YouTube to Offer Every Music Video Ever Created?

Klaidas writes "BBC reports that YouTube is aiming to have every music video ever created within 18 months and offer them free of charge to its users
"Right now we're trying to very quickly determine how and what the model is to distribute this content and we're very aggressive in assisting the labels in trying to get the content on to YouTube," said Mr Chen."

RIAA will love it

[rubycodez]

You do realize YouTube is going to take a huge chunk of that lovely venture capital cash some suckers, er investors, are pouring into that sinkhole and properly license the stuff for distribution just like MTV or VH1? In other words, YouTube is doing the 1990's dot-com thing in style.

It should work great

[mcguiver]

Yes, they could make this be a paid service, but they would probably make a lot more money off of advertising. If they have every music video then it will be the default place for most people to go when they want to watch a music video. Then if they offer a play-list type feature to store all of your favorites that you can just play through, it would be great. This could draw in a lot of people which would make a perfect place to post advertisements.

It also shouldn't be too much of a problem to get past the RIAA. Look at Yahoos music videos. As long as there isn't a way for people to download them and keep them for personal use, I don't see that there would be a problem (but what do I know, if there is a way to make money the RIAA will be all over it). I think that they could have a really good thing starting here.

Re:Free? RIAA will never allow it

[truthsearch]

Obviously the RIAA will try to license the content to YouTube for a huge fee. But even the record labels know that music videos are like advertisements for songs. They make far more money selling records than videos. Free videos give their music more exposure, which means more sales.

Interesting

[loomis]

It is interesting that there is no mention of the fact that a Youtube grey area exists already, where there are 1) a lot of copyright-violating videos on Youtube currently, and that 2) many of these videos--but oddly not all--were removed by Youtube in a mass cleansing a few months ago.

Why is it, Youtube has videos from many very popular and very lawsuit-happy bands (such as Kiss), but only *some* of their videos, and *not* always just the ones that are the arguably less copyright-infringing ones? In other words, often many of the videos that weren't intentionly taken down for legal reasons are the ones that are seemingly most illegal, ala the "legitimate MTV-style" videos.

It smells of payola and soforth. But who knows.

Re:Free? RIAA will never allow it

[tknaught]

Except that selling music videos is not a main revenue stream for record labels. Their money is made selling CDs, and music videos are little more than advertisements for songs. Imagine the following scenario: Your buddy sends a YouTube link to a funny music vid. You play the video a few times, and the song gets stuck in your head. There is now a much greater chance that you'll go out and buy the album that the song is on. MTV used to be a great advertising venue for the music industry, but execs have probably come to realise that people in their teens and twenties, a prime music-buying demographic, are no longer watching television with any frequency. YouTube is a great venue for reaching this demographic. YouTube is an even better match because, unlike Apple's music video downloads, YouTube makes its videos difficult for the average user to download. Even when downloaded, the file is in the uncommon .FLV format, which will need to be re-encoded to be played on any portable media player. For those reasons, downloads from YouTube will not be a viable replacement for purchasing the album to the vast majority of consumers. To summarize: 1. Good advertising venue for a key demographic. 2. Not threatening as a replacement to album purchases.

Re:All the good ones

[Mister Whirly]

The funny thing is, I can actually remember when MTV only had like, 15 videos total. They would just play the same ones, over and over, day and night..(And the "VJs" - god bless Nina Blackwood, Mark Goodman, Alan Hunter, J.J. Jackson and Martha Quinn) I got cable in 1981 and remember the launch of MTV. Their motto then was "All music videos, all day long". (Remember the astronaut jumping on the moon with the MTV flag?)
I honestly can't even remember the last time MTV took a break from such quality programming as "The (Fake)Real World" or "Next" and showed a music video...

censored ??

[beerbellyswan]

will the videos be censored? i never understood why videos on the various video channels are censored so heavily. even late night shows are censored despite being on cable televison. i want to see videos without t-shirts being blurred out and half the song missing lyrics

Labels should pay YouTube for this

[jlcooke]

Blows my mind why labels don't give the videos out on all the band sites.

It's a loss leader. I can't remember how many albums I bought because the video introduced me to the music. The audio quality would be poor enough to encourage people to buy the real thing.

Re:This is great!!!

[darkuni]

Morning Musume for me please ... Seriously, I'm an archiver of media - I am not part of the disposable generation. Music videos helped define my generation (back when videos were quality productions - like Thriller) and I'd like to have them on a disc somewhere that I can watch when and how I like. Sure, you can download YouTube videos - but they are horrible quality to start with. What I want are music videos in an HQ format (I'll take Xvid) - and I'm willing to pay for them a la cart. If you're going to DRM them, don't bother.

Re:MTV has already done it... quietly...

[hachete]

way to go ...

"Firefox users need to install the following ActiveX compatibility plug-in:"

Re:First YouTube Song...

[Anonymous Coward]

There's been an Internet killed the video star [gprime.net] flash video out for a while

Re:It should work great

[Demona]

Why do 99% of the videos on Youtube, Google Video, etc., have the video and audio out of sync? Tried viewing inline and downloading, tried on more than one computer. At first I thought it was the stupid FLV format.

Re:Free? RIAA will never allow it

[fermion]

MTV took the music labels by surprise, in much the same way that Napster did. Much of what MTV did many labels thought of as illegal, and once the content owners realized how much money they could be making, they turned on MTV. This was considered to be the absolute proof of the stupidity of the content owners because it was the general consensus that MTV was what drove the revitalization of the music business. In the end MTV never got any thanks. The saddest part is that absolute greed of the music labels means that Beavis and Butthead cannot be released in their original form, even though the show introduced and reintroduced many bands to the public. People like to laugh that MTV does not play videos anymore, but that is mostly because the content providers do not want them to.

Music videos do cost a lot to produce, and not all those costs can be charged to marketing. OTOH, perhaps music videos do not need unlimited budgets.

Re:MTV has already done it... quietly...

[Sebastopol]

Yeah, but it is missing all the great videos;

Fish Heads
Command Cody : Two Triple Cheese
Roger Hodgeson : Had a Dream
Adam Ant
Rush's live concerts
J. Geils
REO Speedwagon
Journey (besides don't stop)
Chillawak
Blue Oyster Cult (godzilla!)
38 Special

Boo.....

A-ha "Take On Me"

[Cutting_Crew]

probably one of the very best videos ever made, in fact i think it received the nomination for #6 of all time. the video can be found here [youtube.com]. Not only was it a breakout video but unknowingly outside the US A-ha in still increasingly popular in the UK and most of europe. you can read more about a-ha [wikipedia.org] here and the technique they used(a HREF=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotoscope> Rotoscoping ) to make the video. wonder how long it would take to generate this on the computer?

It's amazing that back in the MTV days artists were ACTUALLY artists and the talent shows through and through. ever notice how many 80s stations there are on the radio today? IMHO the 80's was the last attempt at real music with real artists..ya know people that write and produce their own stuff? Sadly its all about the money now, just like everything else. Show some skin, sing someone elses lyrics and you are good to go..thats what we have today.

Maybe thats one reason you dont see music videos anymore and one reason music sales started slumpping way before Napster came along..b/c the music for the most part it utter crap. Napster just made folks at the RIAA realize just how bad the music industry had become and continues to be.

Re:Free? RIAA will never allow it

[mrbcs]

I saw Pink Floyd in Edmonton once. They were in the middle of an extended solo and the band got LOST! It was hilarious. Being a drummer, I've been there. You could tell that nobody knew where to come back in and were kinda playing chicken... should I go now... how bout now... Took em a few bars and it was a messy turnaround, but I don't think anybody else in the audience even heard it. I know my two buddies had no idea. Sure boosted my self-confidence.. shit if Pink Floyd can screw up on stage after playing for over 20 years, I don't feel so bad when I do :-)

Re:Free? RIAA will never allow it

[gyranthir]

I don't know if the RIAA will try to touch it, since these videos are out in public domain, and in most fashions not available for sale in any form. But you never know with the RIAA. I'm not sure how youtube makes money or stays open, but the RIAA may try to get a piece of that.

Re:Free? RIAA will never allow it

[kinglink]

You assume that the RIAA believes in that. The RIAA probably believes that if you hum a song on the street you should pay for it. If you sing a line of a song on a commentary for a tv show you have to fully license the song, and if that commentary goes to another format, pay them again, if you have a tv show, you will need to relicense the music for DVD if you hadn't thought about those rights, and again for Blu-ray.

Basically just remember this. RIAA doesn't need to sell songs as long as it wins court battles. The RIAA would much rather litigate than gain "more exposure" for an artist that is not named the RIAA.