Record Labels Learning They Have Little Leverage On YouTube
from the well,-look-at-that... dept
Over the weekend, the story made the rounds about Warner Music's dispute with Google over getting money from YouTube videos. As we discussed in our post on the topic, it seemed like Warner had very little leverage here: Google has no legal responsibility to pay anything, and removing the videos from YouTube seemed a lot more likely to harm Warner Music and its artists than Google. As noted by some folks, for many kids these days, YouTube is how they find and listen to music these days. Forcing your songs off YouTube would be like demanding their removal from the radio twenty years ago.Yet, more details are coming out on this story, and it appears that both Warner Music and Google may recognize Warner Music's precarious position here. In fact, it appears that it wasn't Warner Music that demanded its music be taken down. Instead, reports are coming out saying that Warner instead went to Google with higher monetary demands, and it was Google's response to start pulling the music down, to demonstrate to Warner Music that YouTube is a lot more valuable to Warner Music than Warner Music is to YouTube (a lesson that Warner Music execs desperately need to learn).
Warner Music's response, apparently, has been to try to pretend it has some leverage, supposedly leaking a somewhat questionable story that it, and other major record labels, are preparing to launch a "Hulu for music." However, as Greg Sandoval notes in the News.com link in the paragraph above, this seems like little more than idle speculation by the labels. They had talked about this months ago, and have done nothing since. Instead, it was a bluff by the record labels in a weak attempt to convince Google that it needs to play ball or face competition. Google is likely to call the bluff -- because Google still recognizes what the record labels seem to have trouble recognizing. The power of YouTube isn't in having a site that plays videos, it's in the audience -- and you don't recreate that overnight.
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Filed Under: copyright, leverage, videos
Companies: google, warner music group, youtube
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Ha ha
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Hulu's basic premise is: "we'll host shows for you to watch, but only the current season. Join our site!" Meanwhile, season after, you can't pull up anything anymore. Oh, and the videos take about 10 seconds longer to download (different software).
Good job music/video industries, I wonder how much of your proverbial feet you have left since you've been shooting at both of them for so long.
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The Trouble with Hulu
How about the music industry demand free advertising space on any YouTube page containing an "illegal" video? That way they could freely promote their artists, not anger the fans, and get the music out to the widest possible audience.
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Re: The Trouble with Hulu
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Re: The Trouble with Hulu
Youtube already has something like that. Content owners are allowed to flag illegally uploaded copies of their material on Youtube. Rather than taking it down, they can instead share in Google's ad revenue from those pages. It's a nice simple solution that benefits everyone.
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Re: The Trouble with Hulu
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Re: Re: The Trouble with Hulu
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Re:
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The curious case of clueless Warner
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RIAA has no value.
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compared to payola
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If the record labels launch a music hulu, it probably won't work as well.
Music is portable, so it won't meet that need. It's just a different animal from TV. The record companies will still need to add value beyond the music.
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No. All it does is perpetuate the idea that content, once produced, can be owned.
It also postpones the much needed end of an industry that is no longer needed and has been a plague on society over the last decade.
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Re: "the economics of entertainment"
Let's take a look at the various aspects of the entertainment industry. Athletes and professional sports teams: do pretty damn well for themselves and STILL feel the need charge ridiculous prices and restrict their content (I'm looking at you, NFL). Actors and the rest of Hollywood: doing excessively well also, and then they whine when they don't get everything they want. Bands and the music industry: most bands do well for themselves despite their labels and despite "illegal" activities. The list goes on...
The economics of entertainment are simple: you provide a service (ie, a game, a performance, a concert) and I pay for that service. That service itself cannot be reproduced by anyone else; it's simply impossible because then it's not the real thing. (This is what branding is all about.)
The audio-video effects of said service can be reproduced ad nauseum, but because such reproduction requires infinitesimal amounts of resources, time, and effort, there is essentially no cost to reproduce the material and therefore no justification for charging for the reproduced material.
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Free Download Sites?
I went to many of those sites. They SELL music but do not provide free downloads to anyone unless you first REGISTER with them, and then they play only a snippet and try to get you to buy the song without hearing it. (At least on the radio you can hear the whole song.)
Back to YouTube I went. There, you can hear the whole song. YouTube is the radio station and jukebox of THIS generation. After I listen to and fall in love with a song, THEN I will make a purchase decision -- not before.
The RIAA wants to make us music lovers buy first, and listen afterwards. It simply doesn't work that way. And the "snippets" their sites play are computer generated and do NOT feature the music in a positive manner. They arbitrarily pick a selection that does not accurately reflect the attributes of the song.
That would be like trying to sell a toilet bowl cleaner on TV by showing the business end of the brush instead of a picture of the gleaming bowl afterwards.
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RIAA
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