What worries me is that it is becoming more and more difficult to find the long tail on Youtube (I don't use Soundcloud so can't comment there). Youtube's sear

What worries me is that it is becoming more and more difficult to find the long tail on Youtube (I don't use Soundcloud so can't comment there). Youtube's search has become useless (to the point where it has become a meme that people are now using non-Youtube search engines to search for content on Youtube), and its recommendation algorithm is designed to promote what is popular (the short-tail). It's still possible to create a new channel on Youtube that offers something different, of course. It's just harder to get visibility on that content because the same "chase the short-tail, ignore the long-tail" strategy is starting to find its way into how modern search engines behave as well. I used to disagree with the claim that if you didn't rank in the top 5 search results you didn't rank at all. My disagreement was based on the fact that I earned a living from a website that received most of its traffic from organic search results. These days though, I think that's becoming more and more true based on how search engines present results to the user.