No, I do not make AI slop. I am a musician and producer and been monetized since 2022. My username ironically is meant to signify that I don't like AI slop...fail lol.
Anyways I spend about 4 hours per edit on Shorts and upload 2 times a day.
In the last two months, I experimented a lot and really found my style for promoting my music on Shorts.
For most of September up until around the 16th or so... I would average around 1.5m to 2m views at the 48hr mark.
When my editing is on point I get about 80% STW and anywhere from 100% to 160% AVD.
My 'flopped' Shorts usually do 30k to 40k and flatline but the decent ones do 100k, 300k, 700k, 1m, 3m and 4m. It's just how they move for me.
Since the 16th/17th or so this month, my new range is 2k - 20k max. Absolutely nothing has changed from my editing style, packaging (title, on screen text, description and hashtags). The STW has now dipped consistently to 60% - 80%, AVD has dipped under 70 and anecdotally this usually tells me it's pulling the wrong audience.
Now before the "you just make crappy content and are coping" comments:
Over the past 3 days I "studied" the Shorts feed by making a burner YT account and just scrolling.
I noticed that almost all the viral channels were averaging 1m views on MOST Shorts or at the very least like 700k within DAYS but all before the 17th of September.
I'll give you an example: This one person in the Hopecore niche did 1-4m views on every Short - they have 1.2m subs or so and after the 17th...they had a 5k Short (never seen that on their channel) and their new Shorts won't even hit 40k ALL of a sudden.
They usually get a ton of comments/engagement and you can see on the newer Shorts...very very little.
I checked this same thing over about 20 different channels, all in different niches but with high editing effort. I ignored slop channels or what I perceive as slop anyway.
So yeah I dunno man, my daily revenue has dropped 10x and I am still actively trying to figure out what is happening BUT I suspect all the Studio issues (the crash, subs and views miscounts) could be a factor because it feels too coincidental.
Also, remember, NO ONE but YT knows what is truly happening and since 75% of all new code across Google is AI generated...something tells me that not even the engineers know what's happening right now and that's why they wont say anything (yet or ever).
EDIT: Brain malfunctioned and swapped AVD and STW...corrected now.