4 ms·

YouTube creators are highly undervalued. How far away are we from direct micropayments to creators, as envisioned by Scott McCloud? http://www.scottmccloud.co

YouTube creators are highly undervalued. How far away are we from direct micropayments to creators, as envisioned by Scott McCloud? http://www.scottmccloud.com/3-home/essays/2003-09-micros/micros.html http://www.scottmccloud.com/3-home/essays/2003-09-micros/mic... Right now, YouTube has to deal with advertisers on behalf of its creators, which means the perverse incentives of advertisers leak through and affect YouTube's relationship with its creators. YouTube could seek to outsource the advertiser relationship to the "Networks" that aggregate YouTube creators. There could be a model where you have independent creators that thrive off of micropayments, while larger channels could be aggregated by networks which deal with the advertisers. Right now, Patreon is great, but the friction is still a bit too high.

derefr 10y ago
Micropayments are hard in general, because you have to solve a problem "for everybody" without creating a single monopoly ad-network-alike corporation to handle the money in the process. But they can be solved in the specific case. Spotify is basically micropayments: you pay a subscription, the site tracks plays, and then the site reimburses content creators proportionally to their plays. I feel like you could create a "Youtube killer" that used the Spotify system pretty easily. But, of course, you would need people to actually pay a subscription. Youtube Red doesn't seem to be doing very well. (That might just be because people expect Youtube content to be free, though. It might be different if all the content is behind the subscription paywall from the start.) Either way, you'll lose Youtube's viral aspect, that comes down to millions of ten-year-olds with tons of time and no money spreading your content.
- stcredzero 10y ago
  (That might just be because people expect Youtube content to be free, though. It might be different if all the content is behind the subscription paywall from the start.) Either way, you'll lose Youtube's viral aspect, that comes down to millions of ten-year-olds with tons of time and no money spreading your content. You can have advertiser-driven content for ten-year-olds and paywalled content for people who have money.
  - derefr 10y ago
    ...which is what Youtube Red is. But everyone starts by consuming the advertiser-driven content, and this content anchors them on what the platform "should" cost.
    - stcredzero 10y ago
      ...which is what Youtube Red is Not exactly. YouTube Red distributes funds in a manner similar to Spotify. But everyone starts by consuming the advertiser-driven content, and this content anchors them on what the platform "should" cost. How is it that growing up with a guardian doesn't "anchor" everyone on what everything "should" cost?
      - fzzzy 10y ago
        YouTube Red does have Red-exclusive content, too.
pc86 10y ago
If Google bought Patreon they could integrate it directly into YouTube, but Patreon isn't platform-specific. It's hard to get something that's platform independent like Patreon and have it also integrate well with all the different content platforms out there.
- SimbaOnSteroids 10y ago
  Shouldn't they have some form of API that allows you to integrate it onto a webpage?
FullMtlAlcoholc 10y ago
This is where an easy to use cryptocurrency could be useful
- mahyarm 10y ago
  Currently at $1.50 transaction fee defaults with BTC.
  - droidist2 10y ago
    Litecoin then?
dredmorbius 10y ago
We are a long, long, long, long way from a micropayments ecosystem. It's fundamentally at odds with information goods, particularly in mass media. https://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/4r683b/repudiation_as_the_micropayments_killer_feature https://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/4r683b/repudia...
- stcredzero 10y ago
  Cognitive Load -- TL;DR: this continues to compound the cognitive overload of payment for content. Under Brin's system, now I've got to: Decide if I want to read something. Decide if I want to pay for reading something. Decide if I've got buyer's remorse for having paid for something, and if so, Wrestle with the vendor's reimbursement system in the event of any dispute.1 1) Happens no matter what. 2) Can be automatic, so no decision applies. If the cost is low enough, it could just amount to some slightly varying small amount that gets auto-paid every month. It would be just like FastTrak toll payment -- something I don't really think about. 3) and 4) I don't think like this with regard to Patreon. If I decide a creator doesn't deserve my money anymore, I just stop paying them. I really couldn't give a rat's ass about the $1 I sent them last month. So fundamentally at odds with information goods, particularly in mass media -- Wat!? Where is the evidence? Is Netflix massively out-earning Amazon Prime Video? If this was the case, why did video rental ever happen, and how does RedBox still exist? How does Steam and the Apple App Store exist and make money, for that matter? Apps and video games are just media, after all.
  - dredmorbius 10y ago
    Fair questions. I've addressed a number of these in existing articles concerning information and markets. A search of my subreddit turns up most of these: https://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/search?q=information+markets&restrict_sr=on https://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/search?q=information+ma... Specific to your questions: 1. The problem with per-article paid access is that the question of access is tied to the question of cost. I'm working at a scale of information where I'm looking at thousands of books and articles. The overhead is nontrivial. A library model -- where you simply have stacks access and don't pay per item viewed -- works out quite well. A rental model, where you're aware that each item carries some access cost, however low: $10, $1, $0.10, $0.1 -- adds up. For much of the world, any per-item cost is high. The Internet offers us several such "library" models --Sci-Hub, LibGen, and BookZZ each provided unencumbered access to massive troves of published material. Extralegally. Yes, you might find some way of wedging a paid-access metering model onto this, but to what end? Consider that the average American spends something on the order of $200 on direct media purchases (books, magazines, music, video) in a year, and an indirect $600 or so in advertising. Which has all kinds of distortionary effects on what is available, or produced. There are ~300k writers and editors in the country, whose core need is to a) keep a roof over their head and food on the table and b) have the tools for writing available to them. Seems to me that cutting out the inefficiencies and distortions of advertising would be a net win. Your 2) is false: at some point, I've got to consciously decide whether or not I'm paying for content. Otherwise you're making a sham of the concept of a discretionary payment system. For 3 & 4: it depends on what the granularity of the system is, on both payments and units of consumption. First, with Patreon, you aren't paying for access to individual items of content, for the most part. The models vary, but range from "I'm pitching in to support someon I believe in" to "I'm gaining time-based channel access". There's a word for that last, it's call a subscription. And subscription-based media access ... is very much a thing. There's an entire industry that grew up around this, at a previous time when per-item access to media was expensive, and the joint problems of "how do I sample the wares" (for audiences) and "how do we keep our authors fed , housed, and clothed" (for broadcasters) came up. The answer was the literary or publisher's magazine. This was a regularly-produced (weekly, monthly, quarterly) publication, with a stable of writers, a compilation of works included with each issue, often publishing longer works in serial form, etc., etc. It served as an advertisement for long-form books, should subscribers choose to buy them. It mitigated the risks (and bundled purchasing decisions), at the level of multiple authors (anywhere from a handful to 100s), on an annual basis, and generally offered something in any given issue worth reading. It wasn't until the 1860s or so that additional advertising (beyond the books and publications themselves) became a significant component, though that grew rapidly through the last half of the 19th century. Hamilton Holt's Commercialism and Journalism, 1909, covers this in a brief 115 page booklet (available at the Internet Archive). (Holt was a magazine publisher, reporting on the industry.) I see the present situation of one in which the question of where and how the bundling size has changed, and is shaking out. The previous regime served the needs and limits of paper-based publication, as well as vinyl & CD-based audio, and VCR and DVD-based video. In a world of ubiquitous digital distribution, those limits and gateways no longer exist. And information is a public good, as Google's Chief Economist argues.

derefr 10y ago

Micropayments are hard in general, because you have to solve a problem "for everybody" without creating a single monopoly ad-network-alike corporation to handle the money in the process. But they can be solved in the specific case. Spotify is basically micropayments: you pay a subscription, the site tracks plays, and then the site reimburses content creators proportionally to their plays. I feel like you could create a "Youtube killer" that used the Spotify system pretty easily. But, of course, you would need people to actually pay a subscription. Youtube Red doesn't seem to be doing very well. (That might just be because people expect Youtube content to be free, though. It might be different if all the content is behind the subscription paywall from the start.) Either way, you'll lose Youtube's viral aspect, that comes down to millions of ten-year-olds with tons of time and no money spreading your content.

stcredzero 10y ago
(That might just be because people expect Youtube content to be free, though. It might be different if all the content is behind the subscription paywall from the start.) Either way, you'll lose Youtube's viral aspect, that comes down to millions of ten-year-olds with tons of time and no money spreading your content. You can have advertiser-driven content for ten-year-olds and paywalled content for people who have money.
- derefr 10y ago
  ...which is what Youtube Red is. But everyone starts by consuming the advertiser-driven content, and this content anchors them on what the platform "should" cost.
  - stcredzero 10y ago
    ...which is what Youtube Red is Not exactly. YouTube Red distributes funds in a manner similar to Spotify. But everyone starts by consuming the advertiser-driven content, and this content anchors them on what the platform "should" cost. How is it that growing up with a guardian doesn't "anchor" everyone on what everything "should" cost?
    - fzzzy 10y ago
      YouTube Red does have Red-exclusive content, too.

pc86 10y ago

If Google bought Patreon they could integrate it directly into YouTube, but Patreon isn't platform-specific. It's hard to get something that's platform independent like Patreon and have it also integrate well with all the different content platforms out there.

SimbaOnSteroids 10y ago
Shouldn't they have some form of API that allows you to integrate it onto a webpage?

FullMtlAlcoholc 10y ago

This is where an easy to use cryptocurrency could be useful

mahyarm 10y ago
Currently at $1.50 transaction fee defaults with BTC.
- droidist2 10y ago
  Litecoin then?

dredmorbius 10y ago

We are a long, long, long, long way from a micropayments ecosystem. It's fundamentally at odds with information goods, particularly in mass media. https://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/4r683b/repudiation_as_the_micropayments_killer_feature https://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/4r683b/repudia...

stcredzero 10y ago
Cognitive Load -- TL;DR: this continues to compound the cognitive overload of payment for content. Under Brin's system, now I've got to: Decide if I want to read something. Decide if I want to pay for reading something. Decide if I've got buyer's remorse for having paid for something, and if so, Wrestle with the vendor's reimbursement system in the event of any dispute.1 1) Happens no matter what. 2) Can be automatic, so no decision applies. If the cost is low enough, it could just amount to some slightly varying small amount that gets auto-paid every month. It would be just like FastTrak toll payment -- something I don't really think about. 3) and 4) I don't think like this with regard to Patreon. If I decide a creator doesn't deserve my money anymore, I just stop paying them. I really couldn't give a rat's ass about the $1 I sent them last month. So fundamentally at odds with information goods, particularly in mass media -- Wat!? Where is the evidence? Is Netflix massively out-earning Amazon Prime Video? If this was the case, why did video rental ever happen, and how does RedBox still exist? How does Steam and the Apple App Store exist and make money, for that matter? Apps and video games are just media, after all.
- dredmorbius 10y ago
  Fair questions. I've addressed a number of these in existing articles concerning information and markets. A search of my subreddit turns up most of these: https://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/search?q=information+markets&restrict_sr=on https://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/search?q=information+ma... Specific to your questions: 1. The problem with per-article paid access is that the question of access is tied to the question of cost. I'm working at a scale of information where I'm looking at thousands of books and articles. The overhead is nontrivial. A library model -- where you simply have stacks access and don't pay per item viewed -- works out quite well. A rental model, where you're aware that each item carries some access cost, however low: $10, $1, $0.10, $0.1 -- adds up. For much of the world, any per-item cost is high. The Internet offers us several such "library" models --Sci-Hub, LibGen, and BookZZ each provided unencumbered access to massive troves of published material. Extralegally. Yes, you might find some way of wedging a paid-access metering model onto this, but to what end? Consider that the average American spends something on the order of $200 on direct media purchases (books, magazines, music, video) in a year, and an indirect $600 or so in advertising. Which has all kinds of distortionary effects on what is available, or produced. There are ~300k writers and editors in the country, whose core need is to a) keep a roof over their head and food on the table and b) have the tools for writing available to them. Seems to me that cutting out the inefficiencies and distortions of advertising would be a net win. Your 2) is false: at some point, I've got to consciously decide whether or not I'm paying for content. Otherwise you're making a sham of the concept of a discretionary payment system. For 3 & 4: it depends on what the granularity of the system is, on both payments and units of consumption. First, with Patreon, you aren't paying for access to individual items of content, for the most part. The models vary, but range from "I'm pitching in to support someon I believe in" to "I'm gaining time-based channel access". There's a word for that last, it's call a subscription. And subscription-based media access ... is very much a thing. There's an entire industry that grew up around this, at a previous time when per-item access to media was expensive, and the joint problems of "how do I sample the wares" (for audiences) and "how do we keep our authors fed , housed, and clothed" (for broadcasters) came up. The answer was the literary or publisher's magazine. This was a regularly-produced (weekly, monthly, quarterly) publication, with a stable of writers, a compilation of works included with each issue, often publishing longer works in serial form, etc., etc. It served as an advertisement for long-form books, should subscribers choose to buy them. It mitigated the risks (and bundled purchasing decisions), at the level of multiple authors (anywhere from a handful to 100s), on an annual basis, and generally offered something in any given issue worth reading. It wasn't until the 1860s or so that additional advertising (beyond the books and publications themselves) became a significant component, though that grew rapidly through the last half of the 19th century. Hamilton Holt's Commercialism and Journalism, 1909, covers this in a brief 115 page booklet (available at the Internet Archive). (Holt was a magazine publisher, reporting on the industry.) I see the present situation of one in which the question of where and how the bundling size has changed, and is shaking out. The previous regime served the needs and limits of paper-based publication, as well as vinyl & CD-based audio, and VCR and DVD-based video. In a world of ubiquitous digital distribution, those limits and gateways no longer exist. And information is a public good, as Google's Chief Economist argues.