Warner Music artists dance back to YouTube
Warner Music videos are headed back to YouTube, but it’s going to cost Google.
Executives at the third-biggest music company said they would receive “a vast majority” of any ad revenues generated by videos from Warner artists. That includes Coldplay, Madonna, Green Day and a zillion catalog artists such as the Monkees, Joni Mitchell and the B-52s.
The Warner-Google money dispute over YouTube led to a rude and sudden cutoff of Warner videos last December. (Google owns YouTube.) The online video giant now has all the music majors in line — Warner, Sony, Universal and EMI. Warner pulled its troops out of LastFM as well, back in June. That annoying dispute continues.
WMG chieftain Edgar Bronfman Jr. has criticized online entertainment providers for being “slow to create monetization tools.”
Of the new deal with Warner, Chris Maxcy, head of Music partnerships at YouTube, told analysts and reporters: “It sets us up for a sustainable partnership going forward by sharing revenues, where the vast majority of the revenues will be going to Warner Music associated with advertising when consumers watch or listen to the content on YouTube.”
Translation: Much was surrendered but much was gained.
YouTube serves 10 bil videos in record month
About 161 million viewers watched online video during the month of August, the largest audience ever recorded, the ratings service ComScore reported. They churned up more than 25 billion video views over all, another record.
Almost 40 percent of that traffic went to Google’s YouTube, of course. The UGC site served up 10 billion videos during the month, yes, another record. Google Sites pulled in 121 million unique viewers in the period, making the average consumption 83 videos. Your basic Hulu guy, by comparison, watched almost 13 videos.
(Note to the confused: ComScore lists YouTube under “Google Sites,” but 99 percent of that comes from YouTube.)
Microsoft Sites was the distant second, with 547 million (2.2 percent) followed by Viacom Digital with 539 million videos viewed (2.1 percent) and Hulu with 488 million (1.9 percent). Hulu has settled into the middle of the pack after making a run up the rankings in the spring.
Read the comScore lite report.
FCC making Net neutrality official
Making good on a Barack Obama campaign promise, the FCC plans to officially bar ISPs from lording over the content and data that flow through their Internet pipes.
FCC chairman Julius Genachowski, pictured, is scheduled to make the announcement Monday, various news media reported.
The news is quite good for the online video industry and its customers, both of whom gobble bandwidth and increasingly threaten traditional video media such as TV broadcasters and cable TV companies.
The Net neutrality rules are intended to prevent cablers and telcoms from denying access to potential rivals, such as online video providers and Internet phone-service providers. A lesser form of discrimination emerged with the deliberate slowing of data packets.
Obama’s choice of Genachowski for the top FCC post virtually guaranteed Net neutrality would be adopted in some form. The tech-savvy chairman is a former venture capitalist who worked for Barry Diller’s e-commerce company IAC/InterActive Corp.
The FCC’s tilt toward neutrality predates the Obama administration, however.
Even before the president took office, the FCC strong-armed Comcast, the giant cabler and Internet service provider, into halting its practice of throttling media file-sharing activities. Comcast had been limiting the bandwidth resources given to heavy online video users. In 2005, a broadband service provider in North Carolina consented to stop blocking access to a Vonage telecommunications application.
The formal adoption of Net neutrality would give the FCC the power to shut down any similar activities by ISPs.
The outlawing of Net discrimination also helps protect against ISPs censoring specific Web sites or other online content providers.
At his confirmation hearings, Genachowski vowed to lead “a 21st century agency for the information age” that would ensure “the Internet remains robust, open and safe.”
YouTube in talks for new Hollywood movies
YouTube appears poised to enter the movie rental business, offering streams of current Hollywood movies at the going rate.
The Wall Street Journal web site broke the news that Google’s amateur video giant has been in talks with Sony, Warner Bros., MGM and Lionsgate for full-length Hollywood fare.
At least some of the video rentals would be day and date with DVDs and Blu-rays’ arrival at Blockbuster and other traditional outlets, several sources said.
YouTube has been pushing the studios for a free, ad-driven model, but Hollywood seeks rental fees such as those on Amazon’s Video On Demand service and the iTunes Store. The studios apparently remain resistant to closing the online release window to match DVD availability.
YouTube recently created a “Shows” section for professional video, embraced widescreen ratios and is offering what passes for HD on the Internet. The Google property also made first-step deals for clips and trailers from DIsney/ABC and Time Warner.
YouTube said in a statement: “While we don’t comment on rumor and speculation, we hope to expand both on our great relationships with movie studios and on the selection and types of videos we offer our community.”
Google’s video sites (YouTube, basically) streamed 8.9 million files in July, accounting for 42 percent of all videos viewed online, according to comScore.
