Welcome to Timeturner, a monthly visit to the past! Each month I’ll take a closer look at some aspect of wizard rock history – events, trends, the community, and more. This month, we’re taking a dive into the land of magical moving pictures: Youtube! Just as a warning: some of the links in this article may lead to videos involving abusive people who have since been kicked out of the community, but none of them are prominently featured in anything linked or embedded.

Youtube has come and gone as a hub for wizard rockers (although plenty still upload there today), but there’s a cool selection of wizard rock history archived there for all to explore. Because anybody can upload videos, and because wizard rockers haven’t been too fussy about restricting the use of their music, people have been making amazingly creative wizard rock-centric videos for years!

Youtube was a great place for fans to create and share their own videos for their favorite wizard rock songs. Many Youtubers created lyric videos, archiving old songs that might have otherwise been lost. People would also make intricate wizard rock tributes in The Sims and set those to music! Few video creators were as prolific as Christine, who compiled related Harry Potter movie clips and set them to wizard rock songs (often quite emotionally) under the username hptwilighter. 

Videos especially gave wizard rock fans a place to shine without having to write their own music. You can find great fan-made lip sync music videos like this cute video set to “All I Think About” by The Mudbloods & The Moaning Myrtles, or this hilarious one to “I Know Every Spell” by Draco and the Malfoys. 

Some Youtubers created wrock content so regularly that they became well known for it. Dani and Jackie made felt and paper puppets to star in wizard rock music videos way back in 2006 under the name “The Potter Journal.” Their videos were adorable, clever, and really intricate celebrations of classic songs from bands like The Parselmouths and Harry and the Potters. The Potter Journal even performed live with bands like The Whomping Willows and The Owl Post! 

Traditional music videos with bands singing directly to the camera didn’t really take off for wizard rock, but some bands took the time to put some really interesting videos together. “I Believe in Neville” by Neville’s Diary features a whole slew of puppets, and The Swedish Shortsnouts share the stage with a headbanging dragon and some delightful special effects while they “Battle Cedric Diggory.” Tonks and the Aurors and Lauren Fairweather also created some pretty cool professional videos, as did the team from The Wizard Rockumentary who did this video for “Ode to Harry” by The Switchblade Kittens.

http://https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gi9duM3N26Y

But wizard rock wasn’t just relegated to music videos – vlogs were super popular as well, and the fiveawesomegirls collab channel featured several wizard rockers talking about their lives. This channel style – where each person posted a video on an assigned day of the week – became very popular and was used by a few wizard rock specific channels including GuysWhoWrock, GirlsWhoWrock, WroadtoWrockstock, and Wizrockateers. The online format helped wizard rock fans connect with each other from around the world.

Many of the creators in the community used YouTube as an archival space, recording live shows in great detail. You’ll find a lot of live show content on pages like acciolove (over 700 wizard rock videos), TGTSNBN, hpboy13, and of course The Wizrocklopedia. If you want songs broken down by band, WrockWay does the ultimate job in organizing these live recordings into per-band playlists, though unsurprisingly these haven’t been updated in years.

There’s also a lot of wizard rock content on Youtube that often gets left out of the wizard rock conversation, from the tons of really incredible parody videos to the Starkid musicals to the amazing love letter to wizard rock that is “I Ship It.“

While that only scratches the surface of wizard rock on Youtube, it’s a fun way to look back! Plus there are tons of channels that are the only place where some musicians ever released their music, so Youtube stands as a treasure trove for wizard rock from eras past and present. But if we’ve learned anything from the fall of Myspace, we know that these videos might not be around forever, so treasure them while you can! What’s your favorite wizard rock video? Share it in the comments!