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YouTube to Offer Every Music Video Ever Created? 282

Posted by CmdrTaco from the allright-finally-a-point-to-all-this dept.
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."
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YouTube to Offer Every Music Video Ever Created? More

YouTube to Offer Every Music Video Ever Created?

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  • Free? RIAA will never allow it (Score:5, Insightful)

    by davidwr ( 791652 ) on Wednesday August 16, 2006 @11:21AM (#15919700) Homepage Journal
    Not gonna happen.
    • No publicity is bad publicity. If RIAA shoots them down, they'll still have gotten all of the publicity from their bold claims.

    • RIAA will love it (Score:3, Interesting)

      by rubycodez ( 864176 )
      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.

      • Re:RIAA will love it (Score:4, Funny)

        by cayenne8 ( 626475 ) on Wednesday August 16, 2006 @01:19PM (#15920853) Homepage Journal
        Actually, I'm wondering if YouTube will do this....have all music videos, and then as years go by, start showing less, and less music, and turn basically into a horrible glut of 'reality tv'....kinda like how MTV and VH1 did?

        I guess we'll know the end is near, when YouTube announces it will carry all of "The Real Life" episodes....

        • Re:RIAA will love it (Score:3, Informative)

          by huhmz ( 216967 )
          Actually I just found VH-1 while flipping through the badjillions of cable channels and I noticed that is actually kind of like how MTV used to be in the 90's when I grew up. Playing music for several hours on end. And not just Britney and that other whats-her-face that is her slutty(ier) counterpart. They were playing Radiohead and The Clash. Maybe Im just caught it at a good hour I don't know.

    • Re:Free? RIAA will never allow it (Score:5, Interesting)

      by truthsearch ( 249536 ) on Wednesday August 16, 2006 @11:33AM (#15919832) Homepage Journal
      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.
      • Record companies pay MTV to play videos. Why would they charge youtube?
        • The same reason you can listen to songs on the radio for free but have to pay to get a copy at the record store. The radio/TV plays whatever the people at the station feel like playing right now. YouTube or iTunes (video or audio) plays whatever you want it to play this second. The RIAA feels you should pay for this freedom (making it, I suppose, a paydom).
        • Are you sure of that? The way they've changed their programming seems to indicate they pay for the videos.
      • How does it work with MTV (or should I say, "How did it work, back when they played music videos")? My assumption was always that MTV got the music video rights for a few pennies per song, like radio stations, clubs, etc. pay. Is this an invalid assumption? Does/did MTV pay big bucks for the right to play those videos?
        • I assumed people paid MTV to show their crappy music videos. The music videos were more of an advertising ploy than anything, used to promote CD/record sales. The bands almost always lip-synced to their own songs in the videos, because it's hard to sing normally while jumping off buildings or chasing one another with chainsaws. It's hard to get decent quality audio outside of a sound studio. The music always comes first in a music video, and nearly without exception you could discard the video part and stil

          • Re:Free? RIAA will never allow it (Score:5, Informative)

            by kthejoker ( 931838 ) on Wednesday August 16, 2006 @01:17PM (#15920833)
            Actually, MTV solicits all videos, and they play what they want - which of course just happens to be all the hitmakers because that drives the advertising dollars / hype factory.

            As a former employee of MTV, I can say unequivocably that nobody at MTV gets paid to show this video over that video. But there is a lot of pressure to, say, "show this new artist video or we won't give you an exclusive interview with Madonna/Ludacris/Green Day." There is a lot of bartering more than outright payola. Influence for influence.

            And, yes, MTV will pay any artist $1 for the right to use their music in the background of their shows in perpetuity forever and ever et cetera et cetera. A lot of bands take that deal; bigger names than I would have thought, especially in the metal/indie world. It's not really selling out, but it's definitely a validation of the system.
          • "The bands almost always lip-synced to their own songs in the videos, because it's hard to sing normally while jumping off buildings or chasing one another with chainsaws. "

            So, what's their excuse for doing it live, onstage in front of a paying audience?

            I'd rather hear a band actually playing their own instruments, and singing...even if it is off a bit. Hell, back in the day, Jimmy Page hit quite a few 'flub' notes on stage, but, the improvs. and the fact he was trying to squeeze 10K notes into a

            • 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 playin
      • Yer but, no but, yer but the user could easily rip the track from the video, surely? Unless the sound quality was so poor you wouldn't want to watch it in the first place.
      • 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 ba

    • Re:Free? RIAA will never allow it (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      If they're working with the labels, what does it have to do with the RIAA? Their members *are* the labels, so if the labels are up for doing it then the RIAA can hardly claim its not in the interests of its members.

    • Re:Free? RIAA will never allow it (Score:5, Interesting)

      by tknaught ( 981065 ) on Wednesday August 16, 2006 @11:40AM (#15919915)
      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:Free? RIAA will never allow it (Score:5, Insightful)

        by tobiasly ( 524456 ) on Wednesday August 16, 2006 @12:29PM (#15920424) Homepage
        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.

        How long do you think it will be before that changes? It wasn't too long ago that there was no such thing as a portable native .mp3 player. If the format becomes popular, the hardware will support it. (Of course I still doubt that would hurt album sales, since the audio quality on YouTube is horrible.)

        • People don't sit down and listen exclusivly to music. We play it while we do other things for the most part.

          Adding a video to the mix changes that. I don't think many people will be in to changing they way we spend our free time so we can watch some video that roughly sync's to a song we like. Just wont happen.
      • 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 lab
        • "The saddest part is that absolute greed of the music labels means that Beavis and Butthead cannot be released in their original form"

          One that makes me really sad, is due to the same reasons, WKRP in Cincinnati can't be released in its original format either...just because of the real songs they used back then.

          Sad thing is...since that show was shot on video, and for other reasons I hear...some episodes in original format may indeed be lost already.

          "As God as my witness...I thought turkeys could

      • I dunno about the "no portable player" bit; MPlayer seems to be the most portable media player on the planet. Transcoding FLV to anything else is trivial via ffmpeg or MEncoder.
    • The RIAA don't seem to mind too much if things are no-cost. They are more concerned with things they have no control over, so they usually require DRM.

      As far as I can tell, YouTube's flash videos are more or less DRM. While they're not conventional DRM, they do have the same effect as DRM.

    • Re:Free? (Score:2, Insightful)

      by alcmaeon ( 684971 )
      Wow, and with YouTube's crappy resolution thrown in as an added bonus. Excellent!!!!
    • No, it will happen because they will pay the RIAA and to get the revenue for this payment, they will have a popup come up ever 3.27 seconds.

  • But what will MTV do? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by 192939495969798999 ( 58312 ) <info AT devinmoore DOT com> on Wednesday August 16, 2006 @11:23AM (#15919715) Homepage Journal
    Oh wait, nevermind, they don't play videos anymore. At least the younger generation will have some opportunity to imagine what MTV was like when it was good (MHO).

    • Re:But what will MTV do? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by bhsurfer ( 539137 ) <bhsurfer&gmail,com> on Wednesday August 16, 2006 @11:30AM (#15919802)
      That's exactly what I was thinking: is this "progress" that we're using the internet to get back to where cable television was 25 years ago?

      Oh well, at least we'll get to see some of that cool old David Bowie video again... :)

      • Oh well, at least we'll get to see some of that cool old David Bowie video again... :)
        Funny, the first video I thought of was Billy Idol's "Rock the cradle of love". That girl was TEH HOTTT!!!
        • Funny, the first video I thought of was Billy Idol's "Rock the cradle of love". That girl was TEH HOTTT!!!

          Absolutely! Much better than most of the women they showed in videos. Another one to add to the list, even though she only appeared for a few moments, is the woman at the end of David Lee Roth's "Just a Gigolo" video. The one who bends over in front of the double doors as he does his final dance before entering the double doors.

          Given a bit of time I'm sure we could come up with several other

        • Trivia: Our good friend David Fincher (of Se7en and Fight Club) fame directed that video.

        • A-ha "Take On Me" (Score:4, Interesting)

          by Cutting_Crew ( 708624 ) on Wednesday August 16, 2006 @02:37PM (#15921509)
          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:But what will MTV do? (Score:3, Insightful)

        by mikael ( 484 )
        MTV used to be awesome 20 years ago - Dire Straits/Money for Nothing, USURA/Open Your Mind, Def Leppard, Eurythmics, Tina Turner. Same with Top of The Pops.

        Although there are now something like 15 video music channels here in the UK. And just about each will have a retro/classic/80's/90's dance/heavy metal/punk/club/garage/underground evening/weekend.

        Now, MTV always just seemed to be guys clowning around, let alone actually being any music.

        • I recently got DishTV...and I'm really thankful, I discovered VH1 Classics...they show a lot of good old videos, and concerts and the like. Much like MTV used to be 'back in the day'.

          I like to keep it on in the background when not watching anything in particular....

      • George Michael - Freedom 90

        Man, that video was dangerous in the hands of a male teenager.
      • Yes, this *is* progress. How much control did you ever have over which particular videos you wanted to see at a given time on MTV?

        Did you want to view one over again a second time, perhaps? Nice to be able to do so without having to catch it on tape first.

  • Bad bargaining position (Score:5, Insightful)

    by 91degrees ( 207121 ) on Wednesday August 16, 2006 @11:26AM (#15919740) Journal
    They should use the Tom Sawyer method. People value what they have to pay for far more than what they can get for free. As soon as you charge them for the generous service of hosting their music videos, it suddenly becomes something they'll want a lot more. Then they'll start fighting for the priviledge of paying you. Otherwise, they'll just want money.

  • Lose more money! (Score:4, Funny)

    by slapyslapslap ( 995769 ) on Wednesday August 16, 2006 @11:26AM (#15919741)
    Wow, they can license the content, give it away for free, and lose even MORE money! They must be going for a world record burn rate.

  • All the good ones (Score:5, Funny)

    by Kohath ( 38547 ) on Wednesday August 16, 2006 @11:27AM (#15919759)
    They already have all the good ones ever created. All 5 of them.
    • 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 programmi
      • I know what you mean. MTV used to be what I had on in the mornings when I was getting ready for school - back when they still actually played music.

        Now I never even flip over there because I know that there's never anything on that I want to see. Personally, I think what started it going downhill was The Real World. It was, after all, basically the first non-music thing on the station.
      • I can understand MTV going into other areas, they needed to generate revenue. But then the create MTV2, which aired videos. But then they started teh crap on there as well.
    • They don't have Tenpole Tudor's Wunderbar yet. Although the presence of various Blotto videos might be considered enough to offset the apparent loss...
  • If those videos were better quality, maybe they could stack up with the mpgs I download off gnutella now, considering I use a leecher on most youtube stuff anyway. :/

    -uso.

  • Do you get to choose the 18 months? (Score:5, Funny)

    by krell ( 896769 ) on Wednesday August 16, 2006 @11:27AM (#15919770) Journal
    "every music video ever created within 18 months"

    Do you get to choose which 18 month period you will select from? I'm hoping for something like Jul 2003 - Dec 2004: no P(uff) D(a/i)iddy videos to worry about, and I might pick up a cool Peter Gabriel video or two.

  • We don't need to stinking hats. (Score:5, Funny)

    by jtownatpunk.net ( 245670 ) on Wednesday August 16, 2006 @11:30AM (#15919801)
    We can dance if we want to We can leave your friends behind 'Cause your friends don't dance and if they don't dance Well they're no friends of mine Soon to be the number one requested video.

  • It should work great (Score:4, Interesting)

    by mcguiver ( 898268 ) on Wednesday August 16, 2006 @11:33AM (#15919831)
    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.

  • I can't find my old posts (Score:4, Insightful)

    by CrazyJim1 ( 809850 ) on Wednesday August 16, 2006 @11:33AM (#15919842) Journal
    But for a long time I said that some website or group of websites that would be hosting every old television show and movie ever created. Some people said On Demand would do this, but I'm pretty sure the Internet is going to beat it out.
  • All of the content on M-TV was "pay for service" whereas YouTube is a free site paid for by online advertising revenue. I just don't see how the RIAA/MPAA will accept this. There is probably going to be some kind of snag, like they'll want users to pay $20 a month. Its always at least $20 for junk content...
    • $20 - That'll be way too much money. Think of an additional TV channel doesn't cost more than $10. It's on-demand but still.... OTOH considering what kind of video/audio quality they're going to give is another big factor.

  • Interesting (Score:5, Interesting)

    by loomis ( 141922 ) * on Wednesday August 16, 2006 @11:35AM (#15919856)
    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.

  • Priorities (Score:2, Insightful)

    by computertheque ( 823940 )
    I would be more concerned with improving their compression method for better quality video. They already have a cap on length of video files, so if they can keep things within a similar file size with a better codec I would have more faith in their attempt to provide media. What's the use of a hundreds of videos if they look like ass?

  • First YouTube Song... (Score:5, Funny)

    by digitaldc ( 879047 ) * on Wednesday August 16, 2006 @11:43AM (#15919956)
    YouTube killed the video star.

  • censored ?? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by beerbellyswan ( 741954 )
    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

    • Re:censored ?? (Score:3, Informative)

      by Doctor Faustus ( 127273 )
      i never understood why videos on the various video channels are censored so heavily... i want to see videos without t-shirts being blurred out

      The t-shirts are blurred when they have a corporate logo on them. MTV doesn't want to run product placement advertising without being paid for it.

  • 100 Awesome Music Videos Lives! (Score:5, Informative)

    by Sargent1 ( 124354 ) on Wednesday August 16, 2006 @11:59AM (#15920113)
    Some time ago, Pitchfork did 100 Awesome Music Videos [pitchforkmedia.com], with one of their criteria being that the videos be available on YouTube. Those videos occasionally get yanked, as I discovered when I started doing something similar every Friday [granades.com]. I wouldn't mind if YouTube could present those legally.

  • Labels should pay YouTube for this (Score:4, Interesting)

    by jlcooke ( 50413 ) on Wednesday August 16, 2006 @12:00PM (#15920134) Homepage
    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.
  • If those videos have 128kbit or better audio, why should one every buy the corresponding song on itunes?
    Splitting streams is rather easy...

  • MTV has already done it... quietly... (Score:4, Informative)

    by 7grain ( 583823 ) on Wednesday August 16, 2006 @12:02PM (#15920151)
    Check out http://www.mtv.com/overdrive [mtv.com]

    It's pretty good. Thousands of videos. Quality is as good as what you usually find on YouTube.

    Not sure why nobody knows about this. I mean, at 37, I'm now outside MTV's target demographic (but I was 14 when I GOT MY MTV in 1983, the weekend that the Thriller video was released in it's 14-minute glory.)

    But anyway, since MY generation was the one that actually watched videos on MTV for about 6 hours a day instead of listening to the radio, I'd think they'd find a way to market this to the 30-45 year age groups. *shrug*
  • Champagne bottles are being emptied.....

    RIAA calculation:

    (every music video ever made) x (USD 150.000) = Endless party

    RIAA vs. YouTube settlement:
    1) pay laywers, music industrie, 1.37 quadrizappeldubbel billion dollars.
    2) shutdown website

  • Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Wednesday August 16, 2006 @12:09PM (#15920212)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • A lot of bands I listened to on college radio became huge after their music video came out. None of them have half naked dancing women though. You're probably referring to rap videos. That's really the record companies way of showing the rapper "Look how good we treat you, half naked dancing women all around you for your music vide, we're letting you drive these nice cars, come make us more money while we pay you hardly anything." The bands I listen to become big because all the teenagers watch TRL or h

  • Not likely (Score:3, Funny)

    by harris s newman ( 714436 ) on Wednesday August 16, 2006 @12:09PM (#15920222)
    I never released mine, so they won't have every one.

  • Meanwhile (Score:3, Funny)

    by MrDiablerie ( 533142 ) on Wednesday August 16, 2006 @12:14PM (#15920267) Homepage
    Meanwhile, MTV still refuses to play videos.
  • Music videos back in the day were freebies to promote tapes and CDs.
    Someone belatedly figured we'd pay for compilations and started going retail.

    YouTube will argue for 80s pricing and RIAA will argue for 2000s pricing.

    As great as videos were in their heyday (the 80s) today's kids will think they're about as exciting as watching bank surveillance videos compared to the bombast that's on now.
  • How do they make money? I'm being serious, are they just burning through VC at the same time waiting for Yahoo/Google/AOL/? to buy them?
  • I don't think they'll be licensing this [wikipedia.org] :)
  • Oh, they mean _legally_.

    OK. That's nice.

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