Radio, TV, Cable, Satellite, YouTube, CDN, UGC – content rules – that’s why there is a grab for quality content from studio’s.

That’s why millions of dollars are being spent on licensing fee’s for top quality content by the big CDN’s
‘An Inconvenient Truth’ Al Gores docu-flick – – over a 100 million downloads! So that alone is worth $200Million bucks lost in download fee’s at a $1.99 – probably more!

All studio’s are switching their business models to include online streaming and downloads – it’s a better business model for them – for music – no CD’s to cut, no jewel boxes to buy, no inserts to print and no shipping costs or returns!

Do not confuse radio air play / payola with distribution – radio did not distribute – they broadcast! BIG DIFFERENCE.

You are right about distribution channels changing, — no more Tower Records or Sam Goodies or any other record retail chain – all gone, only Target and WalMart left!

Movie studio’s were long ago stopped from owning theaters. But now – they can set up an online streaming site and stream direct B2C or B2B/CDN!

Warner and other studios/record companies are alive and well and making more money now than ever – because they closed the free file sharing sites like Napster down – and they will close YouTube down as well for the same thing – illegal copyright infringement.

It’s not just Warner’s – it’s everyone from European football (soccer to you), Paramount, CBS, BBC, NFL, NBA, AP, Rueters – and Spongbob!

And when they win – they will close down the access via the ISP’s – just like Napster – and when Viacomm wins the $Billion lawsuit and all the others follow suit – YouTube, like Napster will become a liability. $20Million a month in adrev is chicken feed!

But I agree with you that the studio’s cannot seem to agree on anything together – remember Intertainer – that was a 90′s studio collaboration company funded by the top five – to harvest all studio content online and stream – and in the end everyone sued each other.

So it does require a platform like YouTube or Napster to push through the new distribution or broadcast model, but in the end it will die in a heap of lawsuits and be a mere shallow shadow of itself inside of three years.

Content means nothing today, and it never has. In all of commercial art history (movies, music, etc), the sole winners were those who controlled the distribution. If not for payola, most of the major artists we all know and love would not have made it into the distribution chain, regardless of how good they are.

Payola is mostly dead today, because distribution is no longer in the hands of the few. Yes, Google and others are significant market share of distribution media, but they’re not the only players. Anyone can theoretically host and distribute their own commercial art. I know of, and have invested, in 3 artists myself who are making decent bank hosting and distributing their own content.

Warner is dead in the water. CD sales won’t last forever. iTunes takes a large chunk. Guitar Hero proceeds will get competitively less profitable as more artists lowball others. Payola is mostly dead, although still exists on some level.

Google does not NEED content to push ads for revenue. Skinny queens dancing, or someone’s 3 year old trained to swear, do well enough. If you look at the top viewed videos on YouTube, it’s rarely anything commercial or “popular.”

Google has the distribution, and anyone who doesn’t kowtow to their demand should eat it. I’d love to see Warner try to build their own server farm/cloud to distribute videos. It won’t happen.

Even better, copyright is dying the slow, painful death it should have. Thankfully, copyright will be a failed experiment for the past 250 years, and publicly-distributable information will no longer be a profitable venture, but a great marketing asset.

i just typed in Madonna on YouTube and a Madonna video popped up – Material Girl – how appropriate.

Me thinks you are mistaken about YouTube’s honesty and ability to screen copyrighted material (pun intended).

YouTube is using copyrighted material and like Napster, using it, for the most part, without the owners consent. I hope Viacomm wins their $Billion dollar lawsuit

http://disruptionmatters.com/2008/12/23/music-2019/

Labels want to make the same kind of money they made selling expensive CDs. No way!

Honestly I can’t wait for the ultimate demise of the labels. They’ll never wake up and realize their old model of music distribution died years ago, and that their power is gone. They’ll flail about, suffocating themselves with their own ignorance and greed. I used to work in music distribution, so I’ve been watching this pathetic charade for about ten years now and nothing ever changes.

Remember BMG doling out hundreds of millions because they took a stake in the old Napster…. Use that frame of reference – and you will understand why an equity stake in YouTube ends up on the liability side of the balance sheet as opposed to the asset side.

Imeem went from sacrilegious to alter boy overnight – and Lela was always the parochial school type (selling CDs to start off). But YouTube has been a heretic – that’s the difference.

Ok Brother OM – no more baiting me – that’s about as much as I should be rambling. Give me your next post will ya.

As I used to say while managing money on Wall Street – the clarity of hindsight is magnificent!

Cheers.

It is common knowledge that domain knowledge has roots in insider knowledge. :-) so what is indeed the gootube story?