Loonyyy said:
I disagree. On the user's end (Which is where the complaints I was addressing were), it's the same. And I'm honestly perturbed by the attitude I see around here. And I don't really view it as strong-arming either-if you want ads, you'll need to agree to Red, because that involves ads. You can still upload, you need to accept Red to monetize. That makes sense.
At the moment, there already is a that system, you're just stuck in the bottom tier, the shit tier, watching ads. They haven't made that worse (Apart from going after Adblock, which you shouldn't be using, and shouldn't enter into discussion).
I don't think there's any particular reason to speculate that channels will be required to make exclusive content-I suspect that Google wants that content to incentivise their service. I would expect that they're probably being incentivised by Google to do so. There are so many YouTube channels, I doubt that Google is going to want regular, exclusive content from all of them. And again, I'm not going to lose any sleep over missing a Youtube video or two. There are fucking millions of them. I'll miss a collegehumor skit, I do it all the time. I'll miss something Roosterteeth does, whoop. I'll miss a Pewdiepie video, lord save me, I think I shall live.
If we want to talk giving money to megacorporations for profit, might I point out that SOPA was in great part, the work of the MPAA, and they're making money from all of us as we speak. I just don't think that's a part of people's motivation and thinking process at all.
For strong-arming, the problem is that Youtube is forcing people to accept the new contract or be kicked to the curb; the content creators have no protection to ask for the deal they signed when they became Youtube Partners (which is supposed to be a prestigious and preferred position), they're being told, "Train's leaving the station, and it's doing so right now. Get on board or say goodbye to not only future videos, but all your past videos. You gave us a ton of content, and even negotiated directly with us to become a partner and get a special deal, now we're holding all the fans who expect to find you on Youtube for ransom, because if you don't agree to this sudden new contract not only will you never make another penny from the majority of those people, you'll simply cease to exist in the public eye."
Now, let me phrase a hypothetical, from the point of a consumer.
I like The X Crew, people who make videos of cats getting stuck in unlikely situations. I'm so fond of the videos that I watch each of them multiple times, I share them with my friends, and I occasionally set up projectors in public spaces and screen X Crew videos until I'm dragged off. Each and every time I watch a video, I see a 15-30 second ad before the video, and probably at least one in the middle (let's assume I hit the benchmark for ad participation each time to simplify).
Under the current model, Google is taking 45% off the top, and the rest is going to the X Crew. Sure, it's fractions of a penny each time, but it adds up; for every person watching, there's an increase in profitability for both Google and the X Crew. I can dislike how big a chunk Google takes, but I'll not use AdBlock because I know that not using that service, and not skipping the ads, leads directly to more money for X Crew. Nice and simple, and I like simple because I don't have time to worry about other people's business.
However, under this new model, I give $10 to Google a month. They take 45% off the top, then they have a decision to make. They have $5.50 to distribute to other videos I watch. If I only watch X Crew, it's a huge bump to their revenue. However, I don't just watch X Crew: I watch thousands of videos over a month, from other videos of cats to cooking tips to PC repair to music. Now I know that I've forked over some money, but I have no say in how it gets distributed. Google's not going to give me a detailed breakdown that exposes their algorithm. All I know is that instead of giving X Crew some money, I'm giving Google a lot of money for the privilege of deciding how the rest of my money is divided, and I'm not at all sure that X Crew is making anything from this. As a consumer, I am now less inclined to use Youtube at all, if I can just go to the X Crew website and see their videos there; it's less convenient to me, but only marginally if I use free tools like an RSS feed, and I get the double satisfaction of not paying a monthly bill and of knowing that every red cent goes to X Crew.
On the subject of exclusive content, let's not forget that Youtube has been offering that for a long while; it's almost 2 years to the day that Google announced it's paid channel option, where you could give $1 a month to certain channels to get access to them. It went down poorly because people were not used to paying a fee on Youtube, and frankly Google did little to promote it. And it's a fine line between 'requiring' and 'incentivizing'. Google knows that they have a lockdown on a lot of media we consume; between Google Searches (which are regularly accused of prioritizing Google services and partners) and Youtube itself, who gives every visitor default packages of channels to watch, and is very reluctant to change that (it still insists that I should watch PewDiePie, even though for years I've never once clicked one of his videos). They are very good at pushing specific content. It is not at all out of the question to assume that they'll entice people into making more videos for subscribers only by offering them top billing to both subscribers and other viewers, or better deals on actually collecting revenue.
They won't go after the majority of channels to make exclusive content, because there's no profit in that: The average CPM (revenue per thousand views) is between
$1.50 and $4, while the average video only gets
between 3000 and 8000 views. However, this is wildly disproportionate, as many channels get millions of views across hundreds of videos a year, while some get dozens of views across 5 videos in 3 years. If Google can convince the top 1% of channels to make exclusive content, they get a lock on the majority of money flowing through the site.
Loonyyy said:
Looking at this list I note a few things:
-Nothing I want to watch is on there
-Google is actually funding content
-This directly flies in the face of the "They're might just take videos away".
-From the executive producers of-Don't make me fucking laugh.
They're actually making movies, and serieses out of things, so it's not even going to be that I'm missing anything, I'm not going to miss a "premium" episode of something and wonder what the fuck happened. So even that little slippery slope isn't the case.
I'm not sure where you see on that list that Google is directly funding these videos. It seems that they are being funded, written, and produced by the creators themselves (just heard through another report on Youtube Red that the PDP show was already being made in LA before this deal) but that Google convinced them to give their products over to Red in return for future profits. It's the same deal they have been offering forever: You put in the time and money to make the video, Youtube offers a platform where you can hopefully reach enough people to make a profit.
And I don't think anyone in this thread is arguing that Youtube plans to directly take videos away like a grasping witch. I (and a hypothetical they) are saying that it incentivizes creators to voluntarily stick their videos behind a paywall in the hopes of more profits, when before they were able to succeed without that option.
