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Google: Indie Musicians Must Join Streaming Service Or Be Removed
Sockatume writes: In a statement to the Financial Times and reported by the BBC, Google has confirmed that it will remove the music videos of independent artists unless they sign up to its upcoming subscription music service. Many independent musicians and labels have refused to do so, claiming that the contracts offer significantly worse deals than the likes of Spotify and Pandora, and that Google is unwilling to negotiate on the rates it offers artists. A Google spokesperson indicated that the company could start removing videos within days.
Google, how the fuck is this not evil?
First, as pointed out, it is removed from YouTube, not google search results. This is annoying to the artists, but Youtube belongs to google. They set the terms for you hosting videos there at no cost to you. If the terms are unfair, simply go elsewhere. Perhaps Vimeo. Google is not killing babies or clubbing seals or blackmailing your momma to get you to publish on their streaming service. In fact, I do not know that their streaming service has much share against the likes of iTunes, Amazon, Pandora, Spotify, etc. Many of these companies do not offer good rates either. However, the market will see who wins here, and forcing people over seems like a mistake that will not aid Google's streaming servies in the long run.
Silence is a state of mime.
It's hardly "evil" for them to provide a free platform for independent artists, just because they're independent artists.
You mean the free platform that they provide to everyone else without discrimination or contractual obligations?
People who say "sheeple" have about as much sophistication as an AOL user, and in fact are probably actually AOL users.
YouTube is a free to anybody video site.
Google is now saying that anybody who has a song up on YouTube that Google would like to include in their (for pay) streaming services (at a crappy rate of compensation) will have it removed from YouTube unless the artist signs up for these terms.
So all of a sudden Google is strong-arming people and saying "we will remove you from YouTube unless you sign this one sided deal".
Do we conclude that the TOS for YouTube now means unless you sign the rights for Google to use your video for commercial gain, you can't have a video up? Or can we conclude that they're only applying this to musicians in order to force them to sign up?
If they're going to apply this uniformly, the video of your child dancing is now something they can use for their own profit. If we say "of course not, those are home videos" how can you claim it's any different? This is Google deciding that their other commercial interests are going to change how YouTube works.
What they're providing is a "free to anybody unless we get a DMCA takedown" video service which is being turned into "unless we want to make money from it, and then it isn't free unless it's on our terms".
I'd say this is well into the "Google have become assholes" end of things. In fact, I'd say Google is fast becoming evil assholes.
Unless they've been strong-arming everybody who puts up a video in the same way, they can't suddenly pretend like one class of videos is different from another.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
If the video is only hosted on Youtube (and I suspect many such videos are, otherwise the uploaders wouldn't make such a fuss), it will be gone from the Google search engine as well, so the net effect is the same.
DON'T BE EVIL.
Kill Google Now - before you are forced into their self-driving cars, and legally required to use their thermostat.
SHARE AND ENJOY!
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
That distinction helps no one. They're leveraging an effective monopoly on streaming video.
Killer. So I can go to Target and I should be able to set the price I want to pay for an item and if they do not sell it to me for that price then they are evil bastards? So fucking awesome!
Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?
YouTube will remove music videos by artists such as Adele, Arctic Monkeys and Radiohead, because the independent labels to which they belong have refused to agree terms with the site.
Whoever wrote that summary clearly has an agenda.
Vimeo? Your mp4 or mpeg2 on any website?
Google has no monopoly on streaming video.
It has a large FREE service, full stop.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
So now evil is "If you do not like our terms then we will stop doing business with you."?
It depends on who's saying this. If you have a lot of other options you can go somewhere else. If the company saying this controls the vast majority of the market and is effectively blacklisting you, that certainly isn't good.
There are still alternatives to Google's service so it's not evil for them to say this, but I think the feeling behind the GP's post is concern that Google is rapidly getting to the point where they will have too much information and control over markets.
Yeah, so when Microsoft was forcing people into other products because of the de-facto standard of windows, you didn't care, right?
> Because YouTube is not a monopoly
In your mind, how much of the market does it take for youtube to qualify as a monopoly? Are you one of those sophists who says it isn't a monopoly as long as there is somebody else, anybody else, no matter how small their marketshare?
Because youtube has 94% of the market. And by the definition of most reasonable people that easily qualifies as a monopoly.
> it's not unreasonable or unfair of it to try to recover costs (or, gasp, make a profit) somehow.
They are making a profit, they are showing ads on the videos on youtube. This is above and beyond that and it is only for certain videos. They are doing price discrimination based on the content rather than their own costs. They make just as much money per play from a 30 second video of an elephant taking a dump as they do from a 30 second music video. But they are adding extra requirements to the music video.
In your geekheart you know that's unfair. The question isn't whether they can do it, clearly they can do it, the question is if we as their paying customers think it is fair (yes we pay with our personal information, if it weren't valuable google wouldn't have a market cap in the billions).
They already have that protection in the form of the DMCA and this form. They don't need to force content owners to license the video for their streaming service in order to have protection for YouTube videos, and even if they had a streaming license it likely wouldn't cover a YouTube video anyways.
So now evil is "If you do not like our terms then we will stop doing business with you."?
It depends on who's saying this. If you have a lot of other options you can go somewhere else. If the company saying this controls the vast majority of the market and is effectively blacklisting you, that certainly isn't good.
Correct so far.
There are still alternatives to Google's service so it's not evil for them to say this
Incorrect. In antitrust law the question is whether a company is able to exercise "market power", which does not depend on the mere existence of alternatives, but the relative market power with respect to the alternatives.
but I think the feeling behind the GP's post is concern that Google is rapidly getting to the point where they will have too much information and control over markets.
Which is governed mainly by the Sherman and Clayton anti-trust acts. But the GP's actual point was about evil, which is a moral and ethical issue. The legal questions are related to morality and ethics, but they are not the same. GP's point is about whether Google has unambigously crossed the line where evil begins. It seems apparent to me that, in this case, Google has done exactly that.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
And what are the odds that Vimeo and other similar sites will be given prime placement in google search results? About the same odds that I'll be sleeping with Angelina Jolie tonight.
Note: I'm an ugly, ugly man.
But if you want to get good press, for your video YouTube is the wisest choice.
1. A lot of people use it, and do random searches against it.
2. Recommended similar videos help people discover new stuff.
3. A lot of software and tools to help you post there even your basic Smart Phone.
If you put in on your website, you are going to need to try to get people going to your website, if you have it on YouTube, people may be able to find you.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
And... so? None of this will happen until self-driving cars are in fact the safer alternative. At which point, great. Since when do you get to endanger others because you think it's fun?
We hope your rules and wisdom choke you / Now we are one in everlasting peace
How would YouTube go about determining whether a particular video is a "music video" by a "music label"? If I compose and record original music to accompany a video that I have produced, and I upload the video to YouTube, does that make me a "label" and make the video a "music video", thus requiring me to formally release its soundtrack?
You're making this too complicated. This has nothing to do with definitions of "music videos" or "labels."
IF you want to upload a video of whatever to YouTube and show it for free, you are still free to do so. Nothing about that has changed.
IF, on the other hand, you want YouTube to pay you money from ad revenue it makes, you need to negotiate a license with Google/YouTube. Some labels and Google can't agree on terms, so Google has simply decided to walk away from the old licenses.
The old license terms gave the labels some ad revenue in exchange for YouTube having permission to show the (commercial) videos. If Google no longer agrees to the payment scheme, if can no longer show the videos, according to the old licenses. Therefore, it must take them down.
Nothing is preventing the independent labels (or artists themselves) from posting anything they want to for free. It's only if they are restricting the playing of videos so that they must receive shares in YouTube's profits in exchange that this matters.
I think this is the narrowest definition of what Google is saying.
Google uses content ID to figure out who owns copyright to music. So, if a video is uploaded that they know is owned by a copyright owner that has not negotiated with them, they can block the video saying that they have no license with the copyright holder and thus, nobody can upload that content.
This effectively allows Google to block all content from the indie labels, uploaded by anyone and monetized or not.
Google is not being clear about what they will do but the worst case is that they can block every indie music from youtube that has not licensed with them. Of course, they want to negotiate and want to scare the indies into signing for their service.
From what I have read, most musicians consider YouTube as a promotional platform and not a revenue stream from videos. Google's threat is that they will eliminate Youtube as a promotional platform. You can choose to believe that they meant only as a revenue stream and not as a promotional platform but there certainly isn't any guarantee from Google about that.