6 ms·

Vevo could have been ‘an existential threat’ to YouTube, but YouTube won

90 points by gymshoes 8y ago

flyinglizard 8y ago
I happened to have a chat with someone who knows what happened first hand - between YouTube and the record labels oligopoly, they could hardly develop as a company and not a mediator, sandwiched between giants on both content production and content distribution.
soneca 8y ago
All that Vevo ever was for me was a quality seal that guarantees that the video from an artist is official, when searching for a song on YouTube - i.e. it had good image and sound quality and it was indeed a video clip, not just an upload of the song with the album cover or crappy collage as image. Never thought about it as a company with ambitions to challenge YouTube.
- leetcrew 8y ago
  i actually used to avoid vevo because it would usually give you the censored version of popular songs.
  - Broken_Hippo 8y ago
    I came to type the same thing.
    - stcredzero 8y ago
      When you get big, you abandon the edge. That's just how it works.
  - Larrikin 8y ago
    Vevo posted the official video. Older music videos were made for play on MTV so they were censored and some one else had to edit them. I haven't run across a censored video on Vevo in a while unless I was looking for something old.
- jandrese 8y ago
  Since when is Vevo a quality seal? I see that mark plastered over 320p videos all the time. I figured it was just the "the ad money is now going to the record company" logo.
  - krisdol 8y ago
    That's the way I see it. Vevo means I don't get to see lyrics, I get a video with weird intro/outro patters and instead of just the song, I get the censored and shortened radio version of the song, and I get more ads. If vevo took their content off youtube and ran, I would welcome it. Youtube should be more than MediaMegacorp advertising-disguised-as-music.
    - danso 8y ago
      If Vevo became the place where music labels and acts -- the ones with the massive money-making audiences -- went to, Vevo would be even less tolerant of bootleg/non-official versions existing on a rival site.
    - themodelplumber 8y ago
      This is why I always add keywords like "lyrics" or "72rpm" to my music searches. Maybe I should just exclude "vevo" though...hmmm...
- seba_dos1 8y ago
  I thought it's just a brand for YouTube's partnership with record labels.
  - rhizome 8y ago
    Yeah, I view it like I do The Orchard and all the other upload/monetization services.
- hiccuphippo 8y ago
  For me Vevo meant that the video would probably not play in my country and when it did, I wouldn't be able to play it with mpv and youtube-dl.
  - exikyut 8y ago
    Can you clarify what you mean by this? I have never heard of any YouTube video (mp4/webm) having DRM in it.
    - fragmede 8y ago
      GeoIP-based blocking, plus some techniques to detect VPN users, end up being fairly (but not 100%) effective at detecting foreign users. There's no need for DRM in the video file if you prevent most people from accessing it in the first place.
      - exikyut 8y ago
        :( Okay, what about this: try youtube-dl on the infinitely-free 600M RAM instance you get in GCE. Upload bandwidth (what you'll use to d/l video from instance) is 1GB/mo max, but outbound to Google services is free, so transfer the videos out through gdrive.
davidhyde 8y ago
When is comes to technology, the music publishing industry is like the airline business. It is more intent on protecting its current business model than innovating for the future. All it is really capable of doing is copying competitors and throwing its legal weight around a bit. Therefore it does not attract future minded people. I am not surprised that Google was able to manipulate them so well.
- stcredzero 8y ago
  When is comes to technology, the music publishing industry is like the airline business. It is more intent on protecting its current business model than innovating for the future. All it is really capable of doing is copying competitors and throwing its legal weight around a bit. Therefore it does not attract future minded people. This can be generalized. Example: The rocket launch industry was once more intent on protecting its current business model than innovating for the future. Fortunately, what that does, is to create a market that is dramatically misaligned with what the price could be from first principles. On the other hand, network effects with proprietary tech might be the great fatal flaw in capitalism that Karl Marx so desperately wanted to find. Once the creative destruction stops, stagnation then oppression takes over. Once capitalism no longer has sufficient advantage over the oppression of centralized control, there is no reason not to fall into centralized control. However, that result isn't utopian at all.
dbuder 8y ago
Youtube's " 15,000-strong salesforce" and non existent customer/producer support
niftich 8y ago
Vevo was a partially thought-out venture, executed well but not well enough. It was always hampered by the studios' stubborn direction: licensing limitations that kept it out of lots of markets, not enough cross-promotion through sponsorships, retail channels, or advertising, and intentional lack of scope to avoid cannibalizing music sales. And they were hamstrung by the legacy of their initial decision to syndicate to YouTube: most people probably discovered the name 'Vevo' through seeing their watermark on music videos posted to YouTube, but subsequently had little reason to explore what Vevo is or does. Not that they missed anything: Vevo didn't do anything that YouTube didn't already do. They wanted the cake both ways: leverage YouTube's audience and discovery, while running a not-at-all-captive, ad-supported competitor just for the sake of perceived control and leverage. That's cute. If it wasn't such a half-assed venture, Vevo could've become the single most valuable subscription music streaming destination: a captive Spotify for daily use, with music videos on demand. But studios couldn't commit to the serious business decision of withdrawing their licensed content from other platforms that have already built an audience. Instead, now they've abandoned their ambition to have their own digital distribution solution, and have decided that focusing on licensing and revenue sharing is their preferred outcome. It's interesting to compare this to TV, where the major incumbents are still interested in gating their content to their respective captive distribution portals.
icc97 8y ago
Vevo's post [0] about stopping their service is a priceless list of bullshit bingo: > At Vevo, our objective is to grow the commercial and promotional value of music videos, fostering deep connections between artists and fans. > To be most effective in achieving those goals, we will phase out elements of our owned and operated platforms. > Going forward, Vevo will remain focused on engaging the biggest audiences and pursuing growth opportunities. [0]: https://hq.vevo.com/vevo-announces-changes-to-its-owned-and-operated-platforms/ https://hq.vevo.com/vevo-announces-changes-to-its-owned-and-...
- mistermann 8y ago
  Why does that page look so absolutely perfect on mobile? Perfect blacks, ultra crisp fonts.
  - kowdermeister 8y ago
    It takes a good designer and a premium font: https://www.fonts.com/font/linotype/avenir-next https://www.fonts.com/font/linotype/avenir-next (not that there are no quality free fonts)
    - ubernostrum 8y ago
      I tend not to think of fonts that come with the operating system as "premium" :) (Avenir + Avenir Next have been bundled in various Apple operating systems, and are the default font choices in a few of Keynote's built-in themes)
      - kowdermeister 8y ago
        Since it's not on windows, linux or android, you should buy it which makes it premium despite the Mac luxury :)
  - ghostbrainalpha 8y ago
    The font is "Avenir Next", and its pretty cool. https://www.fonts.com/font/linotype/avenir-next https://www.fonts.com/font/linotype/avenir-next I can't see anything special about the blacks though...
njharman 8y ago
No, a reaction cobbled together to try and maintain control of a no longer releevabt business model was never a threat to anyone other than investors whose money music publishing industry is wasting. It could only ever fail cause its real customer is music publishers and not music consumers.
- danso 8y ago
  How is it "no longer relevant business model"? Youtube Music would not exist if Vevo ended up being a separate destination that all the main music publishers endorsed. Of the top 100 most viewed YouTube videos, only 6 are not music videos.
  - HyperTalk2 8y ago
    I've always doubted that the view counts on Vevo videos are real.
    - lucasmullens 8y ago
      They might not be "views", just "listens" from people leaving on autoplay for hours.
    - girvo 8y ago
      Why? I’m curious what makes you feel they’re faking the view count?
heywire 8y ago
I was always under the impression that Vevo was owned by YouTube/Google. I had no idea they had plans on anything other than "official music videos" on YouTube.
- higginsc 8y ago
  Alphabet does have a minority equity stake in Vevo.
gaius 8y ago
I had no idea that Vevo wasn’t just a subsection of YouTube anyway, the equivalent of Twitter’s blue tick
- ProAm 8y ago
  They were formed out of a lawsuit (or thread of lawsuit). The music companies were going to sue YouTube/Google for copyright, so Google basically said, we'll provide you the infrastructure to play your Vevo songs free of charge as long as you dont sue out pants off. Worked out in the best interest for both party's
IanDrake 8y ago
The biggest threat to YouTube is YouTube. Censorship is getting out of hand and demonetizing/banning sucessful tubers is making people ask questions. Questions like: Should I continue to invest in this platform or start moving my viewers elsewhere? Personally, if I had a following, I’d be getting my branded media site up and running. I’d continue to post teaser content to YouTube, but host my full content on servers I control.
- on_and_off 8y ago
  The hard part is that Youtube is actually really great at playing videos. I have always found the alternatives surprisingly subpar. It should maybe not be a surprise, after all they had all the time they needed in order to improve the experience.
  - hiccuphippo 8y ago
    Pornhub plays videos pretty well even in Mobile and they are just mp4 files. 4chan does pretty well with webm files except for the short length. Browsers can deal with video just fine and the experience is not so different from Youtube. Just serve the files in a format they can play.
  - agumonkey 8y ago
    There was a time where dailymotion had a shot but they missed it and failed hard on this part. Vimeo is probably the only one that felt good (even though the average resolution being higher killed my poor old laptop)
    - rhizome 8y ago
      Vimeo never streams well on any of my computers, on any of my networks. It reminds me of RealPlayer how often it buffers.
    - on_and_off 8y ago
      Vimeo tends to really annoys me by forcing me to go to their website if I want to see the video in high def. This tends to make me make sure to just leave the website afterwards.
vbo 8y ago
Vevo chose Youtube as a distribution channel. That was both the right and wrong move for them, but in the end it worked out pretty well for consumers, with the wider-scoped/user-driven concept winning over the media site.
pishpash 8y ago
I thought this was talking about Vimeo.
partycoder 8y ago
This is another clickbait variant: postmortem clickbaits. e.g: "My startup failed", "Why I quit <company>", etc... I am passing on this one since my common sense tells me VEVO and YouTube are vastly different services.
mhkool 8y ago
The newest threat to Youtube is Youtube itself. Many content makers are complaining about the AI of Youtube that misunderstands text and videos and forces content makers to take down their own videos. I have also seen channels go down and the owners complaining since they cannot communicate with a real person and have no explanation why their channel is taken down.
godzillabrennus 8y ago
Has YouTube won? Don’t they lose money? It seems like Netflix has won. Hulu is catching up. YouTube is working hard on a distant third place.
- agumonkey 8y ago
  I don't know how much youtube is losing but it seems it's the cultural cornerstone for online video.
  - rhizome 8y ago
    A snail crawling, slithering, along the edge of a straight razor.
- bitmapbrother 8y ago
  According to YouTube they now have 1.8 billion logged in users each month. So I guess you could call that winning. https://www.theverge.com/2018/5/3/17317274/youtube-1-8-billion-logged-in-monthly-users-brandcast-2018 https://www.theverge.com/2018/5/3/17317274/youtube-1-8-billi... As for their profitability: https://medium.com/@intenex/where-are-you-getting-hard-data-that-youtube-isnt-profitable-a00aed0672ac https://medium.com/@intenex/where-are-you-getting-hard-data-...
  - themodelplumber 8y ago
    Just speaking personally, I probably watch at least an hour of YouTube video daily, but I'm feeling less inclined to spend time on YouTube lately, due to all the ads and creator community hijinks. I've even considered hosting my own videos at sites like IA from now on. So while the big numbers look good, I'm personally more concerned about YouTube's future.
Gelob 8y ago
I wonder if this means on the backend the post production houses will just send the masters to YouTube instead of over to Vevo, only for vevo to upload them to YouTube. Would be much cheaper if vevo didn't ingest every video.
hansthehorse 8y ago
I've always thought the music industry would be hitting this point in their life 20 years ago if not for the constant format changes. How many people replaced their collection over and over through the vinyl, 8 track, cassette and cd transformations. Now in it's final format change to downloading the replacement of collections is over and the industry is in trouble as it can't adjust to the lower gross. Depending on a single source for video, in this case Youtube, is going to be a mistake in the long run. Too much power in too few hands.

90 points by gymshoes 8y ago

I happened to have a chat with someone who knows what happened first hand - between YouTube and the record labels oligopoly, they could hardly develop as a company and not a mediator, sandwiched between giants on both content production and content distribution.

soneca 8y ago

All that Vevo ever was for me was a quality seal that guarantees that the video from an artist is official, when searching for a song on YouTube - i.e. it had good image and sound quality and it was indeed a video clip, not just an upload of the song with the album cover or crappy collage as image. Never thought about it as a company with ambitions to challenge YouTube.

leetcrew 8y ago
i actually used to avoid vevo because it would usually give you the censored version of popular songs.
- Broken_Hippo 8y ago
  I came to type the same thing.
  - stcredzero 8y ago
    When you get big, you abandon the edge. That's just how it works.
- Larrikin 8y ago
  Vevo posted the official video. Older music videos were made for play on MTV so they were censored and some one else had to edit them. I haven't run across a censored video on Vevo in a while unless I was looking for something old.
jandrese 8y ago
Since when is Vevo a quality seal? I see that mark plastered over 320p videos all the time. I figured it was just the "the ad money is now going to the record company" logo.
- krisdol 8y ago
  That's the way I see it. Vevo means I don't get to see lyrics, I get a video with weird intro/outro patters and instead of just the song, I get the censored and shortened radio version of the song, and I get more ads. If vevo took their content off youtube and ran, I would welcome it. Youtube should be more than MediaMegacorp advertising-disguised-as-music.
  - danso 8y ago
    If Vevo became the place where music labels and acts -- the ones with the massive money-making audiences -- went to, Vevo would be even less tolerant of bootleg/non-official versions existing on a rival site.
  - themodelplumber 8y ago
    This is why I always add keywords like "lyrics" or "72rpm" to my music searches. Maybe I should just exclude "vevo" though...hmmm...
seba_dos1 8y ago
I thought it's just a brand for YouTube's partnership with record labels.
- rhizome 8y ago
  Yeah, I view it like I do The Orchard and all the other upload/monetization services.
hiccuphippo 8y ago
For me Vevo meant that the video would probably not play in my country and when it did, I wouldn't be able to play it with mpv and youtube-dl.
- exikyut 8y ago
  Can you clarify what you mean by this? I have never heard of any YouTube video (mp4/webm) having DRM in it.
  - fragmede 8y ago
    GeoIP-based blocking, plus some techniques to detect VPN users, end up being fairly (but not 100%) effective at detecting foreign users. There's no need for DRM in the video file if you prevent most people from accessing it in the first place.
    - exikyut 8y ago
      :( Okay, what about this: try youtube-dl on the infinitely-free 600M RAM instance you get in GCE. Upload bandwidth (what you'll use to d/l video from instance) is 1GB/mo max, but outbound to Google services is free, so transfer the videos out through gdrive.

davidhyde 8y ago

When is comes to technology, the music publishing industry is like the airline business. It is more intent on protecting its current business model than innovating for the future. All it is really capable of doing is copying competitors and throwing its legal weight around a bit. Therefore it does not attract future minded people. I am not surprised that Google was able to manipulate them so well.

stcredzero 8y ago
When is comes to technology, the music publishing industry is like the airline business. It is more intent on protecting its current business model than innovating for the future. All it is really capable of doing is copying competitors and throwing its legal weight around a bit. Therefore it does not attract future minded people. This can be generalized. Example: The rocket launch industry was once more intent on protecting its current business model than innovating for the future. Fortunately, what that does, is to create a market that is dramatically misaligned with what the price could be from first principles. On the other hand, network effects with proprietary tech might be the great fatal flaw in capitalism that Karl Marx so desperately wanted to find. Once the creative destruction stops, stagnation then oppression takes over. Once capitalism no longer has sufficient advantage over the oppression of centralized control, there is no reason not to fall into centralized control. However, that result isn't utopian at all.

dbuder 8y ago

Youtube's " 15,000-strong salesforce" and non existent customer/producer support

niftich 8y ago

Vevo was a partially thought-out venture, executed well but not well enough. It was always hampered by the studios' stubborn direction: licensing limitations that kept it out of lots of markets, not enough cross-promotion through sponsorships, retail channels, or advertising, and intentional lack of scope to avoid cannibalizing music sales. And they were hamstrung by the legacy of their initial decision to syndicate to YouTube: most people probably discovered the name 'Vevo' through seeing their watermark on music videos posted to YouTube, but subsequently had little reason to explore what Vevo is or does. Not that they missed anything: Vevo didn't do anything that YouTube didn't already do. They wanted the cake both ways: leverage YouTube's audience and discovery, while running a not-at-all-captive, ad-supported competitor just for the sake of perceived control and leverage. That's cute. If it wasn't such a half-assed venture, Vevo could've become the single most valuable subscription music streaming destination: a captive Spotify for daily use, with music videos on demand. But studios couldn't commit to the serious business decision of withdrawing their licensed content from other platforms that have already built an audience. Instead, now they've abandoned their ambition to have their own digital distribution solution, and have decided that focusing on licensing and revenue sharing is their preferred outcome. It's interesting to compare this to TV, where the major incumbents are still interested in gating their content to their respective captive distribution portals.

icc97 8y ago

Vevo's post [0] about stopping their service is a priceless list of bullshit bingo: > At Vevo, our objective is to grow the commercial and promotional value of music videos, fostering deep connections between artists and fans. > To be most effective in achieving those goals, we will phase out elements of our owned and operated platforms. > Going forward, Vevo will remain focused on engaging the biggest audiences and pursuing growth opportunities. [0]: https://hq.vevo.com/vevo-announces-changes-to-its-owned-and-operated-platforms/ https://hq.vevo.com/vevo-announces-changes-to-its-owned-and-...

mistermann 8y ago
Why does that page look so absolutely perfect on mobile? Perfect blacks, ultra crisp fonts.
- kowdermeister 8y ago
  It takes a good designer and a premium font: https://www.fonts.com/font/linotype/avenir-next https://www.fonts.com/font/linotype/avenir-next (not that there are no quality free fonts)
  - ubernostrum 8y ago
    I tend not to think of fonts that come with the operating system as "premium" :) (Avenir + Avenir Next have been bundled in various Apple operating systems, and are the default font choices in a few of Keynote's built-in themes)
    - kowdermeister 8y ago
      Since it's not on windows, linux or android, you should buy it which makes it premium despite the Mac luxury :)
- ghostbrainalpha 8y ago
  The font is "Avenir Next", and its pretty cool. https://www.fonts.com/font/linotype/avenir-next https://www.fonts.com/font/linotype/avenir-next I can't see anything special about the blacks though...

njharman 8y ago

No, a reaction cobbled together to try and maintain control of a no longer releevabt business model was never a threat to anyone other than investors whose money music publishing industry is wasting. It could only ever fail cause its real customer is music publishers and not music consumers.

danso 8y ago
How is it "no longer relevant business model"? Youtube Music would not exist if Vevo ended up being a separate destination that all the main music publishers endorsed. Of the top 100 most viewed YouTube videos, only 6 are not music videos.
- HyperTalk2 8y ago
  I've always doubted that the view counts on Vevo videos are real.
  - lucasmullens 8y ago
    They might not be "views", just "listens" from people leaving on autoplay for hours.
  - girvo 8y ago
    Why? I’m curious what makes you feel they’re faking the view count?

heywire 8y ago

I was always under the impression that Vevo was owned by YouTube/Google. I had no idea they had plans on anything other than "official music videos" on YouTube.

higginsc 8y ago
Alphabet does have a minority equity stake in Vevo.

gaius 8y ago

I had no idea that Vevo wasn’t just a subsection of YouTube anyway, the equivalent of Twitter’s blue tick

ProAm 8y ago
They were formed out of a lawsuit (or thread of lawsuit). The music companies were going to sue YouTube/Google for copyright, so Google basically said, we'll provide you the infrastructure to play your Vevo songs free of charge as long as you dont sue out pants off. Worked out in the best interest for both party's

IanDrake 8y ago

The biggest threat to YouTube is YouTube. Censorship is getting out of hand and demonetizing/banning sucessful tubers is making people ask questions. Questions like: Should I continue to invest in this platform or start moving my viewers elsewhere? Personally, if I had a following, I’d be getting my branded media site up and running. I’d continue to post teaser content to YouTube, but host my full content on servers I control.

on_and_off 8y ago
The hard part is that Youtube is actually really great at playing videos. I have always found the alternatives surprisingly subpar. It should maybe not be a surprise, after all they had all the time they needed in order to improve the experience.
- hiccuphippo 8y ago
  Pornhub plays videos pretty well even in Mobile and they are just mp4 files. 4chan does pretty well with webm files except for the short length. Browsers can deal with video just fine and the experience is not so different from Youtube. Just serve the files in a format they can play.
- agumonkey 8y ago
  There was a time where dailymotion had a shot but they missed it and failed hard on this part. Vimeo is probably the only one that felt good (even though the average resolution being higher killed my poor old laptop)
  - rhizome 8y ago
    Vimeo never streams well on any of my computers, on any of my networks. It reminds me of RealPlayer how often it buffers.
  - on_and_off 8y ago
    Vimeo tends to really annoys me by forcing me to go to their website if I want to see the video in high def. This tends to make me make sure to just leave the website afterwards.

vbo 8y ago

Vevo chose Youtube as a distribution channel. That was both the right and wrong move for them, but in the end it worked out pretty well for consumers, with the wider-scoped/user-driven concept winning over the media site.

pishpash 8y ago

I thought this was talking about Vimeo.

partycoder 8y ago

This is another clickbait variant: postmortem clickbaits. e.g: "My startup failed", "Why I quit <company>", etc... I am passing on this one since my common sense tells me VEVO and YouTube are vastly different services.

mhkool 8y ago

The newest threat to Youtube is Youtube itself. Many content makers are complaining about the AI of Youtube that misunderstands text and videos and forces content makers to take down their own videos. I have also seen channels go down and the owners complaining since they cannot communicate with a real person and have no explanation why their channel is taken down.

godzillabrennus 8y ago

Has YouTube won? Don’t they lose money? It seems like Netflix has won. Hulu is catching up. YouTube is working hard on a distant third place.

agumonkey 8y ago
I don't know how much youtube is losing but it seems it's the cultural cornerstone for online video.
- rhizome 8y ago
  A snail crawling, slithering, along the edge of a straight razor.
bitmapbrother 8y ago
According to YouTube they now have 1.8 billion logged in users each month. So I guess you could call that winning. https://www.theverge.com/2018/5/3/17317274/youtube-1-8-billion-logged-in-monthly-users-brandcast-2018 https://www.theverge.com/2018/5/3/17317274/youtube-1-8-billi... As for their profitability: https://medium.com/@intenex/where-are-you-getting-hard-data-that-youtube-isnt-profitable-a00aed0672ac https://medium.com/@intenex/where-are-you-getting-hard-data-...
- themodelplumber 8y ago
  Just speaking personally, I probably watch at least an hour of YouTube video daily, but I'm feeling less inclined to spend time on YouTube lately, due to all the ads and creator community hijinks. I've even considered hosting my own videos at sites like IA from now on. So while the big numbers look good, I'm personally more concerned about YouTube's future.

Gelob 8y ago

I wonder if this means on the backend the post production houses will just send the masters to YouTube instead of over to Vevo, only for vevo to upload them to YouTube. Would be much cheaper if vevo didn't ingest every video.

hansthehorse 8y ago

I've always thought the music industry would be hitting this point in their life 20 years ago if not for the constant format changes. How many people replaced their collection over and over through the vinyl, 8 track, cassette and cd transformations. Now in it's final format change to downloading the replacement of collections is over and the industry is in trouble as it can't adjust to the lower gross. Depending on a single source for video, in this case Youtube, is going to be a mistake in the long run. Too much power in too few hands.