It's .22p, not 22p, per play -- similar to the price charged to radio stations. If radio stations can make it work, so should YouTube. And if it can't, then I prefer for the content to be removed, because if advertising can't adequately finance creation of music then some other approach will need to be found. I would prefer the direct approach, i.e. iTunes, you pay for the album or song, or Spotify, but it appears that around here this is seen as hopelessly antiquated (apparently new and better ways exist, although oddly no person or company has stepped forward to take advantage of these el dorado revenue streams). Failing that we could go back to the 17th century and have government sponsored patronage system. Brave new world!
And before people start posting replies along the lines of "it's not google's business to subsidize music execs" -- it is if a significant driver for google's traffic is interest in music content. And last I checked, it's not the music execs flying around in their own 747s, it's Larry and Sergei.
"If you want an interesting excercise, call up a CDN and ask them how much it would cost to support an audience that is never smaller than 10k simultaneous viewers for a 1mbs stream, 24 hours a day, for 365 consecutive days. Then call up one of the satellite providers and ask how much they would charge you to deliver to 100pct of their customers, and then call up a cable company and ask the same question. Total up the cable and satellite numbers and compare them to the internet costs. You may be surprised to see which is cheaper."
He's talking about mass distribution, but distribution on a small scale is going to be even more expensive per stream served. Of course, it's still possible to generate cash from serving content online because Hulu does it. Whether .22p/song is a possibility, I have no idea.
> And if it can't, then I prefer for the content to be removed
That's what they did, unless I totally misread the article.
Those are fair points, and I agree that YouTube removed the music labels' content. Personally, while I sympathize with the songwriters complaining about YouTube's removal of their content -- after all, they have a gun to their heads: if they force YouTube to remove the material, then that material just gets fileshared, so they lose either way --, I think they're in the wrong on that count. Either way, this really wouldn't be a problem if people didn't download music illegally. That's the fundamental problem. It's what gives YouTube the ability to say, "no, we won't pay that price." -- the implicit corollary being, "and if we don't pay you, nobody will, because no sovereign, ISP, or consumer is willing to respect your property rights". I think that's what the songwriters find galling.
Interesting. I occasionally watch music videos on YouTube, and I try to watch the official one whenever possible, because all else being equal, I'd like to see people get paid. I think there's a ton of money to be made off of the monetization of the goodwill fans have towards a band. If a musician says, "here, look at the Coke polar bears dance for a while while you download my music, this helps me get paid," I think he'll make a lot of money. Not as much as he's getting for CDs, but hey, something is better than nothing. And if the labels keep things going as they are, nothing is what they're going to get. The iTunes store isn't really the solution: much of the time, people want to pay for music @ .22p a listen, not $1.00 a download.
> The iTunes store isn't really the solution: much of the time, people want to pay for music @ .22p a listen, not $1.00 a download.
I totally agree, that's why I mentioned Spotify as well as iTunes. Although Spotify works off a flat-rate model, it could equally work on a per-play micropayment model.
Much as it irritated me not being able to play music videos from youtube, seems like they did exactly the right thing taking them down.