This Content Isn't Available

 

"As of this morning, on this account, on my desktop PC, all videos show a black screen with the message "Video Unavailable. This content isn't available". This happens when I try to run the videos directly from YouTube and also when I try to watch videos I have embedded on my blog.

I have logged the account out and back in, cleared the cache, rebooted the machine and tried a different browser. It makes no difference. 

On the same account, on my laptop, the same issue occurs when I access YouTube directly but the embedded videos on my blog still play normally. 

Please correct whatever is causing the issue or, if there is a valid reason for it, please let me know what it is and if there's anything to be done.

Thanks!"

That's the feedback I just submitted to Google in the vague hope someone might do something about it. There are several lengthy reddit threads on the problem, which seems to be fairly common. There are some workarounds that I might try at some point but those have issues of their own, but most of the commenters who report the problem being resolved say it either just went away on its own or after they submitted feedback. 

For others, it didn't  ever go away, or if it did, they didn't feel it was worth coming back to the thread to let anyone know.

I only noticed the problem this morning, after I'd written the first four paragraphs of today's post. I went to last year's Best of 2024 post to check something. I clicked on the link in that post that goes to the playlist I made to accompany it and that's when I found nothing was working. 

At the moment, my other YouTube account is working normally but comments on the reddit threads confirm others have seen the issue spread  to all their accounts. Also, I'm not sure whether the videos embedded on the blog are working for anyone else. 

I'm guessing they are because when I log into one of my many other Google accounts on Chrome I can play videos on the blog and also follow the link to last year's playlist and get that to run, too. I'm listening to it right now. 

God, it's good, too! If you want to test it, here's the link. It's a joy. 2024 was a vintage year for music. 2025 isn't going to match it. 

If anyone isn't able to access that playlist or watch videos on this blog, I'd be grateful if they'd mention it in the comments although I don't imagine there's much I can do about it. Also, if anyone's had this happen to their YouTube account, I'd be interested to hear about that, too. Especially if you figured out how to fix it.

There's a lot of speculation in the threads I read about what might be behind this loss of service. The usual conspiracy theories about Google trying to penalize people for using ad-blockers or even for watching too many videos. Those I discount. 

More credible is the explanation that there's been some security issue with the account (As recently happened to Belghast.) or some penalty applied for an infraction. That, though, would presumably lead to some kind of notification. I haven't seen anything telling me I've done something I shouldn't have.

It looks a lot more like some kind of bug to me. If so, it might get fixed. I'm cautiously optimistic. How long it would take is another matter, though. Could easily be weeks. Or months.

In the meanwhile, I can obviously just move to using another account to keep using YouTube for all my regular viewing needs (And keep making more accounts if they keep failing.). It's going to be annoying but as Wreckless Eric says, we adjust.  

The big question is whether I can work around the problem while it lasts so as to be able to go on embedding videos on the blog. It is, after all, a rather significant element in the range of content here. 

And it's a particularly bad time for it to happen, too.

Here are the four paragraphs I mentioned writing before the issue made itself known: 

Yesterday was the most musical day I've had for a long while. I spent something like five hours writing the What I've Been Listening To Lately post, then went straight into making a long-list for my Pick of the Year. That took another couple of hours and went a lot better than I thought it was going to before I started.

What I have really been listening to for most of the year is my own music. Obsessively and repeatedly. While I've been keeping up with everything else that's around, I can't honestly say I've had anything much on repeat that I didn't make myself. I was expecting to look back through the year's music posts and see a whole load of songs and names I could barely remember, so I was very pleasantly surprised to find that wasn't in the slightest bit true.

Okay, there were some titles and names I didn't recognize but that happens every year. The further I look back, the more of them there are, too. It's natural. The point is, there weren't any more this year than there usually are and better yet there were plenty where my immediate reaction was "Oh, I love that one! I want to hear it again, right now!"

Going in, I thought I might have to reduce the scope to a Top Ten this year. Last year it was a Top Twenty-One for some bizarre reason, only seventeen of which I chose to include on the YouTube playlist I completely forgot I ever made.

And then I found out about the problem. And stopped.

So, yeah, Pick of the Year post. I was looking forward to getting started on that. On hold for now.

Plus, I was just about to go on to talk about this year's musical Advent Calendar. That's more critical. I only realized yesterday there are just three weeks left until I have to start posting a Christmas tune every day. (It will be just one a day this year. That Naughty/Nice thing nearly did for me last time...)

It will still be happening, at least so long as I'm sure anything I put up on the blog will be visible and audible to anyone who cares to see and hear it. If I have to go around the houses a few times to make it happen, I'll do it.  

I'll try and make any workarounds as invisible and seamless as possible but if things look a little weird around here for a while, that might be the reason. 

And if it gets fixed I'll be sure to tell everyone.