I would like to personally thank everyone for this huge milestone for our company.
VladTV launched in 2008 out of my bedroom. At the time I was a struggling DJ living check to check, barely able to pay my rent. I was doing some paid DJ gigs, but the majority of my income was coming from selling mixtapes to small mom and pop stores across the country. As CD's started to fade away, these stores were slowly going out of business.
A few years prior, I tried to diversify my hustle by doing street DVD's as well. In those DVD's I would interview rappers and other celebrities. Not able to afford a cameraman, I would film the interview myself and conduct the interview from behind the camera - which established my style of interviewing that I still use today. DVD's were slightly more lucrative than CD's, but the DVD market was also starting to decline as streaming started to become established.
Although Youtube had been around for a few years, 2008 was the year that they introduced their Partner program. This program allowed content creators to make revenue from their uploaded videos by running ads on them. These videos were also able to be embedded on bigger websites, which would increase the visibility and the views. Blogs like NahRight were becoming popular and they were hungry for content. A light bulb went off over my head as I instantly saw the future of my business with Youtube. I stopped DJ'ing, stopped making mixtapes, and took the video content that I would have put on a DVD and put it all on Youtube.
My initial idea was to break up my longer interviews into shorter clips. This way, I would be able to release a brand new clip every day on my Youtube channel. Since the internet was a 24/7 operation, I felt that I should release at least 1 new clip 365 days a year - including weekends and holidays. Everyone I told this to thought it was a stupid idea. They said that people don't need new videos every day, and breaking up the content was just going to annoy people.
12 years later, I'm still interviewing people from behind the camera, chopping up interviews, and releasing new content 365 days a year. But instead of 1 clip a day, we're currently putting out 7 clips a day. Plus a flashback. And a full interview on certain days. We currently have over 16,000 video clips on our channel. We're also releasing the same content on facebook.com/vladtv. In the next couple of weeks, we'll be announcing a Podcast deal where our content will be available on Spotify, Apple Music, and all the other major audio streaming platforms.
The main reason I do it these days is to document the culture for generations to come. The first time I interview someone, I approach it as a biopic. A lot of the people I interview aren't going to get a big Netflix documentary. But that doesn't mean their story isn't just as important. My hope is that these videos will be referenced by future students and fans as they start to learn who this person is outside of their music or movies.
None of this would be possible without the viewers. They have always been my number 1 priority. The people we interview come and go, but the viewers are the ones that come back every day - year after year. Thank you to everyone who loves and hates our content. Without you, none of this would be possible.
- DJ Vlad
