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.

Comments

and the logical followup

[nimbius]

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.

Re:and the logical followup

[Voyager529]

if DRM has taught us anything its that aggravating someone is the worst way to get them to participate in a market.

Well, to be fair, the argument against DRM had to do with the fact that it affects users who have already directly paid for the content. People streaming on Youtube haven't paid for the content, and thus must pay with some other means.

Youtube streaming is largely for convenience of getting to a single song easily; whether it would result in users paying for the tracks, paying for Spotify Premium or similar, or 'doing without' would accomplish the labels' goals...but the bigger concern I have is whether we'll see a renaissance in a Limewire-like service, which helps no one.

Ads on YouTube?

[Anonymous Coward]

Advertising on YouTube is a really terrible idea. I hope they never decide to put ads on it. That would ruin the site.

Re:Ads on YouTube?

[jonsmirl]

Google Music used to have so many ads that it was unusable. They even ran ads saying "Don't like the ads! Subscribe for advertisement free music!". After I listened to that for a day, I deleted the app and did not try it again for two years. A few months ago I gave it try during an outage on another music service and the obnoxious ads were gone. So now I am using it again for background music. My new complaint -- the channel playlists are way, way too short before they endlessly repeat the same songs over and over. When you finish the playlist on a channel, why can't it just randomly play similar songs instead of looping the same playlist? Randomly playing songs has a very low royalty compared to on-demand.

The lesson here -- obnoxious ads work to drive your customers away. But they may be more likely to go to a competitor than your own pay service.

Alternative Sources

[fussy_radical]

Alternatively: YouTube to frustrate users to use a different source for their music.

Download them

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Weird strategy

[Dixie_Flatline]

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.)

Good tactic, bad strategy?

[QuietLagoon]

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?

Re:Good tactic, bad strategy?

[Paul Neubauer]

It won't. They might convince to pay for something. But they also convince me THEY don't get a penny of it.

Re:youtube sucks

[mccalli]

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.

Who is the TRUE beneficiary?

[geekmux]

"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.

The good old days...

[Comboman]

Do you have any data that the artist will make more money from donations vs royalty payments? Also will you continue to pay the artist for your favorite song over the next 20 years? Or will that one song that you loved so much be the end of that artist. Because after getting paid for that song, they will no longer have an income because their other songs are not so popular.

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?

THE BEATINGS WILL CONTINUE..

[Rick Schumann]

..until morale improves.
Signed,
YouTube Management

Making the same mistake as terrestrial radio

[rnturn]

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.