Updated at 1:25 p.m. PDT.
Google-owned video-sharing site YouTube is silencing music videos in the U.K. after negotiations with the country's Performing Right Society (PRS for Music), which collects licensing fees for artists and labels, failed.
"Our previous license from PRS for Music has expired, and we've been unable so far to come to an agreement to renew it on terms that are economically sustainable for us," a statement from YouTube read. "There are two obstacles in these negotiations: prohibitive licensing fees and lack of transparency. We value the creativity of musicians and songwriters and have worked hard with rights-holders to generate significant online revenue for them and to respect copyright. But PRS is now asking us to pay many, many times more for our license than before."
The YouTube statement continued: "The costs are simply prohibitive for us--under PRS' proposed terms we would lose significant amounts of money with every playback. In addition, PRS is unwilling to tell us what songs are included in the license they can provide so that we can identify those works on YouTube--that's like asking a consumer to buy a blank CD without knowing what musicians are on it."
But a statement from PRS for Music claimed that Google doesn't want to pay enough for licensing fees.
"PRS for Music is outraged on behalf of consumers and songwriters that Google has chosen to close down access to music videos on YouTube in the U.K.," read a statement from the industry group, which noted that Google rakes in billions of dollars in revenue. "Google has told us they are taking this step because they wish to pay significantly less than at present to the writers of the music on which their service relies, despite the massive increase in YouTube viewing."
A report from the BBC suggests that the change will take effect later on Monday.
Royalty fees in the U.K. reportedly caused streaming music service Pandora to pull out of the country (along with other non-U.S. markets) two years ago, and many smaller players in digital media are currently feeling the pain. PRS for Music has also targeted small businesses in the U.K. for playing radios publicly, which the group says is a form of piracy.
Since it only pertains to music videos, this won't affect, say, Queen Elizabeth's royal YouTube channel. But U.S. digital media companies, particularly when it comes to music, have repeatedly encountered rough seas abroad.
One of the most high-profile has been Apple's iTunes, which several years ago came under scrutiny from one European government after another, typically concerning digital rights management restrictions in its iTunes Store. But music videos have been contentious both in and outside the U.S., with labels apparently unclear as to whether the best strategy would be to ink deals with YouTube--where they have less control--or go at it on their own. Much of the controversy comes from the fact that the music industry says it just doesn't profit much from having its videos on YouTube.
Sources told CNET News earlier this month that YouTube was working with Universal Music Group to create a standalone site "closely linked" to YouTube, a shadowy project that has been described as a Hulu for music videos. And Viacom has created its own hub, MTVMusic.com. It's complicated enough in the U.S.; bringing overseas players and viewers into account opens many new cans of worms.
Between its big earnings call and rolling out a snazzy New York visitors' center, Google's been pretty busy this week. Here are five bits of news that slipped through the cracks:
Gmail users can now watch YouTube videos right in Gmail Chat.
(Credit: CNET Networks)Watch YouTube videos in Gmail Chat. Having YouTube video links turn into videos in Google Talk is nothing new, but the feature is now a part of Gmail too. Web users who had lusted over the desktop software's feature are now able to do the same right in the browser. Dropping in any YouTube URL will insert the video into your conversation stream, where it can be viewed by both users, although not at the same time. See our old story about Meebo offering the same thing in its chat rooms back in 2007.
Embedded YouTube videos get high-quality love. Previously, if you had embedded a YouTube video somewhere else, your viewers would have missed out on the option to view it in high quality. Google has quietly added the option to flip it into high-quality mode right from the bottom corner menu. This doesn't come along with an option to view the same video in its high-def glory, but it's a start. (via CrunchGear)
Google's transit site gets a makeover. On Friday, Google rolled out a new version of its transit site that makes it easier to see which parts of the U.S. are Google Transit-capable. Each state now has a little sub-list of regions and the respective transit companies that are a part of Google's index. Missing, however, is the transit layer, which lets you see routes in all forms of transportation at once. Google added this to its Maps product earlier this month, and says it will be a part of the transit site soon.
FeedBurner experiences hiccups in service. Earlier this week, RSS management service FeedBurner began to experience problems with its aggregation tools, resulting in the number of reported reader subscriptions fluctuating wildly. FeedBurner co-founder Dick Costolo says that there's nothing to worry about and that the hiccups have been related to FeedBurner moving users over to the newer, updated architecture. Costolo also said that the actual reader subscriptions have remained intact.
The Vatican goes Web 2.0. On Friday, YouTube announced that the Vatican joined up as a content partner. There's now a dedicated content channel with a dozen videos--mostly of the Pope. In an introductory video, Father Federico Lombardi, the director of the Vatican press office, said the move was the Vatican's way of being a part of the "global arena." The only problem with that statement is that the Vatican has disabled embedding, requiring users to watch all the videos on YouTube's site only.
My CNET News colleague Charles Cooper's kvetching about YouTube not offering a download option for political videos seems to be answered. Such an option now appears right underneath the player on certain videos, including President-elect Barack Obama's weekly addresses.
While users have long been able to grab YouTube clips both with Flash rippers and H.264 stream downloaders, this would be the first time such an option has appeared on the site as an official offering. The new option gives users a full-quality H.264 file--the very same copy that's sent out to YouTube-capable set top boxes and iPhones.
Stanford Law School professor Lawrence Lessig seems to be the first to have noticed the new option, and says it will be spreading out to other government-uploaded videos. I've pinged Google to see if and when the option will be made available for everyone else's videos--and am still waiting to hear back. Update: YouTube's Hunter Walk says "Nothing further to announce at this time. We're just excited to have made this feature available in preparation for a historic week in American politics."
One thing to note here is the timing. This comes just two days after the announcement that Google Video would no longer be accepting user uploaded videos. Google Video let you download an iPod and PSP-friendly H.264 encoded clip that's the exact same size as what YouTube is now offering, leading me to believe that this will soon be available as a standard publishing feature for those who enable it on their clips.
Some YouTube videos now have a direct download option that gives users a H.264 encoded copy of the video to play offline and use in mash-ups.
(Credit: CNET Networks)
Google is rolling out video and voice capabilities for the chat function that is embedded in the Gmail interface. It's a bare-bones voice and video-conferencing service, but it's simple to install and use and is a very good addition to Gmail.
It's no Skype, though. Gmail Video and Voice, as it's called, can't connect to the plain phone network, as Skype's paid service can. And there are plenty of other optional features missing, like a voice call recorder.
Gmail gets video. (And either the person who showed me the app can't be seen in public, or Google can't afford lights.)
I found a demo of voice and video quality on the service excellent, although to be fair I was connected from CNET's corporate network to someone at the Google campus. I do expect Gmail Video quality to be a bit more consistent than Skype, since unlike the point-to-point architecture of Skype, Gmail Video traffic all runs through Google servers. I expect that Google has the bandwidth and server capacity needed.
But the service was a resource hog on my 2-year-old computer; it used up all my available CPU resources and made other apps slow to respond. I've had better luck with Skype. Newer computers would probably not have this problem.
Unlike many current video chat products, Gmail Video and Voice uses a proprietary plug-in, not Flash. The small (2MB) download supports Firefox, IE, and Chrome on the PC, and Firefox on the Mac. Support for other browsers and platforms (Linux and mobile) may come later.
Gmail Video and Voice will be made available to all Gmail users starting Tuesday at noon PST. Global rollout should be complete by the end of the day. To see if you have it, open a chat with someone (you don't actually have to message them). If your account is video-enabled, at the lower left of the chat window, there will be an interface element labeled "Video & more." When you click on that it will walk you through installing the plug-in. If you want to make a video call to someone who hasn't yet installed the plug-in, you'll be able to invite them to do so. (In my early test of the service, this feature wasn't yet enabled).
The existing downloadable Google Talk application, which has supported voice chat for a while, only later may get the video capability. The Google people I spoke with were noncommittal.
Upshot: The addition of voice and video makes Gmail a more compelling product. It's very nice to have all the major communications channels (e-mail, chat, voice, video, and soon, SMS) in one place and under one log-on. Google could, though, layer in some more connectivity into its own apps (like YouTube, Google Docs presentations, and Android) to make it even richer. And the lack of an interface to the standard phone system is limiting.
But Google got the first release of its videophone pretty much right. It works, it's easy, and if you're a Gmail user, the service is right where you want it.
Here's a Google developer's pitch for the service:
Short clips have always been YouTube's bread and butter, but with the company struggling to generate revenue, the Web's No. 1 video-sharing site is experimenting with long-form videos.
YouTube has for a long time allowed several videographers with a YouTube director's account to post videos longer than the standard 10-minute maximum allowed on the site.
But the company now seems more serious about offering long-form videos more widely. During the Los Angeles Film Festival this week, YouTube began pitching independent directors about showcasing their work on the site, according to a story published Wednesday at the Web site of Fortune magazine.
Examples of clips available on the site that already surpass the 10-minute limit are an entire episode from Showtime Network's The Tudors, a series about Elizabethan England, and a 90-minute comedy called Howard Buttelman, Daredevil Stuntman. YouTube was not immediately available for comment
The experiments with longer videos come as YouTube struggles to cash in on its huge audience. Google CEO Eric Schmidt has said this several times this year, and lifting the length of videos means that YouTube may get a crack at full-length TV shows and films.
You can't really keep anything a secret in the New York media industry, but Google managed to do a pretty good job of it on Wednesday night.
The Mountain View megalith rented out the Terminal 5 uberclub on the West Side for an event it called "Videocracy," which is Google-ese for "Hey, advertisers, this is why you should cozy up to YouTube." The company also reportedly made a number of hints at the video site's direction, talking about some in-the-works features.
It was a strictly no-press event; Silicon Alley Insider reporter Michael Learmonth weaseled his way into the open-bar party, only to be given the boot moments later. (I unfortunately didn't try to sneak in. I was downtown, where TheStreet.com was celebrating the launch of its new Mainstreet site. Jim Cramer is shorter than I expected he'd be.)
But secret spies tell CNET News.com that not only were YouTube founders Chad Hurley and Steve Chen there, so were a number of the site's biggest stars, like "Chocolate Rain" singer Tay Zonday and fashionisto William Sledd.
And Deep Focus CEO Ian Schafer wrote a brief recap of the event on his personal blog, detailing some of the upgrades that are in development at YouTube.
According to Schafer, the site will soon be launching video recommendations based on prior viewing history; think StumbleUpon or Amazon Recommendations. Also mentioned were "active sharing," a beta feature that displays which users have recently watched a video (consider it the YouTube equivalent of Facebook's social ads), improvements to YouTube's video-editing tools, and the expansion of YouTube's content to platforms beyond the PC.
"Steve Chen is excited about content on really, really big TVs," Schafer wrote.
Much like Google Video's software uploader, YouTube now has a multifile uploader of its own. While you can still upload up to 100 MB files through YouTube's Web interface, having installed the small piece of Windows software (Mac version coming soon), YouTubers are now able upload several video files at once, at up to 1GB a pop, which is 10x the size of the standard uploader. Interestingly enough, you still have to go through a Web interface, even with the software installed on your machine. The processing is still (thankfully) done on YouTube's servers, which the company says can take up to a half hour to crunch the larger or more complex video files.
Like the single file uploader, the multivideo iteration lets you change tags and edit the options of each video, although there are no batch functions, which is slightly disappointing. Also disappointing is that despite the bump in size limitations, Google is still capping videos to 10 minutes, although if you're making original content, you can probably finagle a director account, or other specialty classification pretty easily, which doesn't have such restrictions.
[via Read/WriteWeb]
Upload multiple video files at a time with YouTube's new multifile video uploader.
(Credit: CNET Networks)
The shaky relationship between NBC Universal and YouTube has collapsed once again, as an NBC representative confirmed on Monday that the network has decided to stop posting promotional clips on the video-sharing site.
According to the representative, NBC Universal pulled out of the deal on Friday to support the upcoming launch of Hulu.com, the Internet video service founded by NBC and News Corp. that could compete for eyeballs with Google's YouTube. A test version of Hulu, which will stream full-length TV shows, is expected to make its debut within the next two weeks.
The breakup is important because it shows that some of YouTube's best-known former partners are satisfied to distribute their shows online themselves.
"NBC informed us on Friday that they were taking down their branded channel and clips," Ricardo Reyes, a YouTube spokesman, said in an e-mail. "Our relationship with NBC was a YouTube success story, so we hope NBC decides to post more original content and stay engaged with our users."
NBC Universal's first dealing with YouTube occurred in 2005 in what turned out to be a watershed moment for YouTube and Web video. Unauthorized clips from the show Saturday Night Live began appearing on the video-sharing site and helped generate publicity and big traffic.
At first, NBC Universal demanded that YouTube remove the clips, citing copyright laws. Then, the entertainment powerhouse reversed its decision. NBC cut a deal whereby it agreed to post promotional clips of some of its shows on YouTube. As many have pointed out, it was really NBC and those SNL clips that helped YouTube build a name for itself with the mainstream. At the same time, YouTube helped introduce SNL to a new generation of fans.
Back then, nearly everyone said NBC Universal was smart to cut a deal. Analysts were predicting that YouTube could one day be the gateway for all Internet video. The site would be a hub where millions looked for user-generated clips, full-length TV shows and perhaps one day feature films.
But the number of pirated clips on YouTube--users recording a favorite TV show or movie and posting the copy to the site--angered many media executives. To many in Hollywood, Google dragged its feet when it came to preventing piracy. The issue came to a head earlier this year when Viacom filed a $1 billion lawsuit against Google for copyright violations.
At the same time, Viacom and NBC started asking whether they really needed YouTube. The companies ratcheted up efforts to distribute video through their own sites and other Web portals.
Anyone wishing to watch an episode of Heroes can go to iTunes, NBC.com and soon Hulu.com. Fans of the Viacom-owned comedy series The Daily Show can just log on to that show's site.
So did Google blow it by playing hardball with the content creators? Did it push too hard when it should have paid the fees the big media guys wanted? This way it could have made those companies dependent on the traffic generated by YouTube and also hooked people on finding their favorite TV shows on the site. It might have been tougher to leave YouTube then.
But Google probably didn't have much of a choice. Such a scenario would have meant that Google would have emerged as a powerful gatekeeper. Google would have become to video what iTunes has become to music, and the TV and film industries are resolved not to follow the same path as the record labels. It was probably only a matter of time before NBC and others struck out on their own.
What this means for the near future is that YouTube, with far less professionally crafted content on the site, is going to compete for eyeballs with the likes of NBC and Viacom as well as a legion of other video plays cropping up seemingly every day.
In the coming months, as YouTube purges its site of more and more copyright content, we'll learn the real value of true user-generated content.
SAN BRUNO, Calif.--Google on Monday unveiled a new system for identifying pirated video on YouTube as it gets uploaded, but the system puts the burden on movie studios and other content owners to provide YouTube copies of the content first.
Content owners provide the video to YouTube and specify whether they want to block anyone else from uploading copies of it. They can also ask YouTube to allow others to post it and put ads next to it or otherwise promote it on their sites, David King, YouTube product manager, told reporters in a briefing at YouTube.
The automated YouTube video ID system looks at all video as it is uploaded and tries to match it with a database of visual abstractions of the copyrighted material that has been provided by content owners. If the system finds a match it will either block it, post it, or--depending upon the policy specified by the content owner--put ads on it, with the revenue being shared with the content owner.
If the copyright owner wants pirated copies to be blocked and the system finds a match, the pirated video may be posted, but only for a few minutes and then the system will remove it. The copies of the copyrighted content that owners provide YouTube for anti-piracy purposes will not end up posted on YouTube unless the company posts the content itself.
... Read more
Yesterday Google rolled out video alerts to its Google Alerts service. If you've never used Alerts, it's a handy way to get Web content updates delivered straight to your e-mail inbox based on keywords. In the case of the new video search, Google will deliver links to videos it's indexed. So how is this helpful? Say you're a big video fan, and you dig seeing those Diet Coke and Mentos videos online. There are always some crazy teenagers out in the suburbs doing new things with them, and that equates to a lot of new videos. Setting up a Google Alert for all the videos of said activity will pass along any new items as they come.
What makes Google Alerts really interesting is its flexibility. Besides videos, you can set it up to scour the Internet in general, blogs, and Google Groups. There's also a comprehensive option that will do all of the above. To keep your inbox from overflowing, you can set up the frequency of alerts, too. There's a simple drop down to select once a day, once a week, and an as-it-happens option that will send you notifications the second Google finds it. Although a word to the wise: You might want to use a spam e-mail account if you've got more than one alert going for a popular topic.
If you're a news junkie, or a fan of using RSS readers, you're likely to prefer using your current system to subscribe to blogs and other news feeds. Luckily for you there's a neat way to take your Google Alert and use it as an RSS feed to simply plug in to your RSS reader. To replicate how this works and put it into your RSS reader, you can do this with a combination of Google's services:
- Web: On Google news, just enter a search term. On the left-hand menu you'll see a link for the RSS feed. Just grab that and plug it into your RSS reader. It will automatically update in your feed reader every time there's new content.
- Blogs: Just like Web search, you'll find the RSS feed link on the left. Copy, paste, and you're done.
- Google Video: Google video search uses the same method. Just do a search, and you'll see an RSS feed logo on the top right, a little bit below where you'd log in. Take it and drop it into your reader.
Interestingly enough there's no RSS feed for Google Groups searches, so you're stuck with an alert. On a related note, if you're a Gmail user and want to keep your alerts super organized, you can set up filters and auto-labeling, which will automatically categorize and index your incoming alerts--keeping them from cluttering your inbox.
Finally, more important than adding feeds is editing and deleting them. You can manage this from your Google account under Alerts. Got tips of your own? Share them in the TalkBack.
