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[rabbit]

thought you'd all be interested in this - just saw it a few minutes ago myself.
the tl;dr of it is that shit's fucked. youtube (google, i believe?) are doing their best job to alienate independent musicians and make themselves look like a bunch of money grabbing pricks.
job well done.

if this goes ahead (which it seems like it definitely is going to) i can imagine that youtube is two shakes of a lamb's tail away from becoming a much, much less interesting website. also a much less popular one.
fuck em. disgusting.

http://www.punknews.org/article/55131/youtube-will-block-indie-artists-who-dont-join-paid-streaming-service

[jer]

not to defend Google here, but if artists aren't agreeing to a royalty program with them, doesn't YouTube legally have to drop them (and is the right thing to do as to honor the artist's wishes)?

"Yo, that service that makes people pay to listen to our music isn't something we want to be a part of" doesn't mean "go ahead and use our music anyway but just don't pay us for it."

[jerkemy]

in a way i'll be glad to know that content is there because it's supposed to be; there are so many annoying parasites that put their own 30 second production company logo onto clips of other people's content and get like 30 million views that they're basically stealing


on the other hand i could see it interfering a little bit with one of the major functions that we all know youtube serves: "i just wanna quickly see/hear a thing that i know is probably not there legitimately but I just want to see it right now/link to it in a forum/show a friend without having to edit and host files myself"

[jerkemy]

although the article does specifically say "music videos" so maybe it won't really affect that stuff at all

[jer]

It looks like they can still upload junk to youtube, they just can't put ads on it to make money anymore unless they sign up for their music to be on the shitty pay service or whatever. I don't know, the more I read the less sense it makes.

[rabbit]

not to defend Google here, but if artists aren't agreeing to a royalty program with them, doesn't YouTube legally have to drop them (and is the right thing to do as to honor the artist's wishes)?

"Yo, that service that makes people pay to listen to our music isn't something we want to be a part of" doesn't mean "go ahead and use our music anyway but just don't pay us for it."

well i've got two things to say to that - first up is that i was moronic (it was a VERY long day at work... my brain is coming out of my ears right now) and didn't quite grasp exactly what the situation was with regards to it being a paid service from the 'public's point of view as well.
but the second thing is that i can't believe that their being booted off youtube is an unhappy side effect of an otherwise nice scheme. i can't believe that youtube are doing it as a way of not ripping the artists off so much as doing it as a way of saying 'cough up or you're outta here'. it seems to me that they could quite comfortably leave non-paying musicians on the 'normal' youtube and just not let anyone download their vids or view them without ads.

sorry, i know that post was disjointed as hell - it's about all i'm capable of right now.

It looks like they can still upload junk to youtube, they just can't put ads on it to make money anymore unless they sign up for their music to be on the shitty pay service or whatever. I don't know, the more I read the less sense it makes.

not just me then.

[jer]

http://gizmodo.com/googles-about-to-ruin-youtube-by-forcing-indie-labels-t-1591957089

that article makes it more clear and it does seem like "go along with our pay service or you won't be allowed to put your music on youtube."

that's super shitty and all, but if they go through with it, it'll essentially just drive a ton of people to vimeo and bandcamp.

[rabbit]

yep. that's one of the first things i thought too. i've never been very fond of vimeo but i think bandcamp is great. i imagine i'll be using it a lot more.

[jer]

what don't you like about vimeo? it's always seemed like just a better version of youtube, but with a bit less content. if more users are pushed in that direction it could solve the content issue.

[jer]

... except uploading a video t vimeo sucks because it makes you wait like 40 minutes before the upload goes live.

[rabbit]

i think it was just, as you said, the relative lack of content on there that put me off. i'm not absolutely in love with the layout either, though i've just checked it and that's better than i remembered it being.

i can't quite make my mind up on this youtube thing - i can't decide if i think that they're being unbelievably short sighted or not. they're going to go down in the estimations of a LOT of people and they might lose a lot of business in the small label indie scene - but the flipside of that is maybe they don't give a fuck. they're going to be raking in the dough from any indies that do participate, all major labels, all non music related content and all their existing advertising. it could be that they could loser a huge chunk of their indie userbase and it not even make a dent.

[skateandannoy]

I don't think Vimeo pays people like YouTube does, although their video player is way better.

edit: just read the punknews article. If Billy Bragg doesn't back it, I don't either haha. Seriously though, it will be interesting to know more about it.

[rabbit]

it will be - right now, of course, we're still in a position where all we can do is wait and see.

one drag is that i was chatting to a friend of mine about it and after we chatted for a bit and she kept on being defensive about it and saying how it definitely wasn't going to go down as it was being reported and that it was all reactionary bullshit, she  suddenly bursted into some huge rant about 'the far left' and 'wheelchair critics' and 'pitchfork waving'
i don't know where it came from but it left me with a bit of a bad taste in my mouth.

[jer]

'wheelchair critics' haha oh man

[ramblinrabble]

One thing to also deter people from using Youtube going forward.   They're cutting support for IE version 8 and below, which is the highest version you can get on Windows XP systems.   Doesnt seem like much of an issue at first, but working in tech support, you realize how many people continue to use XP despite Microsoft's cutting of support for it.   Granted they can just get Chrome or Firefox, but a lot of people don't, or if they have it, don't use it.  Especially with the older generations.

[skateandannoy]

What's the deal, are they trying to kill themselves? Or are they sick of being sued over all the illegal content?

[jer]

If you're still using xp and ie8 you're probably too technologically inept to find YouTube anyway

[jer]

What's the deal, are they trying to kill themselves? Or are they sick of being sued over all the illegal content?

It was all the complaints that artichokification generated

[skateandannoy]

What's the deal, are they trying to kill themselves? Or are they sick of being sued over all the illegal content?

It was all the complaints that artichokification generated

I wouldn't be surprised. I could see Eric Schmidt being like "Hey! Give Jer Dobias and Ghost Mice some of that money fucker! In fact, we need to overhaul all of this completely. For Plan-It-X Records' sake."

[jerkemy]

One thing to also deter people from using Youtube going forward.   They're cutting support for IE version 8 and below, which is the highest version you can get on Windows XP systems.   Doesnt seem like much of an issue at first, but working in tech support, you realize how many people continue to use XP despite Microsoft's cutting of support for it.   Granted they can just get Chrome or Firefox, but a lot of people don't, or if they have it, don't use it.  Especially with the older generations.

here, I designed a page any responsible website should show you if your user agent is IE8 or below:

NOPE.
http://www.mozilla.org
http://www.google.com/chrome
http://www.opera.com

[rabbit]

a friend of mine was telling me how his mum was having problems with her new computer recently because whatever website it was that she frequented and was trying to get at didn't work on any browser *above* IE8.

i never found out what that site was but fucking hell.

[jer]

i think your friend and/or his mom was confused.

[rabbit]

i think your friend and/or his mom was confused.

his mum was *definitely* confused

[moreaboutwhozackis]

Actually, the popular music software security provider iLok is running a website that only seems to properly work on ie, which is honestly kinda shitty.

[jer]

at least it works with modern IE versions