alfo media

Alfo Media is a project that I started in the Fall of 2017. During my junior year of college, I wanted some kind of creative outlet. While I was on my way to a marketing degree, my true interests were in writing — specifically about music. Video editing was also intriguing to me, though I’d barely ever tried it.

After writing a couple of op-ed’s (that I didn’t publish anywhere), I decided to turn them into videos. I bought a decent microphone, Adobe Premiere, made a brand identity for my channel, and that was that.

Part of the early stages of this was that I didn’t want my name to be associated with it. This might sound self righteous in a way, but I knew that I would have the support of my friends + family with this new venture…and I was actively avoiding that. I wanted any kind of initial support to be genuine.

My channel’s name would be some kind of nonsense word that I would grow from nothing into something. “Alfo” came from “Always Forward” — a mantra repeatedly spoken by a character on Marvel’s “Luke Cage”. I found it fitting as a guide to keep me going. “Media” was a catch-all that could encompass whatever would come next.

here’s a look at the channel 2 months in

A main influence for me starting the channel was a wave of young, DIY, independent musicians that seemed to be utilizing the internet to jumpstart their own growth. Funny enough, their growth helped transition into my growth.

Early on (after turning my initial, pre-Alfo, op-ed’s into videos), I began to understand what my niche was. As somebody who always felt

like they had a good pulse on who was “up next” in the music world, my videos about these up-and-coming artists were doing extraordinarily well. Thousands of views within days of starting up my first channel — that doesn’t happen often.

about 8 months or so in — pretty cool progress

So, these were the early roots of my channel, and this is essentially how I was able to come into my own as a creator.

- I was a fan of these musicians

- They had plenty of fans coming in, but not too much in terms of press

- I would utilize the few interviews/articles on them to build a bio, go over that in my video, describe the music and why I liked it

- Being that the fans wanted more and more of their new favorite musician, they often had no other choice but to come to my video (because nobody else was talking about them yet)

As my following grew, my confidence came with it, I started exploring a variety of topics within the music world: ranking lists, trends in the industry and so on.

At the time that I’m writing this, Alfo Media has 400,000 subscribers, over 66 million views, and I couldn’t be prouder.