YouTube to block indie labels who don't sign up to new music service • Hacker News Board

Re: YouTube to block indie labels who don't sign up to new music service

#101

Post by bakhy » Wed, Jun 18, 2014, 8:59 AM UTC

lucky thing that most YouTube music videos are blocked in Germany. i won't feel a thing.

otherwise, this looks an awful lot like another forced bundling by Google, like the way they're showing Google+ down everyone's throats. (I recently caved to that one, and reopened my Google+ simply to be able to login to sites where I was using my google login for authentication. they chose to take away that ability if you don't use G+, along with the ability to use the mobile hangout app, just because they can. i should move elsewhere.) now they're capitalizing on the market share of YouTube to coerce small labels, while large labels were reportedly given preferential treatment. but the fact that they will abuse YouTube instead of simply opening a new, independent service, and trying to win over customers to it, instead of forcing them over, that part stings me.

Re: YouTube to block indie labels who don't sign up to new music service

#102

Post by mcintyre1994 » Wed, Jun 18, 2014, 9:08 AM UTC

tehwebguy wrote: post #7

This is super weird, I'm under the impression that music generates much higher ad rates than most content on YouTube. Wouldn't eliminating ads be sort of shooting themselves in the foot, even against a subscription fee? Maybe they see the other streaming services replacing them in the near future.

Just a theory but could music on YouTube have lower engagement with ads than other video? It seems much more likely to be backgrounded than other videos.

Re: YouTube to block indie labels who don't sign up to new music service

#103

Post by walterbell » Wed, Jun 18, 2014, 9:25 AM UTC

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #100

walterbell wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I keep throwing it around and if I ever met a few folks interested in trying it I'd definitely be up for giving it a major go - I think its the inevitable "maximal" solution to intellectual content. I've looked at business models for all-open content with strong attribution. One question is, how do you protect the business from free-riding competitors who are better capitalized and want to "enclose the public commo…

Just as an aside, I don't think ePub3 is going anywhere. Last time I looked it was an unholy mess and likely to remain so. As less of an aside, I think CC sharing and direct crowdfunding is the way things will go for creators. The only thing labels and distributors bring to the table for artists is public access, sponsorship, and promotion. A public creative network would bypass the first, support direct funding for…

Yes, ePub3 does seem to have entangled itself. But something like it will likely emerge as a DRM-enabled HTML(5+) standard for portable offline "documents", including scriptable audio/video that supports deep linking for viral marketing. Publishers and authors need an alternative to Amazon.

Scaling communities is hard, e.g. see this analysis of the fall (no surprise) in Wikipedia contributions:

http://www-users.cs.umn.edu/~halfak/publications/The_Rise_an...

http://www.technologyreview.com/featuredstory/520446/the-dec...

We need multiple, competing, public creative networks which agree on interoperable standards for content and artist identity/marketing. This avoids the need for one planetwide network, e.g. networks can rise/fall by genre, geography, fictional universe, etc. Consumers and artists would gain access to an ever-growing public commons and multiple distribution channels/perspectives with low switching cost. As with open-source, it should be relatively easy for communities to "fork", without cultural or economic zero-sum conflict, though there will be competition for talent.

Re: YouTube to block indie labels who don't sign up to new music service

#104

Post by walterbell » Wed, Jun 18, 2014, 9:32 AM UTC

zanny wrote: post #93

magicalist wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be great for videos to default to a permissive license, but I don't see how that would change anything fundamentally with regard to copyright problems. You'd still have to deal with people uploading whatever they want, and so you'd still have to deal with DMCA takedowns, and you'd still have to deal with the vast gray area of fair use (remixes, snippets of songs playing in the background, parody and comedy,…

The point is it is not ambiguous. I think the hardest part with video content is trying to figure out the boundary line. But like I said, whether or not you have copyright assignment rights is really straightforward.

Content-centric and named data networking will make it trivial to identify and compose (and censor!) "chunks" of content.

http://www.ccnx.org/about/

http://www.named-function.net/nfn_talk-ccnxcon2013.pdf

Re: YouTube to block indie labels who don't sign up to new music service

#105

Post by dspillett » Wed, Jun 18, 2014, 9:53 AM UTC

magicalist wrote: post #78

fpgeek wrote: post #57

Upon reflection , I think this article (and others like it) are starting from the wrong place and end up confusing the issue more than illuminating it. I think the right place to start is that Google wants to offer a premium, ad-free YouTube service. Given that, what happens to videos that are ad-supported today: 1. They participate and are ad-supported for free users and subscription-supported for premium users. Coo…

One interesting thing is that this is a service that Google is letting you pay for instead of viewing ads. Have they done that before? I guess gmail/google apps, but that's a little different, as you have to get a new account, you can't add a subscription to your existing account. I wish they would do this for all of youtube, not just music. The phrasing (and its effect on how people react to the story) is very inter…

> I wish they would do this for all of youtube, not just music.

As someone who visits youtube a fair bit but very rarely for music, I agree with you there. I can't see that they won't though: if the music side works out then it would make sense to push the idea more generally.

It won't be easy though: there will be many that don't want to sign up to a revised advertising/funding agreement. But the way I see it they are fighting the same fight many admonish the big media players for: they'll be trying to maintain the status quo instead of moving with the times, effectively trying to hold everyone else back because they don't see the need to move as it might not work in their favour.

Re: YouTube to block indie labels who don't sign up to new music service

#106

Post by walterbell » Wed, Jun 18, 2014, 9:58 AM UTC

EGreg wrote: post #72

dublinben wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds a lot like Pump.io or Diaspora. MediaGoblin is going to support federation soon as well.

I personally think there should be a protocol that would turn everything into one big social network where you could sign up on any server and then OAuth to other servers. We are building it: http://platform.qbix.com (Better than Diaspora* :)

Did you consider an open-source or dual-licensing business model? See http://www.1060research.com/products/ for an example.

Re: YouTube to block indie labels who don't sign up to new music service

#107

Post by peroo » Wed, Jun 18, 2014, 10:18 AM UTC

fpgeek wrote: post #66

Shooti wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure you can draw such a hard line between audio/video since all the rumors point to this subscription service essentially being both: http://www.androidpolice.com/2013/11/27/apk-teardown-youtube... i.e. By enabling the Android/iOS Youtube app to background (which they've gone out of their way to disable up until this point), it essentially becomes an audio streaming service with the same interface. Plus accordin…

That sounds like a fundamental disagreement about how much video-wrapped audio streaming is worth (with Google saying enough people will pay to avoid the extra overhead/complexity and the labels thinking that people will walk many miles to save a few bucks). That sounds like a plausible place for negotiations to break down. I suspect Google is right today (at least for the many people who care about mobile music, sin…

A lot of people are already using YouTube as a free streaming service, and even though artist can monetize their music, the payout is significantly lower than from pure music streaming services. This is seen as a fair tradeoff seeing as YouTube is also a great promotional channel, but Google are now trying to pivot it into a pure streaming service without significantly changing payouts.

It sets a very dangerous precedent for the value of music, which can be incredibly damaging for already struggling indie artists (not so much for the three majors who have received _massive_ advances)

Re: YouTube to block indie labels who don't sign up to new music service

#108

Post by peroo » Wed, Jun 18, 2014, 10:26 AM UTC

magicalist wrote: post #78

fpgeek wrote: post #57

Upon reflection , I think this article (and others like it) are starting from the wrong place and end up confusing the issue more than illuminating it. I think the right place to start is that Google wants to offer a premium, ad-free YouTube service. Given that, what happens to videos that are ad-supported today: 1. They participate and are ad-supported for free users and subscription-supported for premium users. Coo…

One interesting thing is that this is a service that Google is letting you pay for instead of viewing ads. Have they done that before? I guess gmail/google apps, but that's a little different, as you have to get a new account, you can't add a subscription to your existing account. I wish they would do this for all of youtube, not just music. The phrasing (and its effect on how people react to the story) is very inter…

The ability to monetize music on Youtube is unlikely to be a big hit since few labels make much compared to real streaming services. The big hit is going to be for promotion. The only reason indie labels have put up with the abysmal payouts from Youtube have been the fact that it's a great way to promote their music. Youtube is great for discovery and poor for streaming, which makes for great conversion.

However, what Google are trying to do is essentially turn Youtube into a fully fledged music streaming service, but they're framing it as the same old video sharing service to justify continued abyssmal payouts. They can do this because they know that artists will put pressure on their labels to get back on Youtube if they're ever blocked. It's a classic monopolist move, and the only solace is that Google will likely fuck up yet again like they do every time they try to enter different markets.

Re: YouTube to block indie labels who don't sign up to new music service

#109

Post by tragic » Wed, Jun 18, 2014, 11:18 AM UTC

sejje wrote: post #51

codezero wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I visit the URL of one of these videos, will it play? It sounds like you are just arguing semantics about what "block" means internally at YouTube versus what a person using YouTube considers the word to mean.

I think it's the difference in "we're mad/blackmailing/whatever, so your videos won't play anymore" and "we legally can't play your videos." GP is suggesting throughout this thread that the indie labels are using deceptive language to say "YouTube is blocking us" when really they're saying "we don't like the terms so we won't let YouTube play our content." Whether that's true or not, I have no idea.

As I understand it, if copyrighted material goes up on Youtube as things stand, the copyright holder has the option of either requesting a block/takedown or entering into the ad revenue scheme for a cut of the ad clicks.

That choice is being revised to: either requesting a block/takedown or entering into the ad revenue scheme for a cut of the ad clicks for free views, and a cut of subscriptions for premium views. Premium views will be worth less to the label than free views, so this will mean a cut in revenue (of course, if 'Youtube+' tanks, then it will be a trivial cut in revenue). So the first option looks better for the indies than it did before. It seems some of them have decided that it looks much better.

I don't think it fits nicely into the Google is great/Google is evil dichotomy, simply because it's an understandable business decision from Google's point of view, but it genuinely is the case that it shafts the indies. (Revenues from streaming services are pitiful for anyone outside the sacred circle of mega-labels.)

Everybody loses. sigh

Re: YouTube to block indie labels who don't sign up to new music service

#110

Post by rwmj » Wed, Jun 18, 2014, 11:20 AM UTC

fpgeek wrote: post #57

Upon reflection , I think this article (and others like it) are starting from the wrong place and end up confusing the issue more than illuminating it. I think the right place to start is that Google wants to offer a premium, ad-free YouTube service. Given that, what happens to videos that are ad-supported today: 1. They participate and are ad-supported for free users and subscription-supported for premium users. Coo…

The premium ad-free service is already here: youtube-dl.