Lots of YouTube news today. First, the company has announced that it’s running a “small test” of skippable pre-roll adverts – they run before videos, but users can choose to skip them.
“We know what you’re thinking: who would choose to watch an ad when they can skip it? Well, that’s what we’re trying to find out,” says YouTube’s blog post, which goes on to suggest that previous research indicates that 15-second pre-rolls see ‘completion rates’ as high as 85%.
Separately, YouTube has announced plans to up the maximum resolution of video uploads to 1080 pixels – true high-definition – later this week. “For our content creators, we want it to look as good or better than the source’s quality,” says YouTube’s Hunter Walk.
Finally, WMG videos are making their way back onto YouTube, surrounded by the label’s own branding, ads and prominent links through to products. It’s part of the deal negotiated by WMG when relicensing its videos to YouTube recently, in which it secured more control.
How successful was U2’s gigstream on YouTube last weekend? The site has revealed that it notched up more than 10 million streams during the concert – the largest single streaming event in YouTube’s history. What’s more, the 150-minute concert has attracted more than one million views since the weekend, now that it’’s archived on the site. “This was a big win for the YouTube community,” says head of music partnerships Chris Maxcy.
Last night saw YouTube’s live stream of a U2 concert in California, watchable by viewers in 16 countries.
A Twitter widget was built in allowing people to chat about the gig, complete with a dedicated #U2webcast – it’s still one of the top trending topics on Twitter this morning.
The webcast is still accessible on U2’s YouTube channel. However, it wasn’t the only livestreaming show this weekend…
Researchers the Far North Living Lab webcast a performance from the Insomnia festival in Norway, using BitTorrent. It was tied in with the EU-funded P2P-Next project.
“If the scalability is good for live streaming, this can increase the amount of viewers without massive bandwidth bills,” says researcher Njal Borch.
YouTube and BitTorrent – very different beasts, but both looking at better ways to power concert webcasts. It’s a far cry from the early days of grainy, postage-stamp sized webcasts.
More news on YouTube’s move into live events: the site will stream a U2 gig live from Los Angeles this weekend, on the band’s YouTube channel.
It will be watchable from 16 countries, and is the second gig to be webcast on Google’s video site, following the Outside Lands music festival in August. Sections of the show will also be available to stream on the site after the event.
It’s the latest example of YouTube’s move into longform content. Earlier this week it announced plans for an online viewing party for the film Taxi Driver, with live Twitter updates appearing below the viewing window. There’s no news on whether this feature will also be used for the U2 gig.
Artists have always had opinions about what music (other than their own) is great. But in the digital era, there are far more chances to trumpet those tastes to their fans. The idea of ‘artist as curator’ is gaining currency, with a variety of examples.
Usher’s Top 100 iPhone app
R&B star Usher is the star of Melodeo’s latest streaming music iPhone application. It’s a playlist of 100 songs apparently hand-picked by the man himself from his favourite ever tunes. That means Arethra Franklin, James Brown and Michael Jackson among other artists.
The app – powered by Melodeo’s NuTsie service – then streams the songs to users, who’ve paid $3 for the privilege of downloading it. Melodeo has released a number of generic streaming compilation apps like this, but Usher is the first big star to put his name to one.
YouTube and Warner Music Group have confirmed that the label is to end its nine-month boycott of the video site, but with a deal that alters the way it makes money from YouTube.
WMG will now sell advertising around its music videos, rather than relying on Google. The label will set its own prices and keep the majority of the revenue, giving YouTube a slice. To try and drive up the price of ads, WMG will apparently launch custom channels within YouTube that purely focus on its artists.
Or, as WMG describes it, “a feature-rich high-quality premium player and enhanced channels”. This may include links to artist websites, buy links and integrated chat, according to Billboard.
The question is what this means for Vevo, UMG’s planned premium video site that has already signed up Sony Music Entertainment. If WMG is running its own premium player within YouTube, will this be instead of joining Vevo? However, TechCrunch suggests WMG is still in talks to possibly join Vevo too.
Pleased with the many five-star ratings given to your artist’s latest video on YouTube? Maybe hold the champagne. YouTube itself has admitted that its ratings system isn’t quite working as planned…
“The overwhelming majority of videos on YouTube have a stellar five-star rating,” admits a post on the company’s blog. Why? Because people don’t bother to rate videos they don’t think are great, seemingly. “The ratings system is primarily being used as a seal of approval, not as an editorial indicator of what the community thinks about a video.”
The blog post goes on to wonder out loud whether to replace its system with a simple thumbs up/thumbs down model, or a Facebook / Last.fm style ”like” system. However, what would be interesting would be to compare YouTube’s stats with Amazon and iTunes, which both use similar five-star systems. Is this a problem with the five-star model itself, or a YouTube-specific issue?
Premium music videos are coming back to YouTube’s UK website, after a licensing deal was finally struck between Google and PRS for Music. The two fell out earlier this year when Google pulled music videos from the site in protest at PRS’ licensing demands.
Google has confirmed to Music Ally that the new deal is a lump sum just like the last one – Google is paying an up-front payment but NOT a per-stream minima. This is good news, as it shows PRS and the publishers it represents are being flexible in their approach to licensing. Songwriters and composers will be keen to hear the finer details of the deal though, in terms of what tracking will be used to equitably share out the cash.
The deal is backdated to 9th January when the previous deal expired, and runs until June 2012. Neither Google nor PRS for Music is saying how much the upfront payment is, naturally.
It’s not been a good few months for Chris Brown, what with that domestic abuse case involving former partner Rihanna. However, he’s still riding high in the digital music charts this week. How come? It’s down to a YouTube video that’s gone viral called JK Wedding Entrance (above).
Basically, it’s a US couple who got married, and sent the wedding party dancing down the aisle in a slick dance routine to Brown’s song Forever. It’s had more than 12.8 million views on YouTube so far. Now Google has been boasting about how it’s helped turn a percentage of those views into sales of the song itself.
Indie band Barcelona say they sold more downloads and gig tickets after one of their songs was featured in a YouTube video that went viral. So even though the use of the song was entirely unauthorised, the band were chuffed enough to record a video response. “We want to let you know that it’s been affirming in the last week to watch in the iTunes store a correlation with the sales of our record ‘Absolutes’, growing in the rock charts as a result of having the song placed in the video,” says drummer Rhett Stonelake.
