In July 2001, Napster got shut down by the recording industry. Had the music moguls known how history would evolve over the next six and a half years, I wonder whether they would have tried a different tack.
I know, it's an endless bar debate. But watching the music establishment play catch-up, with its continuing series of zigs and zags, don't you just know these guys wish they had the opportunity for a do-over? Who wouldn't? But life doesn't work that way. So instead, it's been a slow (and unsatisfying) grapple with technology.
A few days before Christmas Warner Music began to pull its videos from YouTube over a licensing fees impasse. Probably not a very effective negotiating tack given that YouTube/Google needs Warner less than Warner needs YouTube/Google.
But events are moving fast. Today comes word, courtesy of the Financial Times that the four big labels plan to come up with their own destination site on the Internet. To wit:
Plans under discussion include: a partnership with Hulu, the online television and film joint venture between News Corp and NBC Universal; the creation of a premium service on YouTube, Google's video sharing site; or, a standalone venture between some or all of the four largest recorded music groups.
Representatives of two music companies, who would not be named, said they were in discussions with Hulu, adding that no partnership announcement was imminent but that the site appeared to be the favoured partner. "If it happens at all it will be with Hulu," one said.
Then again, they might just as easily decide to fall back in love with YouTube, pending a better deal. Or not.
One parting thought: I still contend that the recording industry would be in a lot better shape today had it not ordered its lawyers to nuke Napster at the dawn of the digital music file swapping. Of course, we'll never really know. To be continued.
YouTube may be a loss leader for Google, though with some 80 million viewers, that's still one hell of a loss leader.
On the strength of the thousands of short-form content uploaded by members, YouTube has grown exponentially since its 2006 acquisition by Google. But how much of a business is there in dumb cat videos? As always, the challenge for management has been how to make YouTube's $1.65 billion purchase price pay for itself.
(Credit:
CNET News)
Now Google is considering a different tack to answer at least part of that question. As my colleague Greg Sandoval reported earlier Thursday, YouTube will begin offering feature films produced by at least one of the biggest Hollywood movie studios, possibly as early as next month.
"For months, Google, YouTube's parent company, has been talking to the major film companies about launching an ad-supported, streaming movie service, two execs with knowledge of the negotiations told CNET News. "It's not imminent," said one of the executives. "But it's going to happen. I would say you can expect to see it, if all goes well, sometime within the next 30 to 90 days."
Among other things, this would put YouTube on a more competitive footing in long-form video versus Hulu, the joint video venture formed by NBC Universal and News Corp. The shift also underscores a recognition that the big spenders increasingly are getting picky. Despite the viral growth in user-generated content, advertisers would much rather spend their money on the professionally created stuff.
That's hardly an epiphany. What's surprising is that it took management so long to reach this conclusion. I'm not going to nitpick but what's more surprising is that even with an improved wide-screen video player, YouTube still lags Hulu in terms of picture quality. Maybe that doesn't matter for wonder-of-me moments shot with my home video recorder. It matters a lot when you're sitting down with prospective advertisers, freaked out by a disastrous economy, about where to put their money.
So it is that MG Siegler of VentureBeat correctly asks whether any of Google's exertions to date are enough to really matter.
Of course, there is still no real proof that Google has figured out an effective way to monetize these or any other videos on YouTube. So a large question would have to be if feature film content would be any different? Another question is if users will be willing to watch feature films in YouTube's often less-than-stellar video quality. It's one thing to watch short clips in low resolution, but sitting through an entire 90-minute to 2-hour feature may be a bit much to ask.
Technically, that doesn't sound like a very tall order. But the longer Google takes to figure out a fix, the more YouTube risks losing its status as a pop culture phenom.
Marley, Joost's "Vice President of Office Hamony." We're not kidding
(Credit: Joost)Looks as if the rest of the world may have to wait a tad longer to experience the pleasure of "next-generation TV." The Sunday Times is reporting that Joost will ditch some of its more ambitious plans to focus on the U.S. market.
The article reports that "a major retrenchment" is in the offing. A Joost spokeswoman is quoted denying layoffs but allowing that "there are some situations where staff have been realigned to better fit our needs." (Bush should hire that person to spin our Iraq fiasco.)
Nice scoopage, if true, though hardly a shocker at this point. This most heavily hyped video start-up was founded by Janus Friis and Niklas Zennström ,the creators of Skype and Kazaa. But it has struggled to gain traction as a so-called YouTube killer. Joost was supposed to be the answer to online video piracy. The idea was to offer a platform which would give professional content creators access to a high-quality video platform and revenue from A-list advertisers.
Now that the initial buzz has faded, Joost faces new competition from the Hulu video venture from NBC Universal and News Corp. Check out this devastating piece in Portfolio.com chronicling just how rapidly "Joost went from superhero to life support."
Of course, this doesn't need to ring the death knell for Joost. Serving up video--including Internet TV--is going to happen. Broadband needs to get faster--a lot faster--while Joost and the other entrants need to improve the user experience. But we've seen this before. The question now is whether Mike Volpi, the seasoned executive brought in from Cisco Systems to provide professional management as CEO, can keep Joost in the game until the "ah ha moment" when the technology can catch up with the big idea.
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