First, the suggestion isn't that artists "build their own YouTube" any more than writers hosting their own blog are "building their own medium.com". A lot has

First, the suggestion isn't that artists "build their own YouTube" any more than writers hosting their own blog are "building their own medium.com". A lot has changed since the debut of YouTube, the tech stack necessary to host your own HD videos is open source and really quite simple for an experienced developer. ffmpeg, nginx (with a couple plugins) and one of the many open source web player clients and you're all set. Payments and subscriptions are a long solved problem via stripe or paypal, it's really not a massive endeavor. Most of the work would be on the aesthetic side, not the technical side.