. . . and then there is "personless" altogether!
What an interesting discussion!
As always, I have come to UU looking for one thing and got distracted by another!
There is another angle to this, but first I should say how I feel about the "headless videos": "
I don't give a damn!"
I have done two or three "headless" videos. In all cases because I wanted the visuals to show my hands as clearly as possible. It has been a bit of an eye-opener reading about some of the other reasons people have for going headless. For example,
"uke-shame" had never occurred to me, although as I had never really given the "headless" issue much thought before, that is not surprising.
If the video is a tutorial and it helps to watch hands, I would much rather see the hands than the face. I particularly like the tutorials by "VerweggistanExpress", who is usually headless, uses lots of clear gesture and no speech at all in his tutorials,
eg.
https://youtu.be/OBWiUkbEN50
Maybe it is because I am a radio-addict, dating from the "wireless" rather than "wifi" era, that for most "performance" videos I am also usually far more interested in the sound than the visuals. So, I often don't even watch them while I am listening.
The other angle . . .
Having said that about radio, what I enjoy most about making ukulele videos is putting together collages of stills to go with the audio. I also enjoy messing about with sound effects using Garageband. So, usually, I will record the audio, mess about with it a bit and then either find one still image to go with it, if I am being lazy or feeling rushed, or a load of them if I am in the mood and have more time on my hands.
This is a great tool for quickly making a YouTube "video" from audio plus a single image:
http://www.tunestotube.com/ It makes the upload equivalent to audio-only sites like Soundcloud but I really don't care if that bothers anyone - life is too short!
As far as my "collage videos" are concerned: they take a long time to put together but I enjoy doing it; I hope that the result is more pleasing to whoever stumbles across them than if I had just uploaded a video of me playing, headless or otherwise; they have their place alongside my "headless" videos and the ones where you can see my face.
A tool (ukulele, YouTube) is just a tool. The variety of things we create with those tools is amazing. Now, due to the thoughts that people have shared here, my imagination has something else to work with when I see a "headless" video . . . is that person actually a world-renowned player of the flugelhorn with a secret passion for the ukulele!? Is that one perhaps someone in danger if they were to be recognised?
It makes "headless" videos a whole lot more interesting - though I will probably still just be more interested in watching the hands of tutorial videos or just listening to "performance" ones.
The only "performance" videos I am guaranteed to watch all the way through, rather than stop watching but continue to listen, are the ones where there is something intriguing going on. Personally, I find most videos of someone just sitting playing and singing in front of a camera quite boring to watch, and that includes my own videos that are like that. I find that those sort of videos can be more interesting if I don't watch but just listen and concentrate on the sound. But that's just me, we are all different