Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

theguardian.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 118 posts

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

#71

Post by 7952 »

davehur wrote: post #40
hullo wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From a seemingly more evenly sourced article on gizmodo: "Some labels are refusing to sign up because they say they're getting a raw deal from Google. They say that while the major labels have negotiated lucrative contracts, Google is offering indies comparatively bad terms. It's their right to say they don't want to sign up if they don't like the deal Google is offering them. In response, Google is drawing a line in…

"crappy licensing deal" doesn't really indicate an even article. Basically same as everyone else they are siding with the labels and adapting their narrative. Yes, if Youtube can't licence the music the videos will get flagged by ContentID, which means they gets "blocked" because they don't have the license to show them, it's a semantics play and circular logic that the labels are offering and as with most attacks on…

I wonder how covers/unofficial recordings/karaoke will be dealt with. That ecosystem is a real differentiating factor for Youtube compared to a service like spotify. A lot of the top results for major songs are not the original recording.

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

#72

Post by EGreg »

dublinben wrote: post #70
EGreg wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But what if there was a decentralized social network that allowed people to visit their site and immediately get a personalized experience as if they were logged in across this decentralized network? Why would people need to HOST their stuff on the centralized servers?

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* :)

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

#73

Post by bsder »

charonn0 wrote: post #30
spingsprong wrote: post #2

Will somebody here please make a video hosting website to replace YouTube.

Is Youtube actually profitable?

Probably not without all the subsidy that YouTube gets via Google's scale of internet bandwidth and integration of ads.

I suspect that's why sites like Nico Nico (http://www.nicovideo.jp/) try to overlay as much to YouTube as possible.

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

#74

Post by Floegipoky »

danudey wrote: post #43
JonnieCache wrote: post #18

So basically they're chopping off the long tail? Seems bizarre to me. Google really is the new MS. Twitter should buy soundcloud and add music video hosting to it. Premium users only obviously.

The long tail might be lucrative but there's more overhead, and mainstream(ish) music provides economies of scale. Put another way: if they can make a penny per view on Psy's Gangnam Style video that's $20m for hosting and distributing one video. Maybe they can get 2 billion combined downloads from indie videos, but that requires hosting and distributing hundreds of thousands of videos. It makes sense, business-wise,…

This is assuming that the long tail is independent (no pun intended), but it isn't.

Musical taste is a very complex issue, and lots of people are going to be annoyed that a handful of their favorite bands aren't on youtube anymore. Others are going to be really angry that their entire favorite genre is missing. Are enough people going to pissed off enough for it to hurt their bottom line? My guess is yes, especially after the heavy-handed tactics they've been using to try to force adoption of some of their other services that nobody wants.

The bigger problem is that it damages YouTube's brand. It's not just a video hosting site, it's THE video hosting site. It has everything- cute cats, stupid people eating cinnamon, your favorite music, etc. They're going to have real problems when the average user has to go elsewhere to see a video that she cares about, especially if that elsewhere also has cat videos and doesn't require a Google+ account to comment. Supporting the long tail is the cost of maintaining their monopoly.

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

#75

Post by guard-of-terra »

danudey wrote: post #43
JonnieCache wrote: post #18

So basically they're chopping off the long tail? Seems bizarre to me. Google really is the new MS. Twitter should buy soundcloud and add music video hosting to it. Premium users only obviously.

The long tail might be lucrative but there's more overhead, and mainstream(ish) music provides economies of scale. Put another way: if they can make a penny per view on Psy's Gangnam Style video that's $20m for hosting and distributing one video. Maybe they can get 2 billion combined downloads from indie videos, but that requires hosting and distributing hundreds of thousands of videos. It makes sense, business-wise,…

Psy's Gangnam Style is The Long Tail.

If YouTube was long tail averse, we'll never have Psy. All we'll have is all kinds of Lady Gaga. Never grossing near one billion.

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

#76

Post by NAFV_P »

Second paragraph in the article > YouTube is about to begin testing the new service – which will charge people to watch and listen to music without ads, and download songs to their mobile devices – within the next few days, initially within Google.

Make a note of the wording: "watch and listen", as opposed to "listen and watch".

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

#77

Post by bowlofpetunias »

notatoad wrote: post #63

Youtube blocks all videos they don't have the rights to. If an indie label refuses to give google the rights to show their videos, then youtube can't play those videos. That isn't youtube blocking indie labels, it's indie labels refusing to licence their music to youtube.

If read it four times, but the logic in this statement is bizarre.

Your first sentence clearly states "Youtube blocks all videos they don't have the rights to". That's YouTube doing the blocking. Period. Of course they can play those videos, copyright hasn't gotten that far out of hand yet.

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

#78

Post by magicalist »

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 interesting. If it had gone instead with "Google forcing labels to allow ad-free youtube subscription service" or something, you'd probably see far more positive reactions. I hate services like hulu plus (subscription and ads!) with a fiery passion, so it sounds good to me.

On the other hand, youtube is so ubiquitous, "block" might not be that poor of a choice of words, as not being able to monetize on youtube is surely a hit. Of course, if they're getting revenue from ads they already have some kind of deal, this is just a different one, and it wasn't so long ago that some labels were holding out ("blocking" youtube from playing their music) in a reverse of the situation.

Really, though, without knowing the details of how google is trying to strongarm them into this agreement (or even the terms of the agreement), it's hard to make much of a judgement here. Definitely played up in the news for drama, though.

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

#79

Post by magicalist »

zanny wrote: post #48
spingsprong wrote: post #2

Will somebody here please make a video hosting website to replace YouTube.

I've always wanted to try a media content site (obviously based on open standards) where to avoid the whole DMCA mess you'd require all content to be relicensed under a CC license (of your choice). That means if you don't own licensing rights, which is very obvious if you even include third party material, you can't upload it. That means personal video is entirely safe, and anything you personally record is always sa…

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, etc).

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

#80

Post by dave5104 »

smacktoward wrote: post #55
EGreg wrote: post #52

Another symptom of centralization. Why don't people host their own videos?

Because doing so is complicated and expensive, would be my guess.

I also don't think grandma (or heck, even teenagers) are going to set up and configure their own servers to host videos.
Post reply on HN