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“ The entire product was built on top of lyrics they don’t own. In essence, they built their product on top of someone else’s platform.” It seems that this is
by whatever1 5y ago
“ The entire product was built on top of lyrics they don’t own. In essence, they built their product on top of someone else’s platform.”
It seems that this is the concept behind many startups that are successful. Airbnb, Uber/Lyft, DoorDash etc.
They try to take on risky efficiencies (by undercutting labor / capital, RnD costs, circumventing regulation), with the hope that they will become too big to be stopped. For many of them it worked.
- asah 5y agoGoogle/YouTube is built on other peoples' content...
- criley2 5y agoUsers must give youtube a permissive license to post videos. Not so for lyrics on Genius.
- whatever1 5y agoYouTube was hosting for years pirated song video clips. Then they just cut a deal with the music companies because they did not want to be out of the biggest video platform of the planet.
- ghaff 5y agoYeah, people forget that, for a long time, to many people YouTube looked like a business that would collapse the instant that rights holders got serious about cracking down on all the infringing content on the site--given that was what 90% of people probably went to the site for.
- thrashh 5y agoBut unlike Genius, YouTube was not forever beholden to just hosting existing content. Genius is never going to start hosting user created lyrics one day.
- pessimizer 5y agoBut YouTube did it by offloading liability for copyright-violating content onto uploaders. Youtube for years was 80% megaupload, but backed by an army of lobbyists. Scribd has TV commercials now, and is still in that stage.
- rchaud 5y agoPeople forget that in 2004 there were several streaming video sites. They all disappeared because they featured copyrighted content.
- Mikeb85 5y agoGoogle has an actual product (ads) and YouTube isn't built on pre-existing content, it's a platform for content creation (and ads for that content). Both add a lot more value than Genius did.
- bliteben 5y agoMovie clips and music videos are surely a double digit percent of youtube's views, not to mention other categories I may be missing.
- Mikeb85 5y agoAgain though, they're posted by the creators (every artist I know of has their own Youtube account, all the major studios post their own teasers) versus people re-posting others' stuff. Most Youtube content nowadays is pretty original.
- TeMPOraL 5y agoNowadays. YouTube became big through users uploading pirated music to it.
- PragmaticPulp 5y ago> It seems that this is the concept behind many startups that are successful. Airbnb, Uber/Lyft, DoorDash etc. Being accesses through someone else’s platform isn’t the same thing as trying to build a business on top of someone else’s IP. The music industry owned the core of Genius’ content from the start.
- jjoonathan 5y agoRight, but the play is to become important faster than you become accountable. Collectively, we are very bad at holding important entities accountable, so speedrunning your way to importance while ignoring the rules is a gamble that can pay handsomely.
- MangoCoffee 5y agoCrunchyroll - build on top of pirated Asian content. it got big enough to the point it can go legit. later sold for more than what its worth. (Sony pay $1 billion)