Business News Digital

YouTube says Content ID has paid out a billion (dollars)

By | Published on Wednesday 15 October 2014

YouTube Content ID

Ah, YouTube. YouTube, YouTube, YouTube. I can’t remember, do we still hate YouTube? Is it still screwing over indie labels everywhere? And exploiting creators for kicks? Or is it now fully focused on providing a platform for aspiring celebrity sex pests? It’s so hard to keep up. But as long as it is still filling massive metal sheds with dollars and roubles so that the glassholes that run Google can keep buying big meaty pies, I guess that’s all fine.

But – oh here comes a but – YouTube would like you all to know that they don’t just fund the pie habits of the Google board. Oh no, any pies you find at the HQs of big content companies (and boy, visit any big content company and you’ll find a lot of pies), they’re courtesy of the YouTube machine too. Because the video site has now paid out over $1 billion via its Content ID system since launching the thing in 2007, according to the Financial Times.

Content ID, of course, is YouTube’s proprietary rights management system which helps bigger content owners, like record companies, monitor when their content is uploaded to the video platform by third parties, either via a straight music video rip off MTV or as the soundtrack to a piece of user generated content. If and when alerted to an upload via Content ID, the rights owner can choose whether to block the video or let it stay on the site and take a cut of any ad revenue generated.

The per-play royalties for a record company on a piece of user-generated content are not as good as on an official video uploaded to its own channel. But plenty of labels nevertheless choose to monetise rather than block vids using their tunes, because providing they don’t directly compete with your official pop promos, the UCG can provide extra revenue where someone else does all the work.

Basically everyone’s sitting around hoping one of their tracks will become the next ‘Harlem Shake’ phenomenon. “Oh, when will one of our tracks become the next ‘Harlem Shake’ phenomenon”, they all say, looking at the depleting pile of pies on their meeting room table, and tapping the YouTube control panel on their computer screen, like that will help.

“Content ID has empowered creators to remix, curate and celebrate their favourite songs and videos”, YouTube’s pie maker in chief Matthew Glotzbach told Billboard, “resulting in videos that are both entertaining legions of fans and rewarding rights holders with revenue”.

So YouTube. It’s not all fucked over indie artists and wannabe teenage misogy-stars. No, it’s also an innovative UCG monetisation platform for serious content owners. Pies all round.



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