A new site from Google, whom owns YouTube, is in the works. The site is the birth child of YouTube and Universal Music Group. Vevo.com should be running online within six months. Vevo will be a site, much like Hulu, where companies can share their music videos for free online to internet users. As it stands, UMG will take a certain percentage of the profits that Vevo nets from advertisers. Warner Music Group had a similar deal with YouTube at one point in which users could upload WMG copyrighted material as long as YouTube gave a certain percentage of money made from site advertisements; the deal between WMG and YouTube no longer exists. All companies are still trying to find ways to make revenue from user uploaded content. YouTube makes all its profit from advertisers, yet with the economy in such bad shape and inflation on the rise, everyone wants more money and no one wants to spend it. Greed is the main reason the deal between YouTube and WMG failed. UMG is also researching ways it can eventually generate future revenue from Vevo.
Even with all the talks of money, Universal Music Group realizes the importance of making its artists' content more widely available. The internet is extremely portable, especially since the creation of the Blackberry and Apple's iPhone. Many artists still create music videos, but the number of music videos being aired on cable television is declining. The creation of Vevo will give artists more exposure and allow users to instantly find and watch the artists they want to watch. The only thing preventing other companies from taking advantage of the internet is money. Most of the time getting permission to use copyrighted material requires paying a fee. Deals between companies allow users to use and obtain various forms of content without having to pay such a fee, as someone is already paying the fees for them. Perhaps if YouTube offered a service in which users could have the option of creating a free or a paid account. Using a free account a person would not be able to upload copyrighted material. Using a paid account, or an account that requires a subscription fee, would allow users to upload copyrighted material as a percentage of the subscription fees paid would go to the companies of the copyright material for rights usage. However, all users, be it paid account users or free account users, could watch all video content uploaded. The free account users would be allowed to do this because the paid account users have already covered the fees for the rights to use and share the content.
No comments:
Post a Comment