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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.
Read the arcticle so you don't have to:
This is about removing artists from Youtube, not from the Google search engine.
Google, how the fuck is this not evil?
I suppose you mean "or be removed FROM YOUTUBE"???
TFS does not match TFA. Google is going to remove a number of videos of artists whose "independent labels" have refused permission for them to be on YouTube.
Trying to make this about Google's upcoming subscription service is a complete misrepresentation of TFA.
What's an "Indie Musician"? My kids singing Happy Birthday©?
Have gnu, will travel.
A few weeks ago a couple of characters in Doonesbury were looking for a new slogan for their company. Their choice was: "Don't be Google". This stuff just adds more weight to their decision.
So don't be Google!
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
I wonder if this will turn out to be Youtube's first step towards irrelevance to the youth market.
This seems like a familiar story from Microsoft and IBM: think your company is so indispensable that you start demanding more of your users and/or partners. And in doing so, make people start looking for alternatives.
Hello Google. How the fsck do you think this won't get you large fines for unfair competition practices in the European Union? By forcing people to have you represent them, you are being unfair competition to other streaming web sites and small record labels. You may have oodles of lawyers up your sleeve, but even they won't be able to get away with this in the EU.
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
ASK TOOLBAR!!!!!!!!!!! RAGE!
Sounds like an opportunity for MySpace to try to reclaim some of that territory. Anybody know if MySpace has the chops to turn this into a good thing for them?
"Now, I doubt any of you would prefer a rolled up newspaper as a weapon against a dictator or a criminal intruder."
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..."
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?
What makes an organization a "music label"? I was under the impression that the closest concept in law to a "music label" was the owner of copyright in a sound recording. For example, an artist who owns his own recordings, either by having bought the masters from his previous label or by not having signed a "work made for hire" agreement in the first place, is his own label.
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.
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? I found nothing in the BBC article or the Guardian article about this.
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.
> 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).
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.
Umm. No. Music was segregated due to the demands of the Music industry. Not Google.
Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?
Ads? What ads? There are ads in YouTube?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
For anyone not smart enough to run things like adblock, yes.
we are all invisible unless we choose otherwise
They refused to agree to the revised terms which are unnegotiable, which indies are claiming to be unfavorable.
Twinstiq, game news
As I read it, this has nothing directly to do with music videos hosted on YouTube - except that they won't let you host them there unless you also sign up to host your music streams on Google Play music - or whatever their Spotify competitor is. That's kind of veering toward evil-ish. Nobody has to host videos on YouTube, but it became ubiquitous by allowing anybody to host stuff there. Now it's requiring you to support another Google site as a condition. Not cool. If the other Google site is good enough, it'll get content on its own...
Posted from my Android phone. Oh, I can change this? There, that's better...
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
Freedom and volition entail some risk.
If we let it get out of hand, this bubble-wrap mentality will be the worst thing that's ever happened to mankind.
FTFY
(For the record, I don't think all classes of Apple users are stupid. The MacBook Air has the highest power-to-weight ratio of any machine that runs Unix, so it's a rational choice for many people. No, I don't own one.)
sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f(q{sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f});
If you're a production company, you should have incorporation documents that you could use [etc]
Thank you. With that having been clarified, now my concern shifts to where "showcas[ing] your creative work" ends and "upload[ing] videos with a commercial intent" begins.
How you post a review of a video game is therefore not their problem.
I fully agree with you that it is not Vimeo's problem. But it is the problem of anyone who suggests Vimeo as an example of a full replacement for YouTube.