I did something similar, but not with video. I used bandcamp to store binary files that I converted to wav sound files. I uploaded Arch Linux to it! (https://bullswillriot.bandcamp.com/album/arch-linux-07-01)

Here's my medium article on it: https://medium.com/@__Tux/using-bandcamp-as-a-backup-solutio...

YouTube is essentially "free file storage", just for a very specific file format.

Some software for the ZX Spectrum was distributed in a similar fashion, by being broadcast in audio format:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZX_Spectrum_software#Others

I suppose if you uploaded a recording of that to YouTube you could do a similar thing, although I can't seem to find any examples at the moment.

> YouTube is essentially "free file storage", just for a very specific file format.

Right. A platform for audio/video or in this case extremely inefficient file storage.

> Some software for the ZX Spectrum was distributed in a similar fashion, by being broadcast in audio format:

That's fascinating, thanks for sharing!

Netflix did just that for an easter egg in Black Mirror: Bandersnatch.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UBJNXzfZ4pw

There is some audio at the end that can be read into a ZX Spectrum emulator.

Holy crap, I remember that exact thread, I was part of it. The OP made a program that just encodes files into a series of QR codes, but I told them that with some additional effort, encoding it into a format that would get less manged by YouTube's compression would make it a lot better.