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Changes to the YouTube Partner Program

233 points by tomkwok 9y ago

southcarolina68 9y ago
I think in a year I mill completely switch to twitch except for free music
Scoundreller 9y ago
Great. /s I published ONE video about how to easily fix a head-scratching computer hardware problem, because there isn't any other guide on it. I get about 1000 views a month, tons of thank yous and make a few dollars. Because I won't get 4000 hours of watch time[1], and nobody will subscribe, I'll get squat. And zero motivation to publish more videos. The next time I figure out a life-trick[2], I won't bother. Who subscribes to videos about fixing stuff anyway? [1] Don't you hate those videos that are 5x longer than necessary? WHY ENCOURAGE THAT? [2] That fancy French mustard you bought? Don't bother with your hands. You'll need to use a corkscrew to open it.
- dmix 9y ago
  What's the motivation here then? To stop paying money to one-hit wonders and funnel it only to the professional/serious content producers? I don't really understand why that'd be necessary. Youtube makes some strange choices with their monetization. I really wonder why they are so obsessed with finely controlling who can profit from producing good content on their platform. Why not let a) the users and b) the advertisers decide this? Who is losing out here, absent their preemptive interventions? If they keep this up it might highly incentivize a decentralized video platform with a built-in monetization scheme.
  - notatoad 9y ago
    As a guess, they are moving to implement a much more stringent manual review of monetized channels, and the change to the eligibility criteria is an effort to reduce the number of monetized channels to a number that's more feasible to review. But if that's the case, I wonder why they don't just say it. >Why not let... the advertisers decide this? The advertiser's have been pretty clear they want YouTube to be the content police. That's what the big advertiser revolt a few months ago was about.
    - shostack 9y ago
      That's an interesting take when you start factoring in the broader landscape. Video is no longer about just the short form, and increasingly attention is pulled away from Youtube by services like Netflix, Amazon Prime, and FB's video play. I wonder how much video CPMs (particularly mid-roll) and the premium big brands are willing to pay plays a role in this vs something like a desire to growing engagement. If you incentivize creators to attract subscribers, and you have more direct ability to control messaging channels to subscribers as a platform, you might gain some levers in driving revenue that may not have existed or had as large an impact before. You also nurture desirable user-base behaviors.
      - Scoundreller 9y ago
        Just multi-tier it. You can pay more if you only want your ads against thoroughly vetted content. Or pay less if you don't care. Less video to bid against will raise ad costs for everyone.
  - Scoundreller 9y ago
    No idea. I just met their new criteria for 10000 views before monetization, which should mean I've already been vetted? Does a company like Google really need human review on videos? With 10k views, their AI/ML should detect what's risky content or not based on what they know about users. Here's a great video that we'll see less of: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vDB2QVEuy60 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vDB2QVEuy60 A well-produced 36 second video on replacing your Corolla's brake light, rather than a 5 minute video going blah blah blah. And I'll never subscribe.
    - intended 9y ago
      Again that level of AI/ML means being able to state what the intent of a comment or document is. If we ever get close to that point, that programs can reliably mark something as "risky" content, human thought is in big trouble. "Risky" material is subjective. Something even humans can't make out reliably very often. I think, this is the result of the tech firms putting content creators of old out of business, but not investing in the necessary editorial power, subscribing instead to the "wisdom of the crowds" school of thought. They have not paid for (and will not be able to afford) the distributed human editorial power which was lost.
      - Scoundreller 9y ago
        It doesn't need to be perfect, just reliable enough to determine what needs more thorough review. A 2 minute video titled "How to fix your computer's _______", that is linked from fixit forums, that is universally liked with comments stating "Wow, that worked, thanks!" shouldn't even need human review to determine risk. The comparison alone to other videos with similar characteristics should do it.
        intended 9y ago
        How, all human activities have adversarial components to it- especially when there’s a financial pay off involved. People will just got the comments. And that’s over the naturally noisy data set of human behavior. Not to mention cultural norms across all nations in the world - I know many Indian user forums where even mildly helpful or unhelpful videos/posts will receive “thank you, could you help with...” posts.
  - pero 9y ago
    > What's the motivation here then? I'd guess it's some sort of legal/accounting move, something beneath the surface. Doesn't really make much sense otherwise.
  - InclinedPlane 9y ago
    The motivation is obvious when you look at it from youtube's perspective. They do not value content creators much, but they lick the boots of advertisers. They want to create a system that is as smooth for advertisers as possible, regardless of the impact on any other aspect of the platform. They want to reduce the risk of bad PR (which causes advertisers to run away). All they care about is the product of eyeball counts and ad impressions yielding dollars, they don't understand at all the goose that lays the golden egg or how easy it is to kill it.
- dingaling 9y ago
  > And zero motivation to publish more videos. Why not? You're posting on HN without financial reward.
  - Fuckthisboard 9y ago
    The reward of being down voted by you cunts you mean?
  - piyush_soni 9y ago
    Which takes a lot less effort than creating, editing, post-processing and uploading videos.
  - gkya 9y ago
    Some months ago when Alan Kay did an AmA, I asked a question to him and got answered. A CS star from thousands of kilometers apart. I can "bump into" many domain experts hereabouts. People like Walter Brigt are regularly posting, and I, as a hacker that's aiming to do humanities in academia as his professional career, it's incredibly exciting to have the chance to interact with this sort of people. I don't think one needs further rewards, and otherwise he is plain greedy as fuck.
- arca_vorago 9y ago
  "Don't you hate those videos that are 5x longer than necessary? WHY ENCOURAGE THAT?" From googles perspective it's because they don't care about the user, and are cowtowing to the advertisers. Longer videos mean more ads, which means more $$$. I wish google had never bought youtube... I knew they would ruin it eventually. I think the real discussion here though is more meta than just google... we have allowed advertisers to gain way too much power on the internet, and if we aren't careful they will ruin us just like they did newspapers. This isn't just advertisers though, this is the general business model of internet companies. Here is the pattern: 1) Create cool new thing, with no ads, no tracking. Users love it and it spreads like wildfire. 2) Slowly boil the frog. Start tracking users and selling user data to third parties, justified under esoteric EULAs and TOS. Start small, unobtrusive ads. 3) Make the ads more prominent, more frequent, and harder to skip/ignore. 4) Allow your platform to be used as a corporate promotion tool that's more like sockpuppet central than regular advertising. Bots talking to bots, subtle corporate products in memes, etc. 5) Now that you have completely aliented the userbase, now is the time to ramp up all of the above and then go public, ride the boom wave up, and at peak sell a massively overvalued company to some dumbass group/company/people, run away with the cash, and take video of your product as it burns to the ground. The users will stick around until someone else starts at 1 and does the same thing but under a different name.
  - corobo 9y ago
    > I wish google had never bought youtube... I knew they would ruin it eventually. If Google hadn't bought YouTube, YouTube would no longer exist.
    - Goladus 9y ago
      Really? I would find that story interesting reading if you'd be willing to share.
      - magila 9y ago
        There's not really that much to it. Pre-acquisition Youtube was burning through cash at a rapid and increasing rate. There was clearly no way they were going to find a revenue source which would even come close to covering their operating expenses. Google was one of only a few companies who were willing and able to keep Youtube going as a loss leader.
- yAnonymous 9y ago
  >The next time I figure out a life-trick[2], I won't bother. Your motivation for uploading that one video was money? Just wondering, because if that was the case I'd expect you to have more than one video. And 1000 views a month is nothing. Certainly not enough to expect any kind of worthwhile revenue.
- mrweasel 9y ago
  I doubt that your video is making Youtube any money with a 1000 views a month on a niche subject. Yet they let you stay on their platform, for free. Most videos like yours aren't made to make $2 extra each month, they're made because people wanted to share the information. Youtube provides a platform, allowing people to distribute videos, for free. The most prolific content producers are given a cut of the profit, or make their advertising deals.
  - piyush_soni 9y ago
    They 'let us stay' because they're net profitable by that video being there, not out of charity. For some in poor countries, those extra $2 a month do matter.
    - beokop 9y ago
      You can’t have it both ways. YouTube is providing a free video hosting service, something that is way more valuable for the creator (poor country or not) than $2/month.
  - throwaway7312 9y ago
    When I was in business school, we had a case study of a large supermarket chain that carried 18,000 or so different items per store. The management team wanted to save on cost and narrow down to just the essentials the chain's customers bought. So they did an analysis and determined that only 6,000 or so of the products they carried sold in any significant amount. The other 12,000 were niche items that sold in small quantities and made little money. Before they nixed the other 9,000 products though, the company decided to make one additional analysis, of who bought what in what combination. And it discovered all those little items were being bought in small quantities by people who bought large quantities of the big items. The analysis further determined that if the supermarket nixed those 9,000 niche products, it would no longer be the "one stop shop" for its customers. Those customers would only be able to buy some of what they needed at the supermarket, and would need to buy the rest elsewhere. If a competing supermarket carried all of what a customer needed, that customer would eventually learn to do all his shopping at that supermarket to save the hassle of needing to journey to 2+ places to get what he needed. After this final analysis, the supermarket chain decided to keep almost all the products it kept on its shelves, eliminating only 200 or 300 products, instead of 9,000. It was not so much that the supermarket was very nice and charitable to niche spices and exotic Asian sauces and imported curries and whatnot. Rather, it was that the supermarket realized that if its customers could not find everything they wanted on its shelves, they would eventually find everything they wanted on a competitor's shelves instead. In YouTube's case, no good competitor presently exists. But a big part of the reason why is because YouTube has sucked all the oxygen out of the video hosting and streaming niche by being a one-stop shop. If it stops being that, there will be a lot more oxygen in that niche again. (that said, I do not think demonetizing videos with low view counts / subscriber numbers constitutes injecting oxygen back into the market. "Not letting" niche video creators user their platform, however, probably would)
- balls187 9y ago
  > Who subscribes to videos about fixing stuff anyway? Me. I subscribed to a few DIY home repair channels, plus a channel on modding a Mark7 Golf R.
Scoundreller 9y ago
tl;dr: Unless you have 4000 hours of watch-time AND 1000 subscribers, you're getting axed from monetization. 1000 subscribers is going to be impossible if your content is niche. That guy who put together that excellent 40 minute step-by-step video on fixing my garage-door opener (plastic gears, seriously?)... why would I subscribe? Youtube is pivoting to being a TV-replacement.
- ucaetano 9y ago
  If you're making <$100/year out of your videos (99% of the channels affected) it is highly unlikely that you were making new videos because of the money anyway. So only <1% of impacted channels might be materially affected.
  - ndespres 9y ago
    Maybe so, but won't there be less incentive for someone new to post some obscure repair video later on, to help the few people who might benefit from it and make a few dollars?
    - PeterisP 9y ago
      Sure, there'll be somewhat less incentive, but it's reasonable to assume that it'll still be enough to get a sufficient amount of obscure repair videos. If there was never much of a financial incentive, then pretty much all such videos were produced for other reasons and will still get produced even without that financial incentive.
      - Scoundreller 9y ago
        Good luck getting subscribers though.
    - Noos 9y ago
      sadly we'll probably just see mini networks where people will buy obscure repair videos in the same way they buy ebooks to sell as part of a brand, for virtually nothing, and then monetize though other people's content, huffpo style.
joelrunyon 9y ago
When is there going to be a legitimate YouTube contender? Seems like it's ripe for a replacement...
- farnsworthy 9y ago
  Someone please do this. (You'll probably need a lot of money.) In the meantime, download anything you enjoy today, because it may not be there tomorrow.
  - dvt 9y ago
    If you have traction, the money will come. But really, what can you do that's better than YouTube? Honest question. I think that YouTube has reached Google levels of optimization. Sure, it could be better, but not better enough that people are willing to switch.
    - dragonwriter 9y ago
      > But really, what can you do that's better than YouTube? For any specialized market, probably a lot; YouTube may be the ultimate least-common-denominator user-submitted-video streaming service, but it's not the only one there is room for.
      - dvt 9y ago
        > For any specialized market, probably a lot This is doubly true for services like Google Search, and yet (for example) security-oriented engines like DDG are barely making a dent. I honestly don't think niche is the way to go if you're trying to go after Google/YouTube/Facebook. You'd need to figure out a core issue or core need that has been overlooked. And I just don't really see one.
        dragonwriter 9y ago
        > This is doubly true for services like Google Search, and yet (for example) security-oriented engines like DDG are barely making a dent. DDG is making a huge dent in the narrow segment it is designed to appeal to, which is all any specialized service can hope for. I think DDG fans persistently overestimate how many people find Google’s personalization a net cost. > I honestly don't think niche is the way to go if you're trying to go after Google/YouTube/Facebook. You'd need to figure out a core issue or core need that has been overlooked. Sure, if you are trying to replace one of those as the dominant mass market player in its domain you need to do that. Also, I think you are more likely to find a core need by dealing with a need that seems niche but is really just more pronounced and visible in that particular niche than by digging around in the dark for a core need.
jeffmould 9y ago
As one of the people whose channel is affected by this policy change, I have to say I am not happy. There are a few issues I have with their new policy: 1) They should not have made this change retroactive to channels. If you already met the criteria you should be grandfathered into the new program. To terminate monetization entirely gives me no incentive to continue with YouTube. 2) For niche channels, like my own, it can be easy to have the views but difficult to have the subscribers. These two should not be tied together for purposes of monetization. 3) The ones that seem to be causing the biggest headaches on YouTube lately are the bigger creators. 4) Finally, their email to me says that they made this decision based on discussions with creators like me. I would be hardpressed to find a creator "like me" that suggested this. Instead, I suspect, they reached out to the creators with the biggest say and decided to squash the little guys for greater visibility. I am curious if they will continue to monetize my videos while not sharing the revenue with me or if they will remove ads entirely from my videos.
- jakebasile 9y ago
  > The ones that seem to be causing the biggest headaches on YouTube lately are the bigger creators. This is a great observation. They're punishing the small, niche channels for the terrible shit pulled by the huge channels, with Logan Paul just being the most recent and which is probably the precipitating event here.
  - anonytrary 9y ago
    I knew someone would mention Logan Paul, that one guy that faked colorblindness to get views, and ultimately ended up tubing around a dead guy. If Google is doing this with a "let's try and make it harder for idiots like Logan Paul to become successful" motivation, then shame on Google. The only other reason I can think of is that smaller players have been abusing the system, and we see tons of tiny low-quality popups that film inappropriate stuff and get reported. I think this is more likely, than because of anything Logan Paul did.
  - notatoad 9y ago
    They're not punishing small channels for logan paul. he's an incredibly easy problem to deal with, and they already solved that problem by kicking him off YPP. This is to deal with the much larger problem of small channels posting awful content in such huge volumes that it's difficult to police, and causing headlines like this one: https://www.buzzfeed.com/charliewarzel/youtubers-made-hundreds-of-thousands-off-of-bizarre-and?utm_term=.pfD30D18R#.ip38zpYEm https://www.buzzfeed.com/charliewarzel/youtubers-made-hundre...
Nition 9y ago
Everyone's talking about how this is bad for small channels, but surely this is a big hit to YouTube itself as well. Since they've decided they need to vet all channels before ads are shown, and they can't do that to every channel, they've had to set an arbitrary view/subscriber limit. But now they're going to lose out on ad revenue for millions of previously-monetised videos, while still having to host them for free.
- Scoundreller 9y ago
  Isn't google's advertising cut 30-40%? How many dollars does it cost them to vet a channel? My 3 minute video makes me ~.3 cents per view. It's actually less than 3 minutes, most don't watch the whole thing. 4000 hours in a year = $240 revenue. So, advertisers are paying $360. If you have just 2000 hours of views per year, Google is throwing away $60/year in revenue. My linked gmail account alone with 10+ years of data should scream legitimacy alone.
  - Nition 9y ago
    I don't think they're worried about whether you're a legitimate account, they're worried about whether your videos are advertiser-friendly, and they've decided that to verify that they'll need to manually check your channel. Which would take forever if they didn't set some threshold. They tried to crowdsource it with YouTube Heroes. I guess that didn't end up being enough.
    - Scoundreller 9y ago
      > manually check your channel. Which would take forever if they didn't set some threshold. It's Google. They'll tell advertisers that every channel will be manually reviewed to make them happy, but the degree of manual review will vary. They'll score most channels as low risk and do a cursory manual review to 'check-the-box', and the degree of review will go up from there.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
- 9y ago
fluxsauce 9y ago
I had some original content with over a million views from a decade ago. I now have other priorities and the language like > Accordingly, this email serves as 30 days notice that your YouTube Partner Program terms are terminated. feels like a pretty big fuck you.
jdietrich 9y ago
It's not a grossly unreasonable move, but it doesn't exactly smack of creator-friendliness. It does nothing to address the ongoing grievances of YouTubers about monetisation. At this stage, it seems like getting paid is a complete crapshoot. Sometimes your videos will be classified as "not suitable for most advertisers", despite not breaching any of YouTube's policies. Sometimes your video will be taken down or demonetized by a completely bogus copyright claim. Sometimes you'll get lucky and actually see some ad revenue for a video. If you've got a problem, you're stuck with the usual Google tech support system of "personally know someone who works at the Googleplex, otherwise you're SOL". Pretty much every sane YouTuber is moving towards a Patreon-first business model and treating ad revenue as a bonus. If someone solves the discoverability problem for videos hosted on other platforms, YouTube are done. Do not pass go, do not collect $200, lose all of your content creators because you've treated them like criminals for years.
anonytrary 9y ago
A signed suicide note by YouTube. It's those peanuts that motivate actual content creators to post content and grow. This is the problem with "free and always will be", smh. You get a centralized broker. In Google's case, between sellers and viewers, who are cast as buyers. This all happens under the shadow of "video content". Google feeds off of the creativity of everyone on YouTube, its own Hollywood. Then they decide who is worthy of reaping the rewards with their rules. Something as simple as an organic comment promoting a product can actually drive real sales, and the John Doe that posts such a comment gets zilch. Why does he get nothing? Is it too difficult for Google to index all of John Doe's comments, crunch the impressions and counts and then give him the few dollars he would have accrued over the past few weeks? This should all just "work" without having to download Google Surveys, or whatever their community feedback/rewards app is. If they can index the web, they can do some math on behalf of me and count me in their little MLM payouts equation ffs. /ranty This is the perfect move to put more YouTubers past the tipping point.
- bitmapbrother 9y ago
  >A signed suicide note by YouTube. It's difficult to take your comment seriously when your opening line contains so much fail. YouTube isn't going anywhere but up. It has no rival and never will.
  - anonytrary 9y ago
    > It has no rival and never will. Likewise, it's difficult to take your comment seriously with this beast of a closing line ;)
    - bitmapbrother 9y ago
      My line is realistic. Your opener, however, is comical.
      - dang 9y ago
        We've asked you numerous times before not to post uncivil and/or unsubstantive comments to HN. If you can't or won't stop doing this, we're going to end up banning you. Flamebait and flamewars aren't welcome on this site. If you'd (re-)read https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and take that spirit to heart when commenting here, we'd appreciate it.
robertelder 9y ago
I just got an email that my channel will de-monetized by this. I thought it was pretty funny actually. There are all these huge content creators losing out on their livelihoods because of Google's unpredictable de-monetization behaviour, and then Google even decides to demonetize even my tiny channel with only a few videos (that are over 9 years old). I turned on monetization a few years ago and I think I've made maybe $20 so far. For a while, I actually considered investing time in making more videos with the idea that the present value of a large number of videos might be pretty considerable over the long term (say 30 years or so). A few years ago one of my most popular videos (tens of thousands of views) was flagged as being 'not family friendly'. The video was a screen capture of me scrolling through a notepad.exe list of documentary titles with no audio. It was just a list of nature/space documentaries that were already on YouTube. Nothing offensive or controversial. I guess this is the final nail in the coffin for my YouTube career.
- gkya 9y ago
  This is why one should not entrust their livelihood to any company. I'm a fan of the Patreon model. If I was starting a video publishing enterprise (say something like Primitive Technology or Computerphile or a music band channel) I'd definitely use all the most popular subscription services available, and a newsletter & blog with proper RSS. I'd upload to YouTube to drive viewers, than take them to my blog, show them where else I upload stuff and where to pay to take active part in the community, which allows for pre-releases or access to live programs after some videos where they can ask questions. I'd earn less than PewDiePie, but nobody would be able to challenge my enterprise. Though certainly to earn with such model, you need to be publishing high quality stuff (or of a quality too low for the decent peope), that is, high quality content.
  - raiyu 9y ago
    Except for when Patreon updated how they collect payments about a month ago and that made it very expensive for patrons to donate to a large number of different people small amounts so they started cancelling their $1 and $2 donations because of the extra fees involved. So all of a sudden if you were getting 20% of your income from these smaller patrons you would lose that. Now they did eventually reverse it, but it just shows you that when you are dependent on X, you are dependent on X. It could be better or worse, but it's still a middle man in the system. You could go to a straight donation model like using Paypal, but that limits your global subscriber network since Paypal isn't used everywhere and you will also be missing out on the platform benefits. Meaning if someone is donating already on Patron they will more likely donate to someone else. Likewise if someone is subscribed to one channel on Youtube they will more likely subscribe to a second. I think ultimately there is a trade off here where you have to understand what you are exchanging in terms of freedom, control, and dependence, with the platform you choose to use.
e_b 9y ago
Vimeo's OTT is an interesting offering in this space that let's filmmakers launch their own subscription services. https://ott.vimeo.com https://ott.vimeo.com
- dbbk 9y ago
  While it is a good idea to establish your own site that you control, I think most YouTubers benefit the most from the built-in marketing that YouTube provides. It's hard work getting your audience off of YouTube the destination and onto your website.
debt 9y ago
I think this is a way more fairer system. They’re trying to reward longer term contributors whom have lower viewer counts. Basically people who continue to contribute content even though YouTube hasn’t rewarded them; they’re contributing because they have a small following of dedicated viewers.
- Macha 9y ago
  1. The old requirement is 10k lifetime views. 2. The new requirement is 4000 annual hours and 1000 subs. 3. The default limit on a new YouTube account is videos of at maximum 15 minutes. So for a new/low profile user, they're effectively requiring at least 16k annual views vs the previous 10k lifetime. Also, many videos are shorter than 15 minutes, so make that 20k. Except a view is counted for 10% of the video, not 100% so really the number is much larger again. This isn't changing the numbers to favour smaller active channels over small channels that have just been around long enough, it's massively raising the requirements however you look at it. I have put out 10-12 videos over the last few years, with 14k views and 2 subscribers, though frequent content and plugs in the video will obviously get a higher subscribe rate. I don't care in this case, I never bothered to turn monetisation on, but I can see someone who'd put more effort in more recently feeling like it's wasted.
keyboardhitter 9y ago
So, will they also be screening the legitimacy of subscribers and watchers in those 12 month? The first thing that came to my mind is that I can't imagine it is terribly difficult to purchase bot subscriptions. Their policy changes to focus on relevant watched hours in a set amount of time could, and probably will, open new demand for purchasing illegitimate traffic as well. Same game, different rules. I wonder if this policy will be easier to spoof than pure views alone? Surely the risk has been evaluated by the policy makers but I am interested to see how things pan out, and what counter measures against bots/spam they may take as a result.
- Roverlord 9y ago
  And the exchange of subs to boost both your counts and hit 1000. No doubt there will be auto player scripts emerging that will randomly watch 4000 hours of content by Friday.
csours 9y ago
There's nothing in here that addresses problems of content creators. It's a list of things that YouTube is doing to protect itself. I guess it's nice that they are sharing the information though?
protomyth 9y ago
I pity all the animators publishing short content since they are going to have a problem get the number of hours in when they spend the time on quality product.
- pvdebbe 9y ago
  If they truly have a quality product, they can monetize on Patreon/Liberapay.
  - geostyx 9y ago
    Linking to Patreon is banned if you don't qualify for the partner program.
sgentle 9y ago
I think people are missing the forest for the trees here. Despite what the PR says, this has very little to do with the relationship between YouTube and creators, and everything to do with the relationship between YouTube and advertisers. YouTube is renting out billboards at a music festival, and the advertisers, predictably, want to know who's playing. "Well, I dunno, like, whoever shows up" has proven to be an answer that they can't get away with. YouTube's negotiating position with advertisers depends on how they can position their package of advertising space. Right now they're trying to sell a big bundle of uncertain providence, with loads of little no-namers mixed in with the heavy hitters. But what can YouTube do? If they split it up, they now have a gold package, a silver package, and a shit package. The rates for the shit package would be so bad that current YouTube revenue starts to look like winning the lottery. The smallest channels are subsidised by the bigger ones, not in terms of views but in terms of reputation. So if you need to improve the reputation of the group, what's left to do but drop the weakest performers? If you're thinking "but that's totally illogical! Smaller channels collectively contribute an enormous number of very valuable advertising impressions", you're right, but making the same mistake YouTube did. The advertising industry isn't logical, it's 18 layers of ticket-clippers and con men playing telephone with money. It doesn't run on economically rational real-time bidding systems, it runs on trend-chasing and reputation. That other stuff is just to keep the nerds happy. So, like in every other field Goophabet has entered, the techno-utopianism lasts right up until it hits the balance sheet. Party's over, folks. YouTube is an advertising company and now it's realising it has to act like one.
- Nition 9y ago
  Exactly. And although it sucks for small content creators to not get any revenue from their videos anymore, it sucks even more for Google because not only do they get no money from advertising on those videos, it costs them to host the video. I'm sure they're hoping fervently that this plan leads to more lucrative ad deals considering how knife-edge YouTube's chance at profitability has always seemed.
  - LoSboccacc 9y ago
    It's still a big bet. Youtube gets views multiplication by the suggested video feature which redirect people from the random video they stumbled upon into the big ticket videos. All the small creators also saturate the search space with all kind of topics and content, which drives people naturally via suggestions to the larger channels with fat advertisers, so the benefit is twofold. Bet they did the math and they still come on top for now, but social are quite generational and live off the network effect, so there's that.
jijji 9y ago
its all about keeping the advertiser money flowing and reducing payments to content creators, that way youtube makes more money
tclover 9y ago
I don't have many videos on my channel. There is a couple of "niche" videos with ~70k+ views. And I'm going to delete them all. This is my protest. RIP youtube.
cjslep 9y ago
Unsurprisingly, people are turning to tit-for-tat subbing to get around the subscription limit, which opens a different kind of headache for enforcement.
- baud147258 9y ago
  All the comments on the blog post were basically this: links to YouTube accounts.
- CamperBob2 9y ago
  Link farms are dead, long live link farms.
seanwasere 9y ago
What’s all this crap about ‘advertiser friendly’. YouTube ads are targeted to the cookie watching. Nearly all ads I see on YT are targeted at me, and always are irrelevant to the content of the video. I watched cranberry video clips in the past few days, and kept getting ads for software development courses.
yeukhon 9y ago
> Starting today we’re changing the eligibility requirement for monetization to 4,000 hours of watchtime within the past 12 months and 1,000 subscribers. Is this an annual check? Or is it a one-time enrollement eligibility? The 4000 hours is a big entry bar... it’s already hard enough to gain subscribers. Indeed the small creators - those who get maybe 5k views per video + 1000 subscriber + 5 mins videos won’t be making money??
- DanBC 9y ago
  Doesn't 4000 hours rule out massive channels like SlowMoGuys? EDIT: 4000? That's 70 hours per week.
  - yeukhon 9y ago
    But it's difficult to get 70 hours of views already for most of the small channels now making some money. Let alone 4000 hours a year accumulated. So basically YouTube is saying we don't want to pay the smaller guys. But the fact is a lot of the smaller guys do good videos and deserve to have a stake too.
deleted 9y ago
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pravj 9y ago
If you read the comments on this blog, it's interesting to see youtubers asking for subscribers in return, "sub for sub". I won't wonder if we see a solution soon to provide fraudulent subscribers like Instagram/Twitter ecosystem has. (not sure if it exists) And then I will wait for Google to fight the subscriber (vote) ring pattern.
vincengomes 9y ago
Youtube itself is a loss making company. With this announcement youtube has effectively told they will only give advertisement on selected videos vetted by youtube. what about the expenses incurred for youtube for hosting small/niche channels? If its reputation that youtube is looking for, they can ask some third party to advertise on the smaller contents with a 33/33/33 split of revenue with content creator/advertiser/youtube.
tanilama 9y ago
My bet about how they are choosing the 1000 subs and 4000 hours watchtime criteria: it is about to get this number as tractable as possible, considering they will now manually review your channel prior to monetization. Even with their smart machine learning algorithm, they cannot scale beyond this number. It is a little insincere to use the 99% of the channels number here. Vast majority of the channels from Youtube makes barely better than nothing because the long tail effect. What is actually interesting is, how many of the channels that previously make around a sizable chunk of money from Youtube, like say 1000 dollars, now will not qualify. I bet it won't be as harmless as Youtube want people to believe here, but they probably believe it is inevitable casualty.
- MachinShinn- 9y ago
  Your precise point is addressed in the blog post...
madshiva 9y ago
Ok let's summarize. Poor content that generate a lot of view is not touch by this change, but good content that have not some many views get nothing, like always. Very fair. If people don't sub what's the matter? I'm done with Google.
cobbzilla 9y ago
I wonder how much more momentum this gives to https://lbry.io https://lbry.io which is a sort of p2p YouTube. There's no good reason that, in the long run, a single centralized entity should control so much video distribution.
- dbbk 9y ago
  I'm willing to wager none at all.
- corobo 9y ago
  Is that the one where you could theoretically bid a few thou to become the equivalent channel "pewdiepie" until he outbids you back?
Grue3 9y ago
Youtube is run by idiots. What they needed is to create their own Patreon clone/gift system (like Twitch did, for example) and open it to all the users. Bang, no more ads needed! Even if big advertisers don't like some channel's content, both youtube and the creator are still getting money off it, as long as fans are willing to support the creator.
- wmil 9y ago
  Susan Wojcicki is just the wrong person to run YouTube. She comes from an advertising background and doesn't know how to work with creators. Really her appointment was nepotism and she'd already have been replaced if she wasn't so close with Larry and Sergey.
OscarTheGrinch 9y ago
Shitting on millions(?) of small creators in order to better please the big fish is short sighted. It risks shrinking the total pie of views, if 9 creators get axed will pewpewdie's views really go up 10x to cover the shortfall? It reminds me of the time my bank canceled my credit card because I always back before any interest has accrued, I wasn't degenerate enough for them to make margins. Totally short sighted because, there is nothing to say I wouldn't need emergency cash tomorrow. Likewise with youtube there is nothing to prevent todays small fry producing super engaging content tomorrow. After all, how does one get to the big time without going through mediocrity first? Other video hosting platforms, such as the vimeo, suddenly got a lot more attractive.
piyush_soni 9y ago
They're just missing one majorly obvious thing here. If it were not for the initial ad earnings, a lot of these "big" content creators would have never become big. I'd certainly remove my videos from YouTube (since my lifetime earning is just $36, they'll not give that to me anyway :) ). Edit: Made all of my videos private.
billysielu 9y ago
Isn't the real problem that when you search for a video on YouTube the first result is usually fake? Actors can and will still make fake accounts to remove traffic from the monetized accounts (and therefore from YouTube). YouTube needs better search results.
dom96 9y ago
This is why I am excited for competitors like Linus Tech Tips' floatplane to start getting traction. YouTube seems to be turning into more of a behemoth that doesn't care for the little guys every day.
mcbits 9y ago
Anyone with small channels, remember that you can turn off ALL ads for your videos (under Channel -> Advanced) if you're not going to get your cut, as small as it may have been. Surely that option will also be taken away eventually, but for now it's still there.
skywhopper 9y ago
What I find most interesting is that immediately the top comments on the post are all channel owners asking for subscriptions from other channel owners in exchange for subscribing back. To be honest these new thresholds seem entirely too low to do any good. The spammers and scammers can easily reach the thresholds. But small scale operators who aren’t interested in gaming the system will be the hardest hit.
- kevin_thibedeau 9y ago
  There'll be a new gold rush for paid sockpuppets who will bring a channel up to the subscriber threshold.
jaggs 9y ago
I think some folk are missing the point that some small publishers do derive a benefit from putting up a video, even if they don't get cash from Google ads. They gain a reputation, perhaps enquiries about their business, collaboration opportunities etc etc. If I was running a smaller channel with cool content, I would definitely start hunting around for partnerships, and start marketing my own business/money source more aggressively if I could. A YT channel can even be a big benefit to a resume, no?
nickjj 9y ago
This really stings because you can't use cards unless you opt into the partner program. That's Youtube's mechanism for linking to an external site. I had ads disabled on my Youtube channel but was forced into the partnership program just so I could link to my website in a card. Now those cards are going to disappear which means it's extremely unlikely someone is going to find my site since it's only listed in the description. As a content provider this makes me less interested in using their platform. I'm only at 2,000 hours watched and 366 subs which isn't remotely close to their new threshold considering those are life time stats. The 4,000 hours and 1,000 subs have to be less than 12 months old. The weird thing is, the channels with the largest amount of subscribers are the ones who are the most risky to advertisers. I don't follow Youtube drama but didn't some kid recently video record a corpse with tens of millions of subscribers, and now advertisers are ripping into Youtube. That one video from 1 person with tons of subs is responsible for more negative advertising press than hundreds of thousands of people with smaller channels.
C4stor 9y ago
Someone (not me) is going to create a webservice to buy fake subscribers in the next hours/day, that's a guarantee :D It's not like creating a google account is exactly difficult ! Thank you Youtube for providing new markets for shady shops ! And now that I think about it, fake view time doesn't really seem difficult to put up either. The time is coming where you'll pay to have you video viewed so you can be payed to have your video viewed, looks a lot of fun :D
- CamperBob2 9y ago
  Exactly. The incentives Google is setting up are as perverse as they can be.
djaychela 9y ago
I have a YouTube channel [1], which is only just above the new criteria - in the last year, 4300 hours of views, and 1100 subscribers. I produce videos on using Cubase, and teaching it IRL was my main source of income until September last year (I got made redundant from 2 schools I worked at). The channel is a useful ad for the book I have written on the subject of Cubase and Music Technology [2], and has got me some sales - I don't have exact figures, but I've had a few people say they saw the channel, then the book ads, and then bought the book. The book sales in total are nothing remarkable (a year of sales is about a month's earnings from the jobs I no longer have), but better than nothing, and mean it's actually worthwhile putting the considerable amount of time needed into the book to update it each year when a new version of Cubase comes out. The YT channel made $135 in the last year. Nothing to write home over, but it means that once a year I can buy a plugin that I wouldn't have done otherwise. A niche channel such as mine isn't ever going to earn real money, but it's a nice side bonus to get some spending money once a year from it - I put the videos up because they are a bit of an advert for my skills, and because I've got a lot of positive comments from people who have found the videos helpful. But I would feel somewhat aggrieved if I wasn't making this small amount of money, and felt that I was being profited from for making content for free. I know about the hosting costs, etc., but I'm sure YT makes money overall. However, I had another video on my personal channel which had a MAME cabinet I made using a Raspberry Pi - back in the day when this wasn't that common. It made it onto the official Pi blog [3] - along with a write-up that I did for it, and currently has 180,000 views. I wouldn't have seen a penny from that if the new rules were in place, and that the new rules will stop the 'one hit wonders' who create something that goes truly viral (Charlie/Finger, etc) from earning anything is a little concerning to me - I'm sure YouTube will still place adverts on them (?), but if you're a one-off, then you get nothing. Won't this just lead to people sending potentially viral videos to a channel who specialise in redistribution who will take a cut of the revenue? [1] - https://www.youtube.com/c/musictechtuition https://www.youtube.com/c/musictechtuition [2] - http://tinyurl.com/cubase9book http://tinyurl.com/cubase9book [3] - https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/guest-blog-6-mame-cabinet-by-darren-j/ https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/guest-blog-6-mame-cabinet-b...
EADGBE 9y ago
Sad, but honestly I only made ~$3.50 over the course of 4 years by monetizing my videos. I suppose I was a waste of time to begin with (for them).
reader5000 9y ago
Third party supported content will always be adversarial to both consumer and creator. People really need to figure out microtransactions / frictionless payments so that creators can be directly supported by consumers for reasonable cost to consumer. For me as a consumer the main value youtube provides is its recommendation system for discovering [long-tail] content. Why not have a "show me more videos like this" button for paying subscribers out of which the video creator gets 10c or something. Youtube is slowly becoming just another shitty mega broadcast outlet like NBC or netflix producing corporate-sanctioned mainstream content of little relevance to anyone. Somebody has to find a way to make longtail content sustainable. The fact that people do sign up to pay into Patreon or pay to Twitchers demonstrates that this is possible. Corporate involvement in content creation is poisonous.
deleted 9y ago
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AaronHatchWorld 9y ago
If we want to protest this, isn't it a good idea to disable ads? That way, YouTube's making no revenue off our videos, and they're paying to host. Or am I missing something here?
calimac 9y ago
Youtube is fueled by systematized copyright infringement with a nod and a wink. Boomers are wire cutting and watching the 24/7 news on their mobiles via youtube app.
FiveSquared 9y ago
As a smalll Youtuber, I am appalled and shocked. Google is shooting themselves in the foot with this. This is killing the small creators. Google is chasing short term profit over long term stability. I guarantee you, a smart startup will try to upset YouTube and succeed due to this new rule. Everyone started from the bottom. And now Google is sinking them.
2600 9y ago
Is there a reason why YouTube can’t implement something similar to Twitch subscriptions and Patreon backing to YouTube? I see that an increasing number of smaller YouTubers are relying on Patreon to supplement their income because their YouTube revenue has been cut significant. A smaller number of dedicated fans are willing to pay more money directly to the creators that they enjoy and connect with. How does this affect their relationship with advertisers more than YouTube Red, if at all?
hartator 9y ago
So, if you have one high quality video, but no subscribers, your video will get demonetize? It doesn't seem fair or to promote high quality content. Seems pushing more for low quality prank videos à la Jack Paul and co.
Scoundreller 9y ago
In 2-3 years, amazon is going to be the place to post fixit/construction/diy videos. Watch the video and buy the parts all in one place. Give the creator a commission on the parts/tools sales.
peapicker 9y ago
I have several musician friends who create excellent content, yet are still fairly niche. Every one of them is getting frozen out of their measly dollar a month from this, as they are all a bit short on hours of listening per year. At least Spotify/Apple still pays musicians per stream. The small musicians on youtube are no longer getting that privilege. Big Music(tm) screws the little guys again. (I know this is more than about indie musicians, but this is the effect I am seeing most in relation to my usage of Youtoob)
retox 9y ago
Let's not forget that this is a direct effect of the outrage culture coming from North America. By spuriously reporting videos and organising email campaigns, or in the case of the Wall St Journal publishing national stories, about ads appearing on your political enemies videos, offended students and general busybodies have taken food from the mouths of thousands. They aren't solely to blame but I would wager they are a prevailing interest at mountain view and in the valley.

233 points by tomkwok 9y ago

I think in a year I mill completely switch to twitch except for free music

Great. /s I published ONE video about how to easily fix a head-scratching computer hardware problem, because there isn't any other guide on it. I get about 1000 views a month, tons of thank yous and make a few dollars. Because I won't get 4000 hours of watch time[1], and nobody will subscribe, I'll get squat. And zero motivation to publish more videos. The next time I figure out a life-trick[2], I won't bother. Who subscribes to videos about fixing stuff anyway? [1] Don't you hate those videos that are 5x longer than necessary? WHY ENCOURAGE THAT? [2] That fancy French mustard you bought? Don't bother with your hands. You'll need to use a corkscrew to open it.

dmix 9y ago
What's the motivation here then? To stop paying money to one-hit wonders and funnel it only to the professional/serious content producers? I don't really understand why that'd be necessary. Youtube makes some strange choices with their monetization. I really wonder why they are so obsessed with finely controlling who can profit from producing good content on their platform. Why not let a) the users and b) the advertisers decide this? Who is losing out here, absent their preemptive interventions? If they keep this up it might highly incentivize a decentralized video platform with a built-in monetization scheme.
- notatoad 9y ago
  As a guess, they are moving to implement a much more stringent manual review of monetized channels, and the change to the eligibility criteria is an effort to reduce the number of monetized channels to a number that's more feasible to review. But if that's the case, I wonder why they don't just say it. >Why not let... the advertisers decide this? The advertiser's have been pretty clear they want YouTube to be the content police. That's what the big advertiser revolt a few months ago was about.
  - shostack 9y ago
    That's an interesting take when you start factoring in the broader landscape. Video is no longer about just the short form, and increasingly attention is pulled away from Youtube by services like Netflix, Amazon Prime, and FB's video play. I wonder how much video CPMs (particularly mid-roll) and the premium big brands are willing to pay plays a role in this vs something like a desire to growing engagement. If you incentivize creators to attract subscribers, and you have more direct ability to control messaging channels to subscribers as a platform, you might gain some levers in driving revenue that may not have existed or had as large an impact before. You also nurture desirable user-base behaviors.
    - Scoundreller 9y ago
      Just multi-tier it. You can pay more if you only want your ads against thoroughly vetted content. Or pay less if you don't care. Less video to bid against will raise ad costs for everyone.
- Scoundreller 9y ago
  No idea. I just met their new criteria for 10000 views before monetization, which should mean I've already been vetted? Does a company like Google really need human review on videos? With 10k views, their AI/ML should detect what's risky content or not based on what they know about users. Here's a great video that we'll see less of: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vDB2QVEuy60 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vDB2QVEuy60 A well-produced 36 second video on replacing your Corolla's brake light, rather than a 5 minute video going blah blah blah. And I'll never subscribe.
  - intended 9y ago
    Again that level of AI/ML means being able to state what the intent of a comment or document is. If we ever get close to that point, that programs can reliably mark something as "risky" content, human thought is in big trouble. "Risky" material is subjective. Something even humans can't make out reliably very often. I think, this is the result of the tech firms putting content creators of old out of business, but not investing in the necessary editorial power, subscribing instead to the "wisdom of the crowds" school of thought. They have not paid for (and will not be able to afford) the distributed human editorial power which was lost.
    - Scoundreller 9y ago
      It doesn't need to be perfect, just reliable enough to determine what needs more thorough review. A 2 minute video titled "How to fix your computer's _______", that is linked from fixit forums, that is universally liked with comments stating "Wow, that worked, thanks!" shouldn't even need human review to determine risk. The comparison alone to other videos with similar characteristics should do it.
      - intended 9y ago
        How, all human activities have adversarial components to it- especially when there’s a financial pay off involved. People will just got the comments. And that’s over the naturally noisy data set of human behavior. Not to mention cultural norms across all nations in the world - I know many Indian user forums where even mildly helpful or unhelpful videos/posts will receive “thank you, could you help with...” posts.
- pero 9y ago
  > What's the motivation here then? I'd guess it's some sort of legal/accounting move, something beneath the surface. Doesn't really make much sense otherwise.
- InclinedPlane 9y ago
  The motivation is obvious when you look at it from youtube's perspective. They do not value content creators much, but they lick the boots of advertisers. They want to create a system that is as smooth for advertisers as possible, regardless of the impact on any other aspect of the platform. They want to reduce the risk of bad PR (which causes advertisers to run away). All they care about is the product of eyeball counts and ad impressions yielding dollars, they don't understand at all the goose that lays the golden egg or how easy it is to kill it.
dingaling 9y ago
> And zero motivation to publish more videos. Why not? You're posting on HN without financial reward.
- Fuckthisboard 9y ago
  The reward of being down voted by you cunts you mean?
- piyush_soni 9y ago
  Which takes a lot less effort than creating, editing, post-processing and uploading videos.
- gkya 9y ago
  Some months ago when Alan Kay did an AmA, I asked a question to him and got answered. A CS star from thousands of kilometers apart. I can "bump into" many domain experts hereabouts. People like Walter Brigt are regularly posting, and I, as a hacker that's aiming to do humanities in academia as his professional career, it's incredibly exciting to have the chance to interact with this sort of people. I don't think one needs further rewards, and otherwise he is plain greedy as fuck.
arca_vorago 9y ago
"Don't you hate those videos that are 5x longer than necessary? WHY ENCOURAGE THAT?" From googles perspective it's because they don't care about the user, and are cowtowing to the advertisers. Longer videos mean more ads, which means more $$$. I wish google had never bought youtube... I knew they would ruin it eventually. I think the real discussion here though is more meta than just google... we have allowed advertisers to gain way too much power on the internet, and if we aren't careful they will ruin us just like they did newspapers. This isn't just advertisers though, this is the general business model of internet companies. Here is the pattern: 1) Create cool new thing, with no ads, no tracking. Users love it and it spreads like wildfire. 2) Slowly boil the frog. Start tracking users and selling user data to third parties, justified under esoteric EULAs and TOS. Start small, unobtrusive ads. 3) Make the ads more prominent, more frequent, and harder to skip/ignore. 4) Allow your platform to be used as a corporate promotion tool that's more like sockpuppet central than regular advertising. Bots talking to bots, subtle corporate products in memes, etc. 5) Now that you have completely aliented the userbase, now is the time to ramp up all of the above and then go public, ride the boom wave up, and at peak sell a massively overvalued company to some dumbass group/company/people, run away with the cash, and take video of your product as it burns to the ground. The users will stick around until someone else starts at 1 and does the same thing but under a different name.
- corobo 9y ago
  > I wish google had never bought youtube... I knew they would ruin it eventually. If Google hadn't bought YouTube, YouTube would no longer exist.
  - Goladus 9y ago
    Really? I would find that story interesting reading if you'd be willing to share.
    - magila 9y ago
      There's not really that much to it. Pre-acquisition Youtube was burning through cash at a rapid and increasing rate. There was clearly no way they were going to find a revenue source which would even come close to covering their operating expenses. Google was one of only a few companies who were willing and able to keep Youtube going as a loss leader.
yAnonymous 9y ago
>The next time I figure out a life-trick[2], I won't bother. Your motivation for uploading that one video was money? Just wondering, because if that was the case I'd expect you to have more than one video. And 1000 views a month is nothing. Certainly not enough to expect any kind of worthwhile revenue.
mrweasel 9y ago
I doubt that your video is making Youtube any money with a 1000 views a month on a niche subject. Yet they let you stay on their platform, for free. Most videos like yours aren't made to make $2 extra each month, they're made because people wanted to share the information. Youtube provides a platform, allowing people to distribute videos, for free. The most prolific content producers are given a cut of the profit, or make their advertising deals.
- piyush_soni 9y ago
  They 'let us stay' because they're net profitable by that video being there, not out of charity. For some in poor countries, those extra $2 a month do matter.
  - beokop 9y ago
    You can’t have it both ways. YouTube is providing a free video hosting service, something that is way more valuable for the creator (poor country or not) than $2/month.
- throwaway7312 9y ago
  When I was in business school, we had a case study of a large supermarket chain that carried 18,000 or so different items per store. The management team wanted to save on cost and narrow down to just the essentials the chain's customers bought. So they did an analysis and determined that only 6,000 or so of the products they carried sold in any significant amount. The other 12,000 were niche items that sold in small quantities and made little money. Before they nixed the other 9,000 products though, the company decided to make one additional analysis, of who bought what in what combination. And it discovered all those little items were being bought in small quantities by people who bought large quantities of the big items. The analysis further determined that if the supermarket nixed those 9,000 niche products, it would no longer be the "one stop shop" for its customers. Those customers would only be able to buy some of what they needed at the supermarket, and would need to buy the rest elsewhere. If a competing supermarket carried all of what a customer needed, that customer would eventually learn to do all his shopping at that supermarket to save the hassle of needing to journey to 2+ places to get what he needed. After this final analysis, the supermarket chain decided to keep almost all the products it kept on its shelves, eliminating only 200 or 300 products, instead of 9,000. It was not so much that the supermarket was very nice and charitable to niche spices and exotic Asian sauces and imported curries and whatnot. Rather, it was that the supermarket realized that if its customers could not find everything they wanted on its shelves, they would eventually find everything they wanted on a competitor's shelves instead. In YouTube's case, no good competitor presently exists. But a big part of the reason why is because YouTube has sucked all the oxygen out of the video hosting and streaming niche by being a one-stop shop. If it stops being that, there will be a lot more oxygen in that niche again. (that said, I do not think demonetizing videos with low view counts / subscriber numbers constitutes injecting oxygen back into the market. "Not letting" niche video creators user their platform, however, probably would)
balls187 9y ago
> Who subscribes to videos about fixing stuff anyway? Me. I subscribed to a few DIY home repair channels, plus a channel on modding a Mark7 Golf R.

Scoundreller 9y ago

tl;dr: Unless you have 4000 hours of watch-time AND 1000 subscribers, you're getting axed from monetization. 1000 subscribers is going to be impossible if your content is niche. That guy who put together that excellent 40 minute step-by-step video on fixing my garage-door opener (plastic gears, seriously?)... why would I subscribe? Youtube is pivoting to being a TV-replacement.

ucaetano 9y ago
If you're making <$100/year out of your videos (99% of the channels affected) it is highly unlikely that you were making new videos because of the money anyway. So only <1% of impacted channels might be materially affected.
- ndespres 9y ago
  Maybe so, but won't there be less incentive for someone new to post some obscure repair video later on, to help the few people who might benefit from it and make a few dollars?
  - PeterisP 9y ago
    Sure, there'll be somewhat less incentive, but it's reasonable to assume that it'll still be enough to get a sufficient amount of obscure repair videos. If there was never much of a financial incentive, then pretty much all such videos were produced for other reasons and will still get produced even without that financial incentive.
    - Scoundreller 9y ago
      Good luck getting subscribers though.
  - Noos 9y ago
    sadly we'll probably just see mini networks where people will buy obscure repair videos in the same way they buy ebooks to sell as part of a brand, for virtually nothing, and then monetize though other people's content, huffpo style.

joelrunyon 9y ago

When is there going to be a legitimate YouTube contender? Seems like it's ripe for a replacement...

farnsworthy 9y ago
Someone please do this. (You'll probably need a lot of money.) In the meantime, download anything you enjoy today, because it may not be there tomorrow.
- dvt 9y ago
  If you have traction, the money will come. But really, what can you do that's better than YouTube? Honest question. I think that YouTube has reached Google levels of optimization. Sure, it could be better, but not better enough that people are willing to switch.
  - dragonwriter 9y ago
    > But really, what can you do that's better than YouTube? For any specialized market, probably a lot; YouTube may be the ultimate least-common-denominator user-submitted-video streaming service, but it's not the only one there is room for.
    - dvt 9y ago
      > For any specialized market, probably a lot This is doubly true for services like Google Search, and yet (for example) security-oriented engines like DDG are barely making a dent. I honestly don't think niche is the way to go if you're trying to go after Google/YouTube/Facebook. You'd need to figure out a core issue or core need that has been overlooked. And I just don't really see one.
      - dragonwriter 9y ago
        > This is doubly true for services like Google Search, and yet (for example) security-oriented engines like DDG are barely making a dent. DDG is making a huge dent in the narrow segment it is designed to appeal to, which is all any specialized service can hope for. I think DDG fans persistently overestimate how many people find Google’s personalization a net cost. > I honestly don't think niche is the way to go if you're trying to go after Google/YouTube/Facebook. You'd need to figure out a core issue or core need that has been overlooked. Sure, if you are trying to replace one of those as the dominant mass market player in its domain you need to do that. Also, I think you are more likely to find a core need by dealing with a need that seems niche but is really just more pronounced and visible in that particular niche than by digging around in the dark for a core need.

jeffmould 9y ago

As one of the people whose channel is affected by this policy change, I have to say I am not happy. There are a few issues I have with their new policy: 1) They should not have made this change retroactive to channels. If you already met the criteria you should be grandfathered into the new program. To terminate monetization entirely gives me no incentive to continue with YouTube. 2) For niche channels, like my own, it can be easy to have the views but difficult to have the subscribers. These two should not be tied together for purposes of monetization. 3) The ones that seem to be causing the biggest headaches on YouTube lately are the bigger creators. 4) Finally, their email to me says that they made this decision based on discussions with creators like me. I would be hardpressed to find a creator "like me" that suggested this. Instead, I suspect, they reached out to the creators with the biggest say and decided to squash the little guys for greater visibility. I am curious if they will continue to monetize my videos while not sharing the revenue with me or if they will remove ads entirely from my videos.

jakebasile 9y ago
> The ones that seem to be causing the biggest headaches on YouTube lately are the bigger creators. This is a great observation. They're punishing the small, niche channels for the terrible shit pulled by the huge channels, with Logan Paul just being the most recent and which is probably the precipitating event here.
- anonytrary 9y ago
  I knew someone would mention Logan Paul, that one guy that faked colorblindness to get views, and ultimately ended up tubing around a dead guy. If Google is doing this with a "let's try and make it harder for idiots like Logan Paul to become successful" motivation, then shame on Google. The only other reason I can think of is that smaller players have been abusing the system, and we see tons of tiny low-quality popups that film inappropriate stuff and get reported. I think this is more likely, than because of anything Logan Paul did.
- notatoad 9y ago
  They're not punishing small channels for logan paul. he's an incredibly easy problem to deal with, and they already solved that problem by kicking him off YPP. This is to deal with the much larger problem of small channels posting awful content in such huge volumes that it's difficult to police, and causing headlines like this one: https://www.buzzfeed.com/charliewarzel/youtubers-made-hundreds-of-thousands-off-of-bizarre-and?utm_term=.pfD30D18R#.ip38zpYEm https://www.buzzfeed.com/charliewarzel/youtubers-made-hundre...

Nition 9y ago

Everyone's talking about how this is bad for small channels, but surely this is a big hit to YouTube itself as well. Since they've decided they need to vet all channels before ads are shown, and they can't do that to every channel, they've had to set an arbitrary view/subscriber limit. But now they're going to lose out on ad revenue for millions of previously-monetised videos, while still having to host them for free.

Scoundreller 9y ago
Isn't google's advertising cut 30-40%? How many dollars does it cost them to vet a channel? My 3 minute video makes me ~.3 cents per view. It's actually less than 3 minutes, most don't watch the whole thing. 4000 hours in a year = $240 revenue. So, advertisers are paying $360. If you have just 2000 hours of views per year, Google is throwing away $60/year in revenue. My linked gmail account alone with 10+ years of data should scream legitimacy alone.
- Nition 9y ago
  I don't think they're worried about whether you're a legitimate account, they're worried about whether your videos are advertiser-friendly, and they've decided that to verify that they'll need to manually check your channel. Which would take forever if they didn't set some threshold. They tried to crowdsource it with YouTube Heroes. I guess that didn't end up being enough.
  - Scoundreller 9y ago
    > manually check your channel. Which would take forever if they didn't set some threshold. It's Google. They'll tell advertisers that every channel will be manually reviewed to make them happy, but the degree of manual review will vary. They'll score most channels as low risk and do a cursory manual review to 'check-the-box', and the degree of review will go up from there.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
9y ago

fluxsauce 9y ago

I had some original content with over a million views from a decade ago. I now have other priorities and the language like > Accordingly, this email serves as 30 days notice that your YouTube Partner Program terms are terminated. feels like a pretty big fuck you.

jdietrich 9y ago

It's not a grossly unreasonable move, but it doesn't exactly smack of creator-friendliness. It does nothing to address the ongoing grievances of YouTubers about monetisation. At this stage, it seems like getting paid is a complete crapshoot. Sometimes your videos will be classified as "not suitable for most advertisers", despite not breaching any of YouTube's policies. Sometimes your video will be taken down or demonetized by a completely bogus copyright claim. Sometimes you'll get lucky and actually see some ad revenue for a video. If you've got a problem, you're stuck with the usual Google tech support system of "personally know someone who works at the Googleplex, otherwise you're SOL". Pretty much every sane YouTuber is moving towards a Patreon-first business model and treating ad revenue as a bonus. If someone solves the discoverability problem for videos hosted on other platforms, YouTube are done. Do not pass go, do not collect $200, lose all of your content creators because you've treated them like criminals for years.

anonytrary 9y ago

A signed suicide note by YouTube. It's those peanuts that motivate actual content creators to post content and grow. This is the problem with "free and always will be", smh. You get a centralized broker. In Google's case, between sellers and viewers, who are cast as buyers. This all happens under the shadow of "video content". Google feeds off of the creativity of everyone on YouTube, its own Hollywood. Then they decide who is worthy of reaping the rewards with their rules. Something as simple as an organic comment promoting a product can actually drive real sales, and the John Doe that posts such a comment gets zilch. Why does he get nothing? Is it too difficult for Google to index all of John Doe's comments, crunch the impressions and counts and then give him the few dollars he would have accrued over the past few weeks? This should all just "work" without having to download Google Surveys, or whatever their community feedback/rewards app is. If they can index the web, they can do some math on behalf of me and count me in their little MLM payouts equation ffs. /ranty This is the perfect move to put more YouTubers past the tipping point.

bitmapbrother 9y ago
>A signed suicide note by YouTube. It's difficult to take your comment seriously when your opening line contains so much fail. YouTube isn't going anywhere but up. It has no rival and never will.
- anonytrary 9y ago
  > It has no rival and never will. Likewise, it's difficult to take your comment seriously with this beast of a closing line ;)
  - bitmapbrother 9y ago
    My line is realistic. Your opener, however, is comical.
    - dang 9y ago
      We've asked you numerous times before not to post uncivil and/or unsubstantive comments to HN. If you can't or won't stop doing this, we're going to end up banning you. Flamebait and flamewars aren't welcome on this site. If you'd (re-)read https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and take that spirit to heart when commenting here, we'd appreciate it.

robertelder 9y ago

I just got an email that my channel will de-monetized by this. I thought it was pretty funny actually. There are all these huge content creators losing out on their livelihoods because of Google's unpredictable de-monetization behaviour, and then Google even decides to demonetize even my tiny channel with only a few videos (that are over 9 years old). I turned on monetization a few years ago and I think I've made maybe $20 so far. For a while, I actually considered investing time in making more videos with the idea that the present value of a large number of videos might be pretty considerable over the long term (say 30 years or so). A few years ago one of my most popular videos (tens of thousands of views) was flagged as being 'not family friendly'. The video was a screen capture of me scrolling through a notepad.exe list of documentary titles with no audio. It was just a list of nature/space documentaries that were already on YouTube. Nothing offensive or controversial. I guess this is the final nail in the coffin for my YouTube career.

gkya 9y ago
This is why one should not entrust their livelihood to any company. I'm a fan of the Patreon model. If I was starting a video publishing enterprise (say something like Primitive Technology or Computerphile or a music band channel) I'd definitely use all the most popular subscription services available, and a newsletter & blog with proper RSS. I'd upload to YouTube to drive viewers, than take them to my blog, show them where else I upload stuff and where to pay to take active part in the community, which allows for pre-releases or access to live programs after some videos where they can ask questions. I'd earn less than PewDiePie, but nobody would be able to challenge my enterprise. Though certainly to earn with such model, you need to be publishing high quality stuff (or of a quality too low for the decent peope), that is, high quality content.
- raiyu 9y ago
  Except for when Patreon updated how they collect payments about a month ago and that made it very expensive for patrons to donate to a large number of different people small amounts so they started cancelling their $1 and $2 donations because of the extra fees involved. So all of a sudden if you were getting 20% of your income from these smaller patrons you would lose that. Now they did eventually reverse it, but it just shows you that when you are dependent on X, you are dependent on X. It could be better or worse, but it's still a middle man in the system. You could go to a straight donation model like using Paypal, but that limits your global subscriber network since Paypal isn't used everywhere and you will also be missing out on the platform benefits. Meaning if someone is donating already on Patron they will more likely donate to someone else. Likewise if someone is subscribed to one channel on Youtube they will more likely subscribe to a second. I think ultimately there is a trade off here where you have to understand what you are exchanging in terms of freedom, control, and dependence, with the platform you choose to use.

e_b 9y ago

Vimeo's OTT is an interesting offering in this space that let's filmmakers launch their own subscription services. https://ott.vimeo.com https://ott.vimeo.com

dbbk 9y ago
While it is a good idea to establish your own site that you control, I think most YouTubers benefit the most from the built-in marketing that YouTube provides. It's hard work getting your audience off of YouTube the destination and onto your website.

debt 9y ago

I think this is a way more fairer system. They’re trying to reward longer term contributors whom have lower viewer counts. Basically people who continue to contribute content even though YouTube hasn’t rewarded them; they’re contributing because they have a small following of dedicated viewers.

Macha 9y ago
1. The old requirement is 10k lifetime views. 2. The new requirement is 4000 annual hours and 1000 subs. 3. The default limit on a new YouTube account is videos of at maximum 15 minutes. So for a new/low profile user, they're effectively requiring at least 16k annual views vs the previous 10k lifetime. Also, many videos are shorter than 15 minutes, so make that 20k. Except a view is counted for 10% of the video, not 100% so really the number is much larger again. This isn't changing the numbers to favour smaller active channels over small channels that have just been around long enough, it's massively raising the requirements however you look at it. I have put out 10-12 videos over the last few years, with 14k views and 2 subscribers, though frequent content and plugs in the video will obviously get a higher subscribe rate. I don't care in this case, I never bothered to turn monetisation on, but I can see someone who'd put more effort in more recently feeling like it's wasted.

keyboardhitter 9y ago

So, will they also be screening the legitimacy of subscribers and watchers in those 12 month? The first thing that came to my mind is that I can't imagine it is terribly difficult to purchase bot subscriptions. Their policy changes to focus on relevant watched hours in a set amount of time could, and probably will, open new demand for purchasing illegitimate traffic as well. Same game, different rules. I wonder if this policy will be easier to spoof than pure views alone? Surely the risk has been evaluated by the policy makers but I am interested to see how things pan out, and what counter measures against bots/spam they may take as a result.

Roverlord 9y ago
And the exchange of subs to boost both your counts and hit 1000. No doubt there will be auto player scripts emerging that will randomly watch 4000 hours of content by Friday.

csours 9y ago

There's nothing in here that addresses problems of content creators. It's a list of things that YouTube is doing to protect itself. I guess it's nice that they are sharing the information though?

protomyth 9y ago

I pity all the animators publishing short content since they are going to have a problem get the number of hours in when they spend the time on quality product.

pvdebbe 9y ago
If they truly have a quality product, they can monetize on Patreon/Liberapay.
- geostyx 9y ago
  Linking to Patreon is banned if you don't qualify for the partner program.

sgentle 9y ago

I think people are missing the forest for the trees here. Despite what the PR says, this has very little to do with the relationship between YouTube and creators, and everything to do with the relationship between YouTube and advertisers. YouTube is renting out billboards at a music festival, and the advertisers, predictably, want to know who's playing. "Well, I dunno, like, whoever shows up" has proven to be an answer that they can't get away with. YouTube's negotiating position with advertisers depends on how they can position their package of advertising space. Right now they're trying to sell a big bundle of uncertain providence, with loads of little no-namers mixed in with the heavy hitters. But what can YouTube do? If they split it up, they now have a gold package, a silver package, and a shit package. The rates for the shit package would be so bad that current YouTube revenue starts to look like winning the lottery. The smallest channels are subsidised by the bigger ones, not in terms of views but in terms of reputation. So if you need to improve the reputation of the group, what's left to do but drop the weakest performers? If you're thinking "but that's totally illogical! Smaller channels collectively contribute an enormous number of very valuable advertising impressions", you're right, but making the same mistake YouTube did. The advertising industry isn't logical, it's 18 layers of ticket-clippers and con men playing telephone with money. It doesn't run on economically rational real-time bidding systems, it runs on trend-chasing and reputation. That other stuff is just to keep the nerds happy. So, like in every other field Goophabet has entered, the techno-utopianism lasts right up until it hits the balance sheet. Party's over, folks. YouTube is an advertising company and now it's realising it has to act like one.

Nition 9y ago
Exactly. And although it sucks for small content creators to not get any revenue from their videos anymore, it sucks even more for Google because not only do they get no money from advertising on those videos, it costs them to host the video. I'm sure they're hoping fervently that this plan leads to more lucrative ad deals considering how knife-edge YouTube's chance at profitability has always seemed.
- LoSboccacc 9y ago
  It's still a big bet. Youtube gets views multiplication by the suggested video feature which redirect people from the random video they stumbled upon into the big ticket videos. All the small creators also saturate the search space with all kind of topics and content, which drives people naturally via suggestions to the larger channels with fat advertisers, so the benefit is twofold. Bet they did the math and they still come on top for now, but social are quite generational and live off the network effect, so there's that.

jijji 9y ago

its all about keeping the advertiser money flowing and reducing payments to content creators, that way youtube makes more money

tclover 9y ago

I don't have many videos on my channel. There is a couple of "niche" videos with ~70k+ views. And I'm going to delete them all. This is my protest. RIP youtube.

cjslep 9y ago

Unsurprisingly, people are turning to tit-for-tat subbing to get around the subscription limit, which opens a different kind of headache for enforcement.

baud147258 9y ago
All the comments on the blog post were basically this: links to YouTube accounts.
CamperBob2 9y ago
Link farms are dead, long live link farms.

seanwasere 9y ago

What’s all this crap about ‘advertiser friendly’. YouTube ads are targeted to the cookie watching. Nearly all ads I see on YT are targeted at me, and always are irrelevant to the content of the video. I watched cranberry video clips in the past few days, and kept getting ads for software development courses.

yeukhon 9y ago

> Starting today we’re changing the eligibility requirement for monetization to 4,000 hours of watchtime within the past 12 months and 1,000 subscribers. Is this an annual check? Or is it a one-time enrollement eligibility? The 4000 hours is a big entry bar... it’s already hard enough to gain subscribers. Indeed the small creators - those who get maybe 5k views per video + 1000 subscriber + 5 mins videos won’t be making money??

DanBC 9y ago
Doesn't 4000 hours rule out massive channels like SlowMoGuys? EDIT: 4000? That's 70 hours per week.
- yeukhon 9y ago
  But it's difficult to get 70 hours of views already for most of the small channels now making some money. Let alone 4000 hours a year accumulated. So basically YouTube is saying we don't want to pay the smaller guys. But the fact is a lot of the smaller guys do good videos and deserve to have a stake too.

deleted 9y ago

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pravj 9y ago

If you read the comments on this blog, it's interesting to see youtubers asking for subscribers in return, "sub for sub". I won't wonder if we see a solution soon to provide fraudulent subscribers like Instagram/Twitter ecosystem has. (not sure if it exists) And then I will wait for Google to fight the subscriber (vote) ring pattern.

vincengomes 9y ago

Youtube itself is a loss making company. With this announcement youtube has effectively told they will only give advertisement on selected videos vetted by youtube. what about the expenses incurred for youtube for hosting small/niche channels? If its reputation that youtube is looking for, they can ask some third party to advertise on the smaller contents with a 33/33/33 split of revenue with content creator/advertiser/youtube.

tanilama 9y ago

My bet about how they are choosing the 1000 subs and 4000 hours watchtime criteria: it is about to get this number as tractable as possible, considering they will now manually review your channel prior to monetization. Even with their smart machine learning algorithm, they cannot scale beyond this number. It is a little insincere to use the 99% of the channels number here. Vast majority of the channels from Youtube makes barely better than nothing because the long tail effect. What is actually interesting is, how many of the channels that previously make around a sizable chunk of money from Youtube, like say 1000 dollars, now will not qualify. I bet it won't be as harmless as Youtube want people to believe here, but they probably believe it is inevitable casualty.

MachinShinn- 9y ago
Your precise point is addressed in the blog post...

madshiva 9y ago

Ok let's summarize. Poor content that generate a lot of view is not touch by this change, but good content that have not some many views get nothing, like always. Very fair. If people don't sub what's the matter? I'm done with Google.

cobbzilla 9y ago

I wonder how much more momentum this gives to https://lbry.io https://lbry.io which is a sort of p2p YouTube. There's no good reason that, in the long run, a single centralized entity should control so much video distribution.

dbbk 9y ago
I'm willing to wager none at all.
corobo 9y ago
Is that the one where you could theoretically bid a few thou to become the equivalent channel "pewdiepie" until he outbids you back?

Grue3 9y ago

Youtube is run by idiots. What they needed is to create their own Patreon clone/gift system (like Twitch did, for example) and open it to all the users. Bang, no more ads needed! Even if big advertisers don't like some channel's content, both youtube and the creator are still getting money off it, as long as fans are willing to support the creator.

wmil 9y ago
Susan Wojcicki is just the wrong person to run YouTube. She comes from an advertising background and doesn't know how to work with creators. Really her appointment was nepotism and she'd already have been replaced if she wasn't so close with Larry and Sergey.

OscarTheGrinch 9y ago

Shitting on millions(?) of small creators in order to better please the big fish is short sighted. It risks shrinking the total pie of views, if 9 creators get axed will pewpewdie's views really go up 10x to cover the shortfall? It reminds me of the time my bank canceled my credit card because I always back before any interest has accrued, I wasn't degenerate enough for them to make margins. Totally short sighted because, there is nothing to say I wouldn't need emergency cash tomorrow. Likewise with youtube there is nothing to prevent todays small fry producing super engaging content tomorrow. After all, how does one get to the big time without going through mediocrity first? Other video hosting platforms, such as the vimeo, suddenly got a lot more attractive.

piyush_soni 9y ago

They're just missing one majorly obvious thing here. If it were not for the initial ad earnings, a lot of these "big" content creators would have never become big. I'd certainly remove my videos from YouTube (since my lifetime earning is just $36, they'll not give that to me anyway :) ). Edit: Made all of my videos private.

billysielu 9y ago

Isn't the real problem that when you search for a video on YouTube the first result is usually fake? Actors can and will still make fake accounts to remove traffic from the monetized accounts (and therefore from YouTube). YouTube needs better search results.

dom96 9y ago

This is why I am excited for competitors like Linus Tech Tips' floatplane to start getting traction. YouTube seems to be turning into more of a behemoth that doesn't care for the little guys every day.

mcbits 9y ago

Anyone with small channels, remember that you can turn off ALL ads for your videos (under Channel -> Advanced) if you're not going to get your cut, as small as it may have been. Surely that option will also be taken away eventually, but for now it's still there.

skywhopper 9y ago

What I find most interesting is that immediately the top comments on the post are all channel owners asking for subscriptions from other channel owners in exchange for subscribing back. To be honest these new thresholds seem entirely too low to do any good. The spammers and scammers can easily reach the thresholds. But small scale operators who aren’t interested in gaming the system will be the hardest hit.

kevin_thibedeau 9y ago
There'll be a new gold rush for paid sockpuppets who will bring a channel up to the subscriber threshold.

jaggs 9y ago

I think some folk are missing the point that some small publishers do derive a benefit from putting up a video, even if they don't get cash from Google ads. They gain a reputation, perhaps enquiries about their business, collaboration opportunities etc etc. If I was running a smaller channel with cool content, I would definitely start hunting around for partnerships, and start marketing my own business/money source more aggressively if I could. A YT channel can even be a big benefit to a resume, no?

nickjj 9y ago

This really stings because you can't use cards unless you opt into the partner program. That's Youtube's mechanism for linking to an external site. I had ads disabled on my Youtube channel but was forced into the partnership program just so I could link to my website in a card. Now those cards are going to disappear which means it's extremely unlikely someone is going to find my site since it's only listed in the description. As a content provider this makes me less interested in using their platform. I'm only at 2,000 hours watched and 366 subs which isn't remotely close to their new threshold considering those are life time stats. The 4,000 hours and 1,000 subs have to be less than 12 months old. The weird thing is, the channels with the largest amount of subscribers are the ones who are the most risky to advertisers. I don't follow Youtube drama but didn't some kid recently video record a corpse with tens of millions of subscribers, and now advertisers are ripping into Youtube. That one video from 1 person with tons of subs is responsible for more negative advertising press than hundreds of thousands of people with smaller channels.

C4stor 9y ago

Someone (not me) is going to create a webservice to buy fake subscribers in the next hours/day, that's a guarantee :D It's not like creating a google account is exactly difficult ! Thank you Youtube for providing new markets for shady shops ! And now that I think about it, fake view time doesn't really seem difficult to put up either. The time is coming where you'll pay to have you video viewed so you can be payed to have your video viewed, looks a lot of fun :D

CamperBob2 9y ago
Exactly. The incentives Google is setting up are as perverse as they can be.

djaychela 9y ago

I have a YouTube channel [1], which is only just above the new criteria - in the last year, 4300 hours of views, and 1100 subscribers. I produce videos on using Cubase, and teaching it IRL was my main source of income until September last year (I got made redundant from 2 schools I worked at). The channel is a useful ad for the book I have written on the subject of Cubase and Music Technology [2], and has got me some sales - I don't have exact figures, but I've had a few people say they saw the channel, then the book ads, and then bought the book. The book sales in total are nothing remarkable (a year of sales is about a month's earnings from the jobs I no longer have), but better than nothing, and mean it's actually worthwhile putting the considerable amount of time needed into the book to update it each year when a new version of Cubase comes out. The YT channel made $135 in the last year. Nothing to write home over, but it means that once a year I can buy a plugin that I wouldn't have done otherwise. A niche channel such as mine isn't ever going to earn real money, but it's a nice side bonus to get some spending money once a year from it - I put the videos up because they are a bit of an advert for my skills, and because I've got a lot of positive comments from people who have found the videos helpful. But I would feel somewhat aggrieved if I wasn't making this small amount of money, and felt that I was being profited from for making content for free. I know about the hosting costs, etc., but I'm sure YT makes money overall. However, I had another video on my personal channel which had a MAME cabinet I made using a Raspberry Pi - back in the day when this wasn't that common. It made it onto the official Pi blog [3] - along with a write-up that I did for it, and currently has 180,000 views. I wouldn't have seen a penny from that if the new rules were in place, and that the new rules will stop the 'one hit wonders' who create something that goes truly viral (Charlie/Finger, etc) from earning anything is a little concerning to me - I'm sure YouTube will still place adverts on them (?), but if you're a one-off, then you get nothing. Won't this just lead to people sending potentially viral videos to a channel who specialise in redistribution who will take a cut of the revenue? [1] - https://www.youtube.com/c/musictechtuition https://www.youtube.com/c/musictechtuition [2] - http://tinyurl.com/cubase9book http://tinyurl.com/cubase9book [3] - https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/guest-blog-6-mame-cabinet-by-darren-j/ https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/guest-blog-6-mame-cabinet-b...

EADGBE 9y ago

Sad, but honestly I only made ~$3.50 over the course of 4 years by monetizing my videos. I suppose I was a waste of time to begin with (for them).

reader5000 9y ago

Third party supported content will always be adversarial to both consumer and creator. People really need to figure out microtransactions / frictionless payments so that creators can be directly supported by consumers for reasonable cost to consumer. For me as a consumer the main value youtube provides is its recommendation system for discovering [long-tail] content. Why not have a "show me more videos like this" button for paying subscribers out of which the video creator gets 10c or something. Youtube is slowly becoming just another shitty mega broadcast outlet like NBC or netflix producing corporate-sanctioned mainstream content of little relevance to anyone. Somebody has to find a way to make longtail content sustainable. The fact that people do sign up to pay into Patreon or pay to Twitchers demonstrates that this is possible. Corporate involvement in content creation is poisonous.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

AaronHatchWorld 9y ago

If we want to protest this, isn't it a good idea to disable ads? That way, YouTube's making no revenue off our videos, and they're paying to host. Or am I missing something here?

calimac 9y ago

Youtube is fueled by systematized copyright infringement with a nod and a wink. Boomers are wire cutting and watching the 24/7 news on their mobiles via youtube app.

FiveSquared 9y ago

As a smalll Youtuber, I am appalled and shocked. Google is shooting themselves in the foot with this. This is killing the small creators. Google is chasing short term profit over long term stability. I guarantee you, a smart startup will try to upset YouTube and succeed due to this new rule. Everyone started from the bottom. And now Google is sinking them.

2600 9y ago

Is there a reason why YouTube can’t implement something similar to Twitch subscriptions and Patreon backing to YouTube? I see that an increasing number of smaller YouTubers are relying on Patreon to supplement their income because their YouTube revenue has been cut significant. A smaller number of dedicated fans are willing to pay more money directly to the creators that they enjoy and connect with. How does this affect their relationship with advertisers more than YouTube Red, if at all?

hartator 9y ago

So, if you have one high quality video, but no subscribers, your video will get demonetize? It doesn't seem fair or to promote high quality content. Seems pushing more for low quality prank videos à la Jack Paul and co.

Scoundreller 9y ago

In 2-3 years, amazon is going to be the place to post fixit/construction/diy videos. Watch the video and buy the parts all in one place. Give the creator a commission on the parts/tools sales.

peapicker 9y ago

I have several musician friends who create excellent content, yet are still fairly niche. Every one of them is getting frozen out of their measly dollar a month from this, as they are all a bit short on hours of listening per year. At least Spotify/Apple still pays musicians per stream. The small musicians on youtube are no longer getting that privilege. Big Music(tm) screws the little guys again. (I know this is more than about indie musicians, but this is the effect I am seeing most in relation to my usage of Youtoob)

retox 9y ago

Let's not forget that this is a direct effect of the outrage culture coming from North America. By spuriously reporting videos and organising email campaigns, or in the case of the Wall St Journal publishing national stories, about ads appearing on your political enemies videos, offended students and general busybodies have taken food from the mouths of thousands. They aren't solely to blame but I would wager they are a prevailing interest at mountain view and in the valley.