YouTube may share revenue with users

[Terry_Lasater]

From MacWorld.com:


January 29, 2007 8:33 am ET
IDG News Service

YouTube may share revenue with users
By Nancy Gohring, IDG News Service

Video-sharing site YouTube may start paying users for their content, the company’s cofounder said in a video displayed on the site.

“In terms of paying users revenue against content they’re uploading, we’re definitely going to move in that direction,” said Chad Hurley, YouTube’s cofounder and chief executive, in a video that appears to be shot during the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, Switzerland.

He did not offer details about how much users might be able to earn or on what basis they might be paid.

YouTube wanted to build a large enough community before beginning to pay users for their content, he said. “We didn’t want to build a system that was motivated by monetary reward. When you start giving money to people from day one… the people you do attract will just switch to the next provider that’s paying more,” he said. “We feel we’re at the scale now that we’ll be able to do that and still have a true community around video.”

The system might work such that a video creator who sets a video against music could share revenue with the record label that owns the copyright on the music.

YouTube has said that it is developing an audio fingerprinting technology that will allow it to identify songs used in videos displayed on the site and enable labels to claim the music and earn revenue from it, he said.

Once that technology is in place, labels will be able to earn revenue on videos that people make of their travels, for example, that are set to music and shared on the site. “With our platform, they’ll have the market opportunity to generate revenue against that material,” he said. “It’s opening up a new market that didn’t exist before.”

Hurley doesn’t describe how the video creator might earn money off that video, but potentially, the record labels could share that revenue with the video creators.

YouTube announced last year, the day before Google acquired the company, that it was working on a system with several record labels that would allow users to license content from the labels for use in their videos. The record companies and YouTube also agreed to share advertising revenue from music videos displayed on YouTube.

YouTube has run into trouble with other content owners who are unhappy that they aren’t being compensated for their copyright material that is displayed on YouTube. Last week, YouTube received a subpoena from News Corp.’s Fox television unit seeking information regarding videos of television programs that appear on YouTube.

link (http://www.macworld.com/news/2007/01/29/youtube/index.php)

[Mark Harris]

I posted a thread about this a little while back. This is a good sign and as it should be I think.

[Terry_Lasater]

D'OH! Sorry Mark... I didn't know you'd posted this thread before.

Noob me... :)

[Mark Harris]

nope, my thread got nuked for some reason. maybe because I mentioned Google's involvement with the Chinese government, and cracking down on free speech...dunno, but it got wiped off the board. So this is good. I think it's way important for people to know this stuff and a really good thing that they want to share revenue.

[ugafan]

let the lawsuits begin! i like the idea, but if it ever happens it will be a legal nightmare.

[oneinfiniteloop]

let the lawsuits begin! i like the idea, but if it ever happens it will be a legal nightmare.

The whole reason they are doing this is to avoid the lawsuits, etc. By having these agreements YouTube is creating a clever way to avoid all the legal troubles they are encountering, and they get to do it under a noble cause. It makes the users think they are getting paid and the record companies regain as much control as they can, however little it is, and get some cash and everyone goes home none-the-wiser.

Now, if it'll work...that's a different question.

[MsManhattan]

Here's an Associated Press article (http://www.technologyreview.com/read_article.aspx?id=18116&ch=infotech) about it that makes it sound more definite. You Tube co-founder Chad Hurley announced it during a panel discussion at the World Economic Forum.

[TimurCivan]

looks like Al The Moon god is gonna hit You tube.....

[ernesto]

No I don't think this is good at all. Most YouTube videos have one form or another of copyright infringement, probably 95% of them. Anyone who uses music without the rights, any posters on the wall, all the TV clips, etc. etc. Right now, the users aren't making any money with it, and Google, who is, has no control over what is uploaded so lawsuits haven't really come up.


But let's say these two pretty girls make a music video lip-synching the the hottest new rap song. They get 200,000 views which lets say translates into $100. It could be argued that a large percentage of those views came from people that just wanted to listen to the hottest new rap song and that since the two girls are profitting from it, it's only fair that the artist gets some of that. A plethora of lawsuits ensue.

This is not good at all.

[Kirk Gillock]

I agree, it's a bad idea. Of course, in theory, it sounds great (YouTube helps videomakers make money to support their "craft"). But we all know that all "good things" are ruined by bad people. For every honest filmmaker who makes a great video, there's 1,000 idiots just trying to make a buck.

Once money enters the picture greed takes over. Somebody is going to want more than their share of the pie. Not to mention, spam will have a new outlet for making money (you already see spammers in the YouTube comments). It might even cause a flood of even more crappy videos. Nooooooooo!!!!

Should be interesting to see how they regulate it.

[Psynema]

Amazing how YouTube has completely emerged out of nowhere and now completely dominates the internet and people's lives and is in fact competing with Television in just a matter of 6 months (ok it's been around for a year, but this past summer is when people actually started noticing it).

This has to make it one of the biggest most complex sites known to man.
An Apple TV / YouTube feature is not too farfetched at all.