ago, I posted about the story behind the making of Sebastien’s Theme, a piece of music that my band and I wrote and recorded for a movie soundtrack several years ago.  I also posted a clip of the “video” for the song, courtesy of YouTube.

There are lots of things I love about YouTube;  for starters, the service makes it so simple (please read cost-efficient cheap) to disseminate a video clip like this one;  I’d never be able to justify the expense of hosting a video clip on my own server (bandwidth costs money, and this little site o’ mine ain’t about revenue generation, I can tell you that).

Beyond that simple basic premise, though, YouTube has recently added some awesome tools to their site.  For instance, they have added a viewing statistics package called “Insight” that is just rocking my world right now.  This package goes way beyond simply telling you how many “views” your video has had (Sebastien’s Theme is up to 27 as of today – this record may go triple teflon yet).  One of the things that it can tell you is where the traffic is coming from.   I don’t know about anybody else, but I’ve always been curious about how exactly who has been watching – Insight doesn’t quite go that far (although there is a “demographics” function built in to the tool as well), but it does provide some tantalizing bits of information about the countries from which people are watching, and (for the U.S.) what state they’re connecting from.

I just happened to check the Insight stats for Sebastien’s Theme this morning and my curiosity is definitely piqued:  I see that there have been views from California (and I think I can guess who that was);  I also see, however, that there have been views from New York state (hmm?) and Germany.   I would love it if my Empire State or Deutsche viewers would roll up and represent in the comments section (um, for you non-English speakers out there, that means “please let me know something about yourself and how you found the video by leaving a comment below”).   In the meantime, absent any verifiable information on the subject, I will content myself by fantasizing that King Kong took time out from scaling a skyscraper to eyeball my video, and that somewhere there is a lederhosen-wearing, beer-drinking bratwurst manufacturer humming the tune to himself while he warms up the BMW in the driveway.

I’ll try to remember to post a little tutorial on how to set up the Insight function later.  For now, I’m off to Christmas shop and then – because this may be the only time in recorded history I get to truthfully write this next sentence – it’s off to the symphony with Spouse for tonight’s performance of Handel’s Messiah.   You can search long and hard on this here blog thingy, and you’ll find many a mention of hockey players, an extended discussion about a young child submerged in a filthy pond, and more tractor-related exegesis than you might reasonably expect, but I don’t think you’ll find a single other reference to the Toronto Symphony Orchestra or their performances.   Gotta make hay while the sun shines.