YouTube is starting to really push into the live video streaming market, despite saying that it wasnt a viable market for a long time. The Google-owned video website has streamed the Outside Lands concert and an Obama press conference in recent months, but now it’s going to stream the Rose Bowl concert of one of the world’s most popular bands, U2.
The concert will begin at 8:30 PM PT on Sunday the 25th of October and it will be available in 16 countries. The live feed will be available on the U2 Official Channel, and feature a live Twitter feed of chatter about the concert.
The world’s largest video website, in a conference call earlier today, explained that it is seeking to experiment in live video. Clearly, YouTube sees some type of potential in this emerging market, as live video players Ustream, Justin.tv, and Livestream have started to prove the viability of this market.
Some news that might not seem immediately edifying, but might have far reaching implications. The Intellectual Property Office in the UK has issued a ‘Scoping Document‘ attempting to assess the potential role of a Digital Rights Agency. Given what’s currently happening between the PRS and Google, the rights of artists to benefit from the exploitation of their music online is quite a hot topic at the moment.
More rumblings in the same region of the law are sounding in New Zealand, where Google has deposited it’s two cents in a discussion being held by the Telecommunication Carrier’s Forum – a think-tank organised by the TeleComms and ISP comapnies in that region to decide how to monitor and deal with digital copyright violations. Google has come in on the side of the consumer, saying that the idea of banning users who are caught infringing three times from using the ISP’s services – in effect cutting them off access to the internet as a whole – was too heavy a penalty. They also chime in with approval of measures designed to protect ISP’s from the consequences of copyright infringement perpetrated by their customers. Google is in a pretty unique position to provide a balanced opinion, given that they are operating a service across every nation in the world, but their ultimate position is always going to be pro-internet and pro-traffic of information, including music, because that is essentially pro-Google. More pageviews, more ad revenue.
How then, to deal with copyright violation on the net? The RIAA is abandoning it’s programme of coming down heavy on individuals in the hope that it will act as a deterrent to other pirates, as sending threatening letters and scaring little old ladies seems to be generating more negative publicity for them than deterrent effect on the pirates. Perhaps prosecuting people like middle-aged Mavis from New Hampshire in their fearful absence is not quite the shining moralistic proof that pinching a devious little ferret of a computer scientist with a server-filled basement of porn and Michael Jackson albums might be, but then he’d have used proxies and covered his tracks, and would be much harder to catch.
Ultimately this blogger just hopes all the legislation and discussion and arguing and imprisoning of housewives helps us home in on the inevitable. It is inevitable that consumers on the net will find a way of quickly and conveniently getting hold of the music they want, through filesharing, paid downloads, ad supported models or whatever other method they can. It is inevitable that artists must profit from the consumption of their music, directly or indirectly, because otherwise they won’t be able to afford to make music, and we’ll all have to listen to U2 and the Beatles for evermore, and no-one wants that… So we must, eventually, inevitably arrive at a solution that bridges that gap; that provides a way for music consumers to get what they want cheaply, quickly and conveniently, and for artists to profit from it. Some sort of commercial, digital radio… I’m going to go and listen to Spotify while I think about what that perfect solution might be.
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In what may prove a revolutionary move, YouTube is refusing to pay the increased licensing fee that the MCPS/PRS alliance has demanded for the right to stream music videos for signed artists in the UK.
Music licensing can be a knotty problem; while most of the copyrights necessary to permit streaming for tracks belong to the record labels that have direct agreements with YouTube, there are other authorship rights that artists and songwriters can retain, or assign to be protected by the MCPS/PRS, which will attempt to collect revenues on their behalf whenever a song is played.
The previous licence that YouTube had negotiated with the PRS has expired, and the asking price for a new one is larger by many multiples. On top of this, the PRS has declined to specify what rights and what songs are actually covered by the agreement they’re offering to sell YT. In effect the PRS is demanding to be paid for a mystery box, which may or may not contain anything that YouTube actually needs.
The PRS have a different take on this, of course. They claim to be outraged on behalf of both artists and consumers that Google/YouTube have taken the drastic step of shutting down official access to music videos in the UK. Personally I find this quite unbelievable, since all they would need to do to permit the consumers to see these videos is set out exactly what rights they’re selling, and agree a reasonable price, rather than pulling a number out of the air, for an undisclosed package of rights and expecting it to be paid without question.
As we ponder all this, let’s think back to Jan 2008, when the MCPS/PRS forced Pandora, an online radio site that is nothing to do with Microsoft, to shut down UK operation. Pandora said they couldn’t operate sustainably if they had to pay the fees demanded of them. Do these sound like instances of the PRS looking after the rights of consumers and the artists they represent, or is it more like the stifling of new technologies and ways of consuming music, and why can’t the PRS specify what they’re actually bringing to the table in a deal this important?
What is sure is that while the content that’s being wrangled over is unavailable through more legitimate channels, the consumers will be looking elsewhere for their entertainment, to sites like the Pirate Bay to direct them to torrents that generate zero revenue for the artists concerned.
A lot of people are losing revenue and losing their jobs as the whole geography of the music industry, and the entertainment industry at large is gripped in the seismic change the internet is facilitating, and you can’t blame groups like the PRS and the big labels for trying to retain control. This said, perhaps stifling new channels like YouTube and Pandora is cutting off their nose to spite their face, and they would be better off supporting innovation, and creating new ways to generate revenue and help people enjoy the great music that their artists are creating.
CNET and the Wall Street Journal are both reporting that Universal Music Group and YouTube are in final negotiations to create a new music videos website, with the working title of Vevo.
The site is intended to feature music videos, artist-related content and interviews. The aim of course is to bring in more high profile brands who arent necessarily interested in advertising on YouTube because of its user-generated content.
It has been mentioned by CNET that the three other major labels have all been approached to join the Vevo service. Im sure this would all work in the same way as Myspace Music in which the major labels all have an equity stake. Myspace Music has amazed me that so many independent labels have come on board with the solution, because they should realise that part of their profits are still going to the major labels. However, with Myspace Music most independent labels need to have their music on the site, so why not make some revenues in the process.
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