Tag: youtube

Karma Meets Irony. “Freebooted” YouTuber’s Feel The Sting Of Piracy…

Watch and learn… We can’t make this up. Seriously you have to watch this video.

If we had a nickle for every YouTuber or Tech Journalist that advised musicians that “YouTube” was the SOLUTION TO PIRACY we’d be rich. Really rich. I mean, really, really, really rich. We we’re told YouTube was “promotion” and “exposure” to make money other ways.

We were told how if you just “made stuff people wanted” and “connected with fans” then they would reward you with loyalty and support. Musicians were told they were “whining” about piracy and that they should “adapt and evolve” to the “new way” and just embrace all of this “awesome internet empowered promotion”.

Funny how it is when the shoe is on the other foot. See here’s the thing. All of these YouTuber’s make money from the advertising that runs on their YouTube videos. But when those videos are ripped from YouTube by fans and uploaded to Facebook guess who doesn’t get paid? Yup, you guessed it… the YouTuber’s are getting stiffed and they don’t like it.

Where is Larry Lessig to help these folks out? Remember kids, don’t break the internet! It’s “sharing economy” afterall. You do the work and silicon valley shares the profits.

Soooo… when a musician’s work is pirated on Napster, Grockster, Kazaa, Limewire, The Pirate Bay, oh and YouTube… Musicians should “get over it”. But when a YouTuber’s work, labor and creative output is devalued, or worse monetized by a third party (Facebook) who doesn’t pay them anything, well then, you know, that’s “bad”.

The issue gained national attention this year earning editorials and reports from the likes of Slate, “Facebook’s Piracy Problem” in July. Time followed with a story in August, “This Is Facebook’s Biggest Problem With Video Right Now.” And recently as November AdWeek chimed in, “Facebook’s ‘Freebooting’ Piracy Problem Just Cost Casey Neistat 20 Million Views“.

This quote from the AdWeek story above kind of says it all…

But then they ran into a problem known as “freebooting,” which entails republishing videos on social sites without the consent of the folks who made the clips. In essence, it’s a practice of intellectual-property theft that’s plagued Facebook more than other digital platforms—PR-wise, at least—in recent months thanks to a few whistle-blowers.

They go on…

“I spent roughly a week issuing take downs on Facebook—a convoluted process,” Neistat told Adweek. “I crowdsourced the process of finding the freebooters because there is no way to search Facebook. In all, I took down well over 50 different posts—[which was] not nearly all of them. I simply gave up after a while. I anecdotally kept track of the view counts—over 20 million views on the videos I took down.”

Here’s more to chew on from a post by Hank Green on Medium, “Theft, Lies and Facebook Video“.

According to a recent report from Ogilvy and Tubular Labs, of the 1000 most popular Facebook videos of Q1 2015, 725 were stolen re-uploads. Just these 725 “freebooted” videos were responsible for around 17 BILLION views last quarter. This is not insignificant, it’s the vast majority of Facebook’s high volume traffic. And no wonder, when embedding a YouTube video on your company’s Facebook page is a sure way to see it die a sudden death, we shouldn’t be surprised when they rip it off YouTube and upload it natively.

Facebook’s algorithms encourage this theft.

Hmmmmm… where have we heard this story before? Maybe it was Daily Finance back in 2010, “Viacom vs. YouTube/Google: A Piracy Case in Their Own Words“.

• On July 19, Chen wrote to Hurley and Karim: “Jawed, please stop putting stolen videos on the site. We’re going to have a tough time defending the fact that we’re not liable for the copyrighted material on the site because we didn’t put it up when one of the co-founders is blatantly stealing content from from other sites and trying to get everyone to see it.” Four days later, Karim sent a link to the other founders, and Hurley told him that if they rejected it, they needed to reject all copyrighted material. Karim’s reply: “I say we reject this one but not the others. This one is totally blatant.”

• A July 29 email conversation about competing video sites laid out the importance to YouTube of continuing to use the copyrighted material. “Steal it!” Chen said , and got a reply from Hurley, “hmmm, steal the movies?” Chen’s answer: “we have to keep in mind that we need to attract traffic. how much traffic will we get from personal videos? remember, the only reason our traffic surged was due to a video of this type.”

Yup, Karma meets irony… How very interwebs… Ok, Ok, Ok… Sorry, just one more…

Everyone’s creativity deserves to be protected. All creators should be united against the illegal, infringing and exploitative uses of their work (especially for profit) without consent or compensation.

by Trichordist Editor

FREE Streaming is the Digital Cut-Out Bin. Artists You Deserve Better.

Cutouts

Today’s younger consumers who missed the glory days of the record store as a cultural hub will probably have little awareness of the cut-out bin. The cut-out bin was dreaded by artists and labels alike, but it served an important function in the ecosystem and economy of record sales. This was the rack in the record store where over manufactured titles made their last stop before the trash bin.

The cut-out bin was the last stop for an album, not the first stop. This is a very important consideration in today’s digital music economy. Artists, you deserve better service from your labels, management and partners.

Having your record appear in “the cut-outs” didn’t mean the album wasn’t successful, to the contrary, many of the records in cut-out bins were by well known name artists. Many of these records contained hit songs and singles. However, for whatever reason the quantities manufactured exceeded the markets ability to absorb those units into sales. At some point the decision was made to either monetize the overstock, or destroy the overstock.

The net result of the cut-out bin was that full length albums were often priced below the cost of a current 45 rpm single. However, this pricing distinction occurred at least a year or more after the initial release of the album. An album was “cut-out”after all of the front line sales, traditional discounts and higher margin retail channels had long been exhausted. Cut-out supplies were also limited and inconsistent. In other words, it was only the most patient and adventurous consumer who benefited from this deep discount.

Honestly, who would buy an album at full price if the same exact product (sans for the cut off top right corner) could be had for less than the price of current single?

So here we are a decade and a half into the new millennium and the best “new business model” for artists and rights holders in the 21st Century Digital Economy is to start at the last stop on the value chain?  You’re kidding us, right? We wish.

So how did we get here? Well, in three words “Ad Funded Piracy.” The lowest price for a product or service sets the price floor for all other comparable products. In the case of music that price has been set at about zero for over a decade and a half. But that’s not say there’s no money being made in the distribution of music online. No, there’s actually a lot of money being made by the Internet Advertising Networks supplying the advertising that fuels the corporate profits to over half a million infringing pirate sites.

It should also be noted that the CEO of the leading ad-funded, free to consumer streaming service was also the creator of the most successful ad-funded, bit-torrent client, u-torrent. Yup, that’s none other than Spotify’s Daniel Ek. Shocker, right?

Obviously, pirates and thieves are going to pirate and steal. These people should not be the first concern of business executives seeking to expand their profits on digital platforms. Enterprise level piracy requires the political will to enforce the law against egregious digital robber barons. Anti-Piracy is an “in addition to” action, not an “instead of” action. The future of the music business must be rooted in both innovation and advocacy.

Windows work. Period.

Business decisions need to developed through common sense, innovation and time tested principles of basic economics. We’ll repeat our previous suggestion for an industry wide, consistent windowing platform strategy below.

Windowing works better when there is a reasonable amount of consistency. Our friends in the film business have been highly effective at windowing for decades and there’s no reason why it can’t work similarly well for the record business.

Every new release should have the option to determine the release windows when the record is being set up. For example the default could be 0,30,60,90 day option for transactional sales, followed by 0,30,60,90 day option for Subscription Streaming prior to being available for Free Streaming.

Windowing is not new for the record business. The industry has never had pricing ubiquity across all releases, genres and catalogs. There has always been strategic and flexible pricing strategies to differentiate developing artists, hits, mid-line catalog, and deep catalog. An industry wide initiative to re-allign time proven price elasticity is the key to growing the business and developing a broad based sustainable ecosystem for more artists.

  • Windowing allows for Free Streaming to exist as a strategic price point.
  • Windowing allows for Subscription Streaming to exist as a strategic price point.
  • Windowing allows for Transactional Downloads to exist as a strategic price point.
  • Windowing allows for artists and rights holders to determine the best and most mutually beneficial way to engage with their fans.

Windowing is the key (as it always has been) in rebuilding a sustainable and robust professional middle class that will inevitably lead to more artists ascending to the ranks of stars. Some will become superstars and legends capable of creating the types of sales and revenues currently achieved by Adele, Taylor Swift and Beyonce’. To get there however we need to abandon Stockholm Syndrome and embrace windowing that works for everyone.

by Trichordist Editor

YouTube’s DMCA decision and the campaign to morph victims into villains | Vox Indie

YouTube will pay copyright court costs for a few users–not because it’s right–but to protect Google’s bottom line

According to a story in today’s NY Times, the folks at YouTube are ready to pony up cash to support some of its users “fair use” claims in court.

“YouTube said on Thursday that it would pick up the legal costs of a handful of video creators that the company thinks are the targets of unfair takedown demands. It said the creators it chose legally use third-party content under “fair use” provisions carved out for commentary, criticism, news and parody.”

You’ve probably read a lot about “fair use” lately.  It’s the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s mantra and if the folks there had their way, pretty much everything and anything would be considered “fair use.”  Fair use an important legal doctrine and when applied properly (criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, or research) is not an infringement of copyright.  However, these days, too often is used as a disingenuous defense for copyright theft.

READ THE FULL STORY AT VOX INDIE:
http://voxindie.org/youtube-covers-legal-costs-for-some-users/

by trichordist

YouTube’s Sucker Punch ? Free Streaming Licenses, No Subscription Fees…

We reported on this a little bit ago that YouTube Music Key seemed to be a pretty good way for Google to leverage labels into legitimate licenses with the promise of paid subscription fees. We questioned that in our post, “Did Google & YouTube just Scam The Entire Record Business into Free Streaming Licenses? MusicKey is MIA…“.

But here’s the thing… it’s not just us. Music Business Worldwide is asking the same question:

YouTube Music Key starts charging subscriptions… oh wait, no it doesn’t | Music Business Worldwide

You can see why suspicions are growing out there amongst the more cynical minds in the music biz that YouTube won’t ever charge for Music Key.

YouTube struck a number of megabucks, multi-year licensing deals with rights-holders last year, largely on the basis of launching a subscription platform.

Deals done, labels are now scratching their heads as to why Music Key isn’t earning them any money, almost a year after it was announced.

READ THE FULL POST AT MUSIC BUSINESS WORLDWIDE:
http://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/youtube-music-key-starts-charging-subscriptions-oh-wait-no-it-doesnt/

 

by Trichordist Editor

About Social Media and Internet Advertising | AdLand

Our friends at AdLand recently posted this story “Nice ad you got. Be a shame if no one saw it.” They detail how social media sites like YouTube and Facebook are becoming more and more aggressive in leveraging their platforms to require payment for engagement.

Bands take note, these platforms are charging you to reach the audience you built for them…

The article is a must read, a small except below.

In 2012, GM stopped advertising on Facebook. It took its 40 million dollars elsewhere. When Facebook started reducing organic reach it became even clearer that social media is not the bargain, or effective juggernaut it was purported to be.

Consider that analog media print for a moment. You spend money to place an ad in GQ, and it goes in GQ’s across the country. There is no guarantee someone will buy the magazine, of course, but if they do, there is a good chance they’d see your ad. If Facebook owned GQ, you’d place an ad in it, and then Facebook would hide 90% of the magazines unless you paid them to put the magazine featuring your ad on the magazine stands.

So we live in the digital age where media channels like Youtube and Facebook seem only effective if you pay for views to inflate your numbers (and likes if you’re even more smarmy). And remember, a vast majority of Youtube videos (ads or otherwise) do not go viral. Then in Facebook’s case you’re dealing with a a quasi-Mafia-style practice of paying them to “boost” your post to an audience you worked hard to cultivate.

PLEASE READ THE FULL STORY AT ADLAND:
http://adland.tv/adnews/nice-ad-you-got-be-shame-if-no-one-saw-it/1541959236

by Trichordist Editor

Michael Price: Composer for Sherlock blames Google and YouTube for suppressing rewards songwriters receive | Independent UK

More artists, performers, songwriters and composers are getting it.

“YouTube are effectively paying incredibly low rates and are not a willing partner to negotiate licences and that pulls down the rates from someone like Spotify, which has to compete in their free service with YouTube,” he told The Independent on Sunday.

“The value from the music we create is being sucked out into the companies that aggregate it, [but] YouTube … are not happy to set adequate streaming rates. There is a huge shift of value from artists to tech companies.”

READ THE WHOLE STORY AT THE INDEPENDENT UK:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/michael-price-composer-for-sherlock-blames-google-and-youtube-for-suppressing-rewards-songwriters-receive-10447054.html

by trichordist

Did Google & YouTube just Scam The Entire Record Business into Free Streaming Licenses? MusicKey is MIA…

Remember all the controversy over YouTube’s ad-free streaming subscriber service, MusicKey? If the words “Google” and “Ad-Free” sound like a complete contradiction, you are not alone.

MusicKey_AdFree

Ok, so where is it? We tried to sign up, but we’ll be notified later when the service is available.

whenMusicKey

Remember how one of the requirements was ALL OF YOUR MUSIC also had to be licensed for FREE STREAMING on YouTube or your promotional videos would be blocked or banned from the site?

Did you forget? No worries, here is the recap from Zoe Keating’s blog that brought the issue to light.

1) All of my catalog must be included in both the free and premium music service. Even if I don’t deliver all my music, because I’m a music partner, anything that a 3rd party uploads with my info in the description will be automatically included in the music service too.

2) All songs will be set to “montetize”, meaning there will be ads on them.

3) I will be required to release new music on Youtube at the same time I release it anywhere else. So no more releasing to my core fans first on Bandcamp and then on iTunes.

4) All my catalog must be uploaded at high resolution, according to Google’s standard which is currently 320 kbps.

5) The contract lasts for 5 years.

So, “All songs will be set to “montetize”, meaning there will be ads on them.” That’s one hell of a trade-off to get some subscription money, but maybe it won’t be so bad once that MusicKey money starts rolling in right? YouTube and Google have a HUGE amount of users to convert to PAYING SUBSCRIBERS, right?

Hahahahahahahahahaa. You fell for that gag? Seriously? Here’s what YouTube says about that little side business of PAID SUBSCRIBERS…in an interview between YouTube Senior Exec Robert Kyncl and Music Ally: YouTube Music Key delay ‘nothing too serious’ says senior exec.”

“We’ll always have ad-supported: that’s our core, and we’ll never stop focusing on it.  It’s in Google’s DNA to be in the ad-supported business.

Subscription is just an add-on. It’s an adjacent business that we’re building.”

Suckas… You seriously thought Google who has slathered the internet with advertising on “User Pirated Content” across multiple platforms was going to pivot to a paid subscription model to move away from advertising on it’s flagship video streaming site? Really? Seriously?

You saw that five year term, right? So MusicKey is a no show for subscriber revenue but thanks to that five year term the largest streaming service in the world, that pays the least amount per stream now has licenses for the next half decade. As the kids say, LOL.

Don’t worry about MusicKey not showing up anytime soon with that Paid Subscriber Money, in the meantime enjoy your life’s work as a YouTube auto-generated music video and playlist, for free.

Oh MusicKey we would have loved to have known you – now all we have is our catalogs of master recordings being monetized on old-school YouTube for pennies on the dollar of every other streaming service including Spotify. Wow, just wow.

And Speaking of Spotify, guess who has a seat on the board to make sure that their “ad-supported DNA” remains the primary focus of that music streaming service? Three guesses… Yup, it’s Google.

Here’s a trip down MusicKey memory lane…

April 2014 : Exclusive: ‘YouTube Music’ Is Launching This Summer… | Digital Music News

June 2014 : Artists who don’t sign with YouTube’s new subscription service to be blocked [Updated] | Ars Technica

June 2014 : F*&K It: Here’s the Entire YouTube Contract for Indies…| Digital Music News

November 2014: YouTube’s MusicKey Will Cause $2.3 Billion In Music Industry Losses… | Digital Music News

January 2015 : YouTube Is Removing Any Artist That Refuses to License Its Subscription Service…| Ars Technica

April 2015 : If You Don’t Agree to YouTube’s New Ad-Free Terms, Your Videos Will Disappear…|Digital Music News

June 2015 : YouTube Music Key delay ‘nothing too serious’ says senior exec | Music Ally

Exhausting… Why would anyone trust these people? All hail “User Pirated Content“… and if that doesn’t work just come up with a non-existent paid subscriber streaming service that auto-generates music videos and playlists on the free, ad-supported platform. At least that part is working, right?

Let’s talk about transparency for a second. Why is it that YouTube would be excluded from Google’s own DMCA tracking report? It couldn’t be because DMCA notices and takedowns of infringing material YouTube dwarf even the most notorious of pirates sites say like The Pirate Bay? No, that wouldn’t be the reason would it?

553k_InfringingBusinessesMaybe #adbusters and #blackspot really do have it right…

by Trichordist Editor

How to ignore YouTube completely: One Direction’s radical gamble | Music Business Worldwide

Good luck Sony, let’s see how this goes with the “User Pirated Content” at YouTube…

Search YouTube for 1D’s new comeback single Drag Me Down, and you’ll discover Harry, Niall, Louis and Liam are nowhere to be found.

Sony won’t confirm it, but the major appears to have a taskforce stamping out any attempt to upload the track onto the platform.

Why? Because One Direction are using their colossal social media presence (Twitter: 24.5m; Facebook 37m; Instagram: 9.7m) to actively push fans towards iTunes and Spotify instead.

READ THE FULL STORY AT MUSIC BUSINESS WORLDWIDE:
http://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/how-to-ignore-youtube-completely-one-directions-radical-gamble/

 

YouTube’s Content ID : $375.00 Per Million Views… aka “Block In All Countries”…

What YouTube Really Pays… Makes Spotify Look Good! #sxsw

 

by trichordist

“User Pirated Content” Is Core Internet Advertising Model (Which is Why Streaming Rates Can’t Increase Until Piracy is Decreased)

Google’s YouTube is a business built on infringement as a model. So called “User Generated Content” is really just code for what the majority of the high value media on YouTube really is, “User PIRATED Content“.

In other words there’s nothing internet advertising loves more than illegally monetizing the work of professional creators, and thus driving down the true fair market rates for those works (keep this in mind when thinking about Spotify and streaming services!).

Below are excerpts from emails discovered during the Viacom Vs. YouTube lawsuit and published  by DailyFinance:

• A July 29 email conversation about competing video sites laid out the importance to YouTube of continuing to use the copyrighted material. “Steal it!” Chen said , and got a reply from Hurley, “hmmm, steal the movies?” Chen’s answer: “we have to keep in mind that we need to attract traffic. how much traffic will we get from personal videos? remember, the only reason our traffic surged was due to a video of this type.”

And this is not the only smoking gun, here’s a quote from DailyTech regarding Google’s Ad Sales and the site EasyDownloadCenter: 

In fact, Google’s ad teams even made suggestions designed to optimize conversion rates by using keywords targeted to pirated content – such as suggesting downloading films still in theatrical release, that obviously were not available yet in any authorized format for home viewing.

According to PCWorld this added up to some decent money…

EasyDownloadCenter.com and TheDownloadPlace.com generated US$1.1 million in revenue between 2003 and 2005, and Google received $809,000 for advertising, the Journal reported.

Both YouTube and Google Search function similarly by monetizing infringing “User Pirated Content” with advertising. On YouTube users upload infringing music and videos of all varieties which attract the consumers to the globally dominant and monopolistic video streaming site.

Remember the email above where the YouTube founders admit “how much traffic will we get from personal videos? remember, the only reason our traffic surged was due to a video of this type”. And by “this type” they mean professionally produced and created media by artists, musicians, filmmakers and other creative professionals that are of high value in attracting an audience – an audience that can then be monetized with advertising.

Google Search operates in very similar way (no coincidence) by monetizing (mostly with advertising) millions infringing URLs on sites primarily dedicated to distribution of copyrighted works via p2p networks and bittorrent.

Over 50 Major Brands Funding Music Piracy, It’s Big Business!

LouReedCHEVY

But don’t take our word for it, here’s a report from DigiDay (owned by The Economist):

According to AppNexus CEO Brian O’Kelley, it’s an easy problem to fix, but ad companies are attracted by the revenue torrent sites can generate for them. Kelley said his company refuses to serve ads to torrent sites and other sites facilitating the distribution of pirated content. It’s easy to do technically, he said, but others refuse to do it.

“We want everyone to technically stop their customers from advertising on these sites, but there’s a financial incentive to keep doing so,” he said. “Companies that aren’t taking a stand against this are making a lot of money.”

What about the removing infringing material with a DMCA notice you ask? Well, we’re glad you did… here’s how it “works”…

https://vimeo.com/94514834

DMCA “Takedown” Notices: Why “Takedown” Should Become “Take Down and Stay Down” and Why It’s Good for Everyone | Nova Edu

 

Safe Harbor Not Loophole: Five Things We Could Do Right Now to Make the DMCA Notice and Takedown Work Better

 

by Trichordist Editor