Boom!

Warner Music Group: Still Blowing It

I just discovered that the funny video of a boy super-dancing to “Low” has been removed due to YouTube’s autobots.  YouTube’s been around for 4.5 years and music labels are still scratching their heads about this Webby Tubes Music Downstreaming thing.

Here’s the deal:  YouTube has a Content ID system*.  Labels can submit all their music, the system will create a blueprint of every song, and whenever something pops up online that matches a blueprint, the system can act.  (I’m told by an ESPN executive that YouTube is creating a similar system for videos, if they haven’t already.)

When the Content ID system finds a match, it can do any number of things:

• Remove the video
• Overlay a transluscent banner at the bottom that contains links to iTunes and Amazon
• Other things, like send out an alert internally (just guessing on this one)
• Nothing

Warner Music Group content is automatically removed because the label hasn’t settled on a licensing deal with YouTube.  I don’t know whether WMG instructs YouTube to remove the content or YouTube removes it proactively to avoid a lawsuit.  Either way, they’re missing the point:  in the absence of advertising revenue, WMG could and should be making use of these streams by embracing them.  The opposite of this is not neutral, it’s aggressively negative.

Here’s what I said a few months ago following an article specifically about WMG’s YouTube content.  Is it that outlandish?

WMG, here’s a proposal.

Google’s Content ID tool should identify potentially offending tracks but then simply flag them internally, not remove them. When a video reaches a predetermined benchmark (e.g., total views and/or exponential growth), it notifies the label so someone can take a look. If it’s girl playing a cover on a webcam, make sure the Content ID system is overlaying a link to your artist’s iTunes and Amazon page like it should, then contact her and send her and a friend a free concert ticket, because she’s generating enormous interest in and referral linkage to your artist. The last thing you should do is have a video like that removed from YouTube.

If it’s a slideshow that someone used as an excuse to post the full song, yes, take the song down. (But recognize that you probably have the full song on your own official YouTube video anyway, and if you don’t, maybe you should, and your audience just did you a favor. Use the Content ID system to automatically overlay links to iTunes and AmazonMP3 and move on.)

Instead of removing flagrant violations, why not have the system limit the video to 30 seconds like imeem does?

And if the response is, “we don’t have time for this”, then you don’t have time to run your business.

And again following a more recent article about YouTube revenue:

Yes, making money on a per-stream basis is elusive, but not the value of eyeballs seeing your content.  This sounds more like a problem of classification: perhaps TV networks should treat the Web content as a marketing expense rather than the product itself.

Sound crazy?  Remember that Transformers cartoons and comic books were designed in part to sell action figures, and soap operas were originally sponsored and produced by soap manufacturers as a vehicle for product placement.

Theoretically an ad-supported pay-per-stream model could work, and I’m surprised I haven’t seen at least one company experiment with 15-second ads at the beginning of each song.

* Side note: RRR applied to be in the Content ID system and was rejected because YouTube didn’t believe or understand that we own our music. No appeals process, no contact information, just, “No.”