Comment by magicalist | Hacker News Reader

Comment by magicalist | Hacker News Reader

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One interesting thing is that this is a service that Google is letting you pay for instead of viewing ads. Have they done that before? I guess gmail/google apps, but that's a little different, as you have to get a new account, you can't add a subscription to your existing account. I wish they would do this for all of youtube, not just music.

The phrasing (and its effect on how people react to the story) is very interesting. If it had gone instead with "Google forcing labels to allow ad-free youtube subscription service" or something, you'd probably see far more positive reactions. I hate services like hulu plus (subscription and ads!) with a fiery passion, so it sounds good to me.

On the other hand, youtube is so ubiquitous, "block" might not be that poor of a choice of words, as not being able to monetize on youtube is surely a hit. Of course, if they're getting revenue from ads they already have some kind of deal, this is just a different one, and it wasn't so long ago that some labels were holding out ("blocking" youtube from playing their music) in a reverse of the situation.

Really, though, without knowing the details of how google is trying to strongarm them into this agreement (or even the terms of the agreement), it's hard to make much of a judgement here. Definitely played up in the news for drama, though.

> Have they done that before?

As you note, not really, but YouTube is an excellent place to start. YouTube ads suck on pretty much every dimension compared to search/Gmail ads: They're irrelevant, repetitive, interrupt what you're doing, burn bandwidth, etc. And, so far as I can tell, there's no obvious way to make them less sucky for users without destroying the value proposition for advertisers.

> I wish they would do this for all of youtube, not just music.

Given how often otherwise non-commercial videos end up monetized because of the music they contain, getting rid of music ads may affect more of YouTube than you might expect.

The ability to monetize music on Youtube is unlikely to be a big hit since few labels make much compared to real streaming services. The big hit is going to be for promotion. The only reason indie labels have put up with the abysmal payouts from Youtube have been the fact that it's a great way to promote their music. Youtube is great for discovery and poor for streaming, which makes for great conversion.

However, what Google are trying to do is essentially turn Youtube into a fully fledged music streaming service, but they're framing it as the same old video sharing service to justify continued abyssmal payouts. They can do this because they know that artists will put pressure on their labels to get back on Youtube if they're ever blocked. It's a classic monopolist move, and the only solace is that Google will likely fuck up yet again like they do every time they try to enter different markets.

> I wish they would do this for all of youtube, not just music.

As someone who visits youtube a fair bit but very rarely for music, I agree with you there. I can't see that they won't though: if the music side works out then it would make sense to push the idea more generally.

It won't be easy though: there will be many that don't want to sign up to a revised advertising/funding agreement. But the way I see it they are fighting the same fight many admonish the big media players for: they'll be trying to maintain the status quo instead of moving with the times, effectively trying to hold everyone else back because they don't see the need to move as it might not work in their favour.

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