<story><title>YouTube to block indie labels who don&apos;t sign up to new music service</title><url>http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jun/17/youtube-indie-labels-music-subscription</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>fpgeek</author><text>Upon reflection , I think this article (and others like it) are starting from the wrong place and end up confusing the issue more than illuminating it.&lt;p&gt;I think the right place to start is that Google wants to offer a premium, ad-free YouTube service. Given that, what happens to videos that are ad-supported today:&lt;p&gt;1. They participate and are ad-supported for free users and subscription-supported for premium users. Cool. Everyone&amp;#x27;s happy.&lt;p&gt;2. They don&amp;#x27;t participate and...&lt;p&gt;(a) Premium users see ads anyway. They&amp;#x27;re pissed.&lt;p&gt;(b) Premium users don&amp;#x27;t see those videos at all, but free users see them with ads. Might dodge the issue for a while, but when they find out they&amp;#x27;d be even more pissed.&lt;p&gt;(c) You can&amp;#x27;t offer ad-supported videos to free users unless you also offer ad-free videos to subscription users. Labels that like the ad-supported terms and don&amp;#x27;t like the subscription terms are pissed.&lt;p&gt;Alternative (c) seems to be what Google has picked. Which seems logical if they&amp;#x27;re launching a new service they want new users to like.&lt;p&gt;Corollary: Indie labels should still be allowed to post whatever non-monetized videos they want (subject to other YouTube policies like the terrible ContentId, of course). If that isn&amp;#x27;t true, then we can talk about being &amp;quot;kicked off YouTube&amp;quot;. Otherwise, they&amp;#x27;re choosing to leave because they don&amp;#x27;t like how the monetization option is changing. That&amp;#x27;s clearly their privilege, but, in the exact same way, it&amp;#x27;s Google&amp;#x27;s privilege to change the monetization they&amp;#x27;re willing to offer (whether that&amp;#x27;s as small as tweaking the payout formula or something larger like adding a subscription tier).&lt;p&gt;P.S. I found some of the Ars Technica comments (not the article) particularly helpful in terms of explaining how this must fit together: &lt;a href=&quot;http://arstechnica.com/business/2014/06/artists-who-dont-sign-with-youtubes-new-subscription-service-to-be-blocked/?comments=1&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;arstechnica.com&amp;#x2F;business&amp;#x2F;2014&amp;#x2F;06&amp;#x2F;artists-who-dont-sig...&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>YouTube to block indie labels who don&apos;t sign up to new music service</title><url>http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jun/17/youtube-indie-labels-music-subscription</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>Shooti</author><text>Plausible breakdown of Google&amp;#x2F;YT&amp;#x27;s side of the story:&lt;p&gt;1. Youtube wants to offer users a subscription service with no ads.&lt;p&gt;2. Youtube needs to update its licensing&amp;#x2F;terms with artists:
  If a video plays for a subscriber they see no ads, artist gets money from subscription pool. 
  If a video plays for a non-subscriber they see ads, artist gets money from ads pool.&lt;p&gt;3. Artists need to explicitly agree to these terms because it changes how and how much they&amp;#x27;ll get paid.&lt;p&gt;4. It doesn&amp;#x27;t seem fair for a user to pay a subscription, expect to see no ads, and then see ads for some video&amp;#x27;s because that artist&amp;#x2F;distributor did not agree to new terms. This is why Google wants all or nothing.</text></comment>