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YouTube to Offer Every Music Video Ever Created?
Klaidas writes "BBC reports that YouTube is aiming to have every music video ever created within 18 months and offer them free of charge to its users
"Right now we're trying to very quickly determine how and what the model is to distribute this content and we're very aggressive in assisting the labels in trying to get the content on to YouTube," said Mr Chen."
"Right now we're trying to very quickly determine how and what the model is to distribute this content and we're very aggressive in assisting the labels in trying to get the content on to YouTube," said Mr Chen."
Yes, they could make this be a paid service, but they would probably make a lot more money off of advertising. If they have every music video then it will be the default place for most people to go when they want to watch a music video. Then if they offer a play-list type feature to store all of your favorites that you can just play through, it would be great. This could draw in a lot of people which would make a perfect place to post advertisements.
It also shouldn't be too much of a problem to get past the RIAA. Look at Yahoos music videos. As long as there isn't a way for people to download them and keep them for personal use, I don't see that there would be a problem (but what do I know, if there is a way to make money the RIAA will be all over it). I think that they could have a really good thing starting here.
Obviously the RIAA will try to license the content to YouTube for a huge fee. But even the record labels know that music videos are like advertisements for songs. They make far more money selling records than videos. Free videos give their music more exposure, which means more sales.
Developers: We can use your help.
It is interesting that there is no mention of the fact that a Youtube grey area exists already, where there are 1) a lot of copyright-violating videos on Youtube currently, and that 2) many of these videos--but oddly not all--were removed by Youtube in a mass cleansing a few months ago.
Why is it, Youtube has videos from many very popular and very lawsuit-happy bands (such as Kiss), but only *some* of their videos, and *not* always just the ones that are the arguably less copyright-infringing ones? In other words, often many of the videos that weren't intentionly taken down for legal reasons are the ones that are seemingly most illegal, ala the "legitimate MTV-style" videos.
It smells of payola and soforth. But who knows.
"The television is the retina of the mind's eye" - Videodrome
Except that selling music videos is not a main revenue stream for record labels. Their money is made selling CDs, and music videos are little more than advertisements for songs. Imagine the following scenario: Your buddy sends a YouTube link to a funny music vid. You play the video a few times, and the song gets stuck in your head. There is now a much greater chance that you'll go out and buy the album that the song is on. MTV used to be a great advertising venue for the music industry, but execs have probably come to realise that people in their teens and twenties, a prime music-buying demographic, are no longer watching television with any frequency. YouTube is a great venue for reaching this demographic. YouTube is an even better match because, unlike Apple's music video downloads, YouTube makes its videos difficult for the average user to download. Even when downloaded, the file is in the uncommon .FLV format, which will need to be re-encoded to be played on any portable media player. For those reasons, downloads from YouTube will not be a viable replacement for purchasing the album to the vast majority of consumers.
To summarize:
1. Good advertising venue for a key demographic.
2. Not threatening as a replacement to album purchases.
Blows my mind why labels don't give the videos out on all the band sites.
It's a loss leader. I can't remember how many albums I bought because the video introduced me to the music. The audio quality would be poor enough to encourage people to buy the real thing.
way to go ...
"Firefox users need to install the following ActiveX compatibility plug-in:"
Patriotism is a virtue of the vicious
probably one of the very best videos ever made, in fact i think it received the nomination for #6 of all time. the video can be found here . Not only was it a breakout video but unknowingly outside the US A-ha in still increasingly popular in the UK and most of europe. you can read more about a-ha here and the technique they used(a HREF=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotoscope> Rotoscoping ) to make the video. wonder how long it would take to generate this on the computer?
It's amazing that back in the MTV days artists were ACTUALLY artists and the talent shows through and through. ever notice how many 80s stations there are on the radio today? IMHO the 80's was the last attempt at real music with real artists..ya know people that write and produce their own stuff? Sadly its all about the money now, just like everything else. Show some skin, sing someone elses lyrics and you are good to go..thats what we have today.
Maybe thats one reason you dont see music videos anymore and one reason music sales started slumpping way before Napster came along..b/c the music for the most part it utter crap. Napster just made folks at the RIAA realize just how bad the music industry had become and continues to be.
I saw Pink Floyd in Edmonton once. They were in the middle of an extended solo and the band got LOST! It was hilarious. Being a drummer, I've been there. You could tell that nobody knew where to come back in and were kinda playing chicken... should I go now... how bout now... Took em a few bars and it was a messy turnaround, but I don't think anybody else in the audience even heard it. I know my two buddies had no idea. Sure boosted my self-confidence.. shit if Pink Floyd can screw up on stage after playing for over 20 years, I don't feel so bad when I do :-)
I'm not anti-social, I'm anti-idiot.