EMBEDDING DISABLED BY REQUEST
Jan. 22nd, 2010 02:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
defrogIf you’ve ever wondered why some videos on the YouTubes aren’t embeddable, Damian Kulash of OK Go (the band that invented the viral music video, currently signed to EMI by way of Capitol Records) explains why, and why OK Go thinks it sucks.
Basically, it has to do with the fact that YouTube avoided lawsuits from the major labels by agreeing to pay them a royalty every time one of their videos gets played.
While I understand OK Go’s objections, I’m having trouble understanding why this would be a problem in terms of software. For a start, I’m pretty sure a YouTube video registers a play every time someone clicks on it regardless of whether the viewer sees it on the YouTube page or via a blog, so in terms of payouts it shouldn’t make any difference.
Also, even if for some reason YouTube can’t track plays from embedded videos, surely there’s some applet or code or something YouTube could conjure up to fix this problem. (I mean, they’re owned by a search engine that makes money by placing and tracking ads, for God’s sake).
Which is why it occurs to me that it may be a problem YouTube doesn’t want to see fixed, depending on how many YouTube videos are viewed on-site vs embedded.
Say the new Slayer video is a big hit (look, it could happen). On the YouTube page, it gets 5 million hits. So YouTube pays the label a fee for each of those hits.
Suppose 100,000 bloggers embed it, and 50 readers of each blog watches it. That’s another 5 million hits. If you assume that those hits represent people who don’t visit the actual YouTube site regularly or would never have seen the video (or wouldn’t have clicked a link that took them direct to the YouTube page), YouTube now has to pay double the royalties it would have paid if the video wasn’t embeddable.
I’m making those numbers up – and again I’m not intimately familiar with YouTube’s video tracking practices, so those of you with insider knowledge, feel free to correct me – but you get the idea. Embedded videos might mean more views for the band, but someone has to foot the bill to keep the labels happy – and YouTube probably doesn’t want to be it. And it can’t realistically charge blogs to embed videos (and don’t think EMI hasn’t suggested that).
Of course, there are plenty of bands and indie labels who DO allow you to embed YouTube videos, and it will be interesting to see which ones ultimately fare better (look at what it did for OK Go – well, yes, bad example, but you see what I’m saying).
The other option, of course, is to stop watching the goddamn YouTubes and go to sites like Vimeo, MySpace, Daily Motion and other video hosting sites that do allow embedding. It’s easy to forget that YouTube is just one distribution channel of many – it may be the biggest, and with Google signing its paycheck, but you DO have a choice.
For now.
Don’t watch that, watch this,
This is dF
Basically, it has to do with the fact that YouTube avoided lawsuits from the major labels by agreeing to pay them a royalty every time one of their videos gets played.
The catch: the software that pays out those tiny sums doesn’t pay if a video is embedded. This means our label doesn’t get their hard-won share of the pie if our video is played on your blog, so (surprise, surprise) they won’t let us be on your blog. And, voilá: four years after we posted our first homemade videos to YouTube and they spread across the globe faster than swine flu, making our bassist’s glasses recognizable to 70-year-olds in Wichita and 5-year-olds in Seoul and eventually turning a tidy little profit for EMI, we’re – unbelievably – stuck in the position of arguing with our own label about the merits of having our videos be easily shared. It’s like the world has gone backwards.
While I understand OK Go’s objections, I’m having trouble understanding why this would be a problem in terms of software. For a start, I’m pretty sure a YouTube video registers a play every time someone clicks on it regardless of whether the viewer sees it on the YouTube page or via a blog, so in terms of payouts it shouldn’t make any difference.
Also, even if for some reason YouTube can’t track plays from embedded videos, surely there’s some applet or code or something YouTube could conjure up to fix this problem. (I mean, they’re owned by a search engine that makes money by placing and tracking ads, for God’s sake).
Which is why it occurs to me that it may be a problem YouTube doesn’t want to see fixed, depending on how many YouTube videos are viewed on-site vs embedded.
Say the new Slayer video is a big hit (look, it could happen). On the YouTube page, it gets 5 million hits. So YouTube pays the label a fee for each of those hits.
Suppose 100,000 bloggers embed it, and 50 readers of each blog watches it. That’s another 5 million hits. If you assume that those hits represent people who don’t visit the actual YouTube site regularly or would never have seen the video (or wouldn’t have clicked a link that took them direct to the YouTube page), YouTube now has to pay double the royalties it would have paid if the video wasn’t embeddable.
I’m making those numbers up – and again I’m not intimately familiar with YouTube’s video tracking practices, so those of you with insider knowledge, feel free to correct me – but you get the idea. Embedded videos might mean more views for the band, but someone has to foot the bill to keep the labels happy – and YouTube probably doesn’t want to be it. And it can’t realistically charge blogs to embed videos (and don’t think EMI hasn’t suggested that).
Of course, there are plenty of bands and indie labels who DO allow you to embed YouTube videos, and it will be interesting to see which ones ultimately fare better (look at what it did for OK Go – well, yes, bad example, but you see what I’m saying).
The other option, of course, is to stop watching the goddamn YouTubes and go to sites like Vimeo, MySpace, Daily Motion and other video hosting sites that do allow embedding. It’s easy to forget that YouTube is just one distribution channel of many – it may be the biggest, and with Google signing its paycheck, but you DO have a choice.
For now.
Don’t watch that, watch this,
This is dF
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