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YouTube Will 'Frustrate' Some Users With Ads So They Pay for Music (bloomberg.com)
YouTube will increase the number of ads that some users see between music videos, part of a strategy to convince more of its billion-plus viewers to pay for a forthcoming subscription music service from the Google-owned video site. Bloomberg: People who treat YouTube like a music service, those passively listening for long periods of time, will encounter more ads, according to Lyor Cohen, the company's global head of music. "You're not going to be happy after you are jamming 'Stairway to Heaven' and you get an ad right after that," Cohen said in an interview at the South by Southwest music festival. Cohen is trying to prove that YouTube is committed to making people pay for music and silence the "noise" about his company's purported harm to the recording industry. The labels companies have long criticized YouTube for hosting videos that violate copyrights, and not paying artists and record companies enough.
adblockers will become more adept at blocking Youtube ads not just in this context, but in every context.
if DRM has taught us anything its that aggravating someone is the worst way to get them to participate in a market. Give me a link to the artist and I'd likely be far more interested in donating cash for certain songs in a live stream.
Good people go to bed earlier.
Advertising on YouTube is a really terrible idea. I hope they never decide to put ads on it. That would ruin the site.
Alternatively: YouTube to frustrate users to use a different source for their music.
I download all youtube unless I am just wandering around on youtube checking out new stuff. I download about 20 things a day from youtube, typically to mp3 formate as I don't care about the video aspect. I do it all with a free downloader online. It works great and I can load them up on my phone and listen all day without one commercial.
I've never understood this strategy, exactly. I mean, I know why Google/YouTube is doing it, but what's in it for the advertisers?
Flooding the system with ads that are specifically meant to drive people to ad-free subscriptions means you're removing all the people that have the money to pay for stuff AND who can't tolerate ignoring ads. What you're left with is either people that don't have the money, or are so good at ignoring ads they don't care.
(I know that ads work on a semi-conscious level; even someone that really claims not to be affected can't help but be to some extent. Still, I don't see it as a good value for advertisers.)
Will this tactic backfire? If people want to start paying for music, why does youtube think that youtube will be the vendor for those people?
You advertise something for free or low cost to get (in their case) eyeballs or the ability to legally say it costs some lowball price.
You really want to sell the upgraded version, but you can't take away the original offer without pissing off your customers and sometimes the FTC (bait and switch).
If your customers aren't going for the upsell, you just degrade the lowball product until they do.
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away." - Philip K. Dick
Didn't you learn anything from webpages and what happened to their ad revenues when ads became more and more obnoxious? What did people do? Grin and bear it? Pay for the pages? Or install more and more sophisticated blockers for the nuisance?
The only thing that will happen is that people install adblockers. Worse, you'll get people who did NOT use adblockers so far to use them. The ones that are your key audience. The ones that don't want to deal with "that computer shit" and just want their fix. The ones that still put up with your ads. You have already lost the ones that do care and that do know how to use adblockers. I haven't seen an ad on YouTube in ages.
You are about to learn what the webpage ad industry learned: That you can actually make mountains move if you pester them enough. These are the people who put up with 20+ popups from some "free" software they installed. These are the people that dutifully close window after window every time they start their computer because they have no idea how to clean their autorun from uninstalled software that didn't quite uninstall properly. These are the people that surf on 5" browser windows on 30" screens because the rest of the browser real estate is hogged by "browser bars" they somehow installed and now don't know how to get rid of.
The ad industry managed to piss THESE people off enough that they installed ad blockers!
And now they are whining and begging and threatening and complaining that their ad revenue dried up. And they beg and plead to deactivate and uninstall those adblockers. But there is no going back. These people will continue to block. Worse, it's likely they don't even know how to deactivate it, even if they could be bothered to do it.
YouTube, you're about to learn the same lesson. Why do you insist in touching the stove yourself, ain't it enough that everyone else is already crying over scorched hands?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
As a person with some music up on youtube - yes. You have to upload as HD video, otherwise it goes to...err...96kbps? Something like that. Uploading as HD video gets you 192kbps audio, so even though it's literally just a static picture of the album cover all my stuff is uploaded as HD.
Since the adpocolypse, I block all ads on youtube. Any channel that I care about already got demonitized, so I pay them directly with Patreon or buying shit from them.
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
Because they bent over backwards to help the music industry monetize or restrict their music in other people's videos, and the music industry knows how important YouTube is to them financially these these days.
I browse on +1 so AC's need not respond, I won't see it.
"Cohen is trying to prove that YouTube is committed to making people pay for music and silence the "noise" about his company's purported harm to the recording industry..."
Oh, so you wish to silence the purported noise by forcing customers to pay by annoying the shit out of them? Thanks for clarifying what 21st Century customer service has become for those Too Big To Fail. A Fuck You Very Much And Have A Nice Day mantra from you friendly owns-the-neighborhood mega-corp. I've said it before. Corporate Arrogance is not a good thing, but there's never enough people that give a shit enough to stop it, so it will continue to spread like a disease.
"...The labels companies have long criticized YouTube for hosting videos that violate copyrights, and not paying artists and record companies enough."
Oh, so THAT is the reason you're doing this? You care about the artists? Well, I'll be waiting for your financial statements that show that 100% of the revenue generated from this WILL be supporting that justification then. Needless to say, I'm not holding my breath.
How on earth did artists ever survive back in the days when you just paid them once for a record/tape/CD that you could play over and over for the next 20 years without paying them again? Especially when the studio/distributor/retailers took the lion's share of that money?
Support Right To Repair Legislation.
..until morale improves.
Signed,
YouTube Management
The problem I have is all the services want total control, I've flat out had songs removed from my playlist from an artist as they take them off the service, like google play, then have to go find the song on youtube.
I almost forgot the name of the song and would have never known except one of my devices hadn't updated yet and had it removed.
If there was more responsibility and accountability to provide proper access or notification if a song has been removed from the service it would be better.
In the end, I pay about 10$ a month to listen to music every now and then, but if it keeps up bands are going to find it harder to get discovered, and I'll switch to buying music I like, taking it on medium I control, and that'll be the end of it.
I'm okay with people being paid for their work, but I'm not okay with people dictating when they'll take it away from me, after taking my money.
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The music-to-ad content became low enough that people started going elsewhere for music. YouTube will learn that this can happen to them as well.
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M