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Nebula: A paid alternative to YouTube, curated by the creators

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Re: Nebula: A paid alternative to YouTube, curated by the creators

#21

Post by trazire »

dymk wrote: post #6
robot wrote: post #3

https://medium.com/vidme/goodbye-for-now-120b40becafa

And yet there are still swaths of HN commenters claiming that people would surely support paid, ad-free alternatives to YT, if only they existed. Well, this is try two. Think people will still try to claim it’s a viable model over ads after this one?

It is a viable method, you just won't get many customers. For a smaller userbase, it is entirely feasible and profitable to do stuff like this based on subscriptions. Ad revenue can be higher, but is volatile and harder to implement. Personally, I feel like this is delving too close to other SVOD services. While a potential four figure CPM is alluring, I don't think we'll truly begin to see it.

Re: Nebula: A paid alternative to YouTube, curated by the creators

#22

Post by elliekelly »

I (naively) expected the platform to be paid for by the creators in a way where they all shared the operating costs while finding some “fair” way to allocate advertising income.

Instead they’ve taken Jay-Z’s Tidal strategy: create a premium platform for the content creators and expect the content consumers to pay a premium price for it.

Re: Nebula: A paid alternative to YouTube, curated by the creators

#24

Post by trazire »

opan wrote: post #18

I don't see this working better than something like peertube. We don't need centralized alternatives, we need decentralized alternatives.

While I agree, decentralized video shouldn't be considered any more then it actually is; a tool for serving videos with lower bandwidth costs.

Re: Nebula: A paid alternative to YouTube, curated by the creators

#25

Post by cannonedhamster »

rfwhyte wrote: post #20

Seems like more and more "content creators" are getting into the platforms business, and I genuinely don't think many, if any of them are going to succeed. If Legendary Pictures, with their Chinese government money and big acquisitions of Nerdist and Geek and Sundry couldn't make their subscription site work, what makes these guys think they'll be any different? As a consumer of content, I don't want dozens of differ…

There were failed social media platforms before Myspace and Facebook. If you'd have said Facebook would outgrow Myspace people would have thought you were crazy. At some point someone is going to unseat YouTube. It's going to take timing, luck, and a product that delivers something better or different than YouTube. Is this it? Who knows? Most likely not, but that's why you keep trying.

Re: Nebula: A paid alternative to YouTube, curated by the creators

#26

Post by themagician »

This is so funny to me. The vast majority of creators really don't understand their "role", so to speak, in the YouTube ecosystem. The ego, I think, consumes them.

Most content on YouTube—most views, most videos, most trending content—is just slightly better than nothing at all. The bar is both surprisingly low and high at the same time. Most people will not pay for most of the content that gets upload to YouTube in any way. And the reality is that the people who complain about demonization—the vast majority of them—would have zero revenue anyway because no one is going to pay to advertise against their content either.

The keyword is most. There are a handful of creators whose content is more valuable than nothing at all. They are not bound by YouTube. Never have been. They choose to host on YouTube because it's a good deal for them, but they could just as easily survive hosting their content somewhere else.

If you've got valuable content you can host it somewhere else and people will watch it. They will share it far and wide. Some people will spend money for it. Advertisers will gladly work with you and you'd be surprised just how quickly they find you and want to cut you a deal for a :30 spot. But most content isn't valuable outside of YouTube. Most content isn't even valuable enough to pay for the bandwidth it takes for people to watch it.

The YouTube alternative already exists. It's called hosting the content yourself.

Re: Nebula: A paid alternative to YouTube, curated by the creators

#27

Post by awalton »

dymk wrote: post #6
robot wrote: post #3

https://medium.com/vidme/goodbye-for-now-120b40becafa

And yet there are still swaths of HN commenters claiming that people would surely support paid, ad-free alternatives to YT, if only they existed. Well, this is try two. Think people will still try to claim it’s a viable model over ads after this one?

It's way beyond Try 2.

And the last company to try this exact model, Vessel, was snapped up and murdered by Verizon to keep it from being a threat...

Re: Nebula: A paid alternative to YouTube, curated by the creators

#28

Post by edoceo »

opan wrote: post #18

I don't see this working better than something like peertube. We don't need centralized alternatives, we need decentralized alternatives.

With some discovery method, I want to find new stuff too. Hunting for cool stuff is "hard", just feed me Seymour!

Re: Nebula: A paid alternative to YouTube, curated by the creators

#29

Post by smaddock »

cartman82 wrote: post #15

> No algorithm They are conflating what they care about vs. what the audience cares about.

This seems be directed at creators interested in their platform, which would be their audience at this stage. The "algorithm" on YouTube can decide whether or not a video will be discovered. Guaranteeing that subscribers will see their recent content could be a good selling point.

Re: Nebula: A paid alternative to YouTube, curated by the creators

#30

Post by manigandham »

dymk wrote: post #6
robot wrote: post #3

https://medium.com/vidme/goodbye-for-now-120b40becafa

And yet there are still swaths of HN commenters claiming that people would surely support paid, ad-free alternatives to YT, if only they existed. Well, this is try two. Think people will still try to claim it’s a viable model over ads after this one?

There have been hundreds of attempts and Youtube itself already has direct monetization options.

Video is the hardest because of the cost of production and hosting, but subscriptions just don't scale very far. People always forget that the vast majority of people on this planet cannot afford these rates, and putting up a paywall only prevents them from getting access.

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