YouTube’s Missing Soundtracks

YouTube’s got a blog post up about why audio tracks for music videos are suddenly disappearing – apparently it’s a ‘solution’ to the copyright issue. I’ve got a solution for you: get with the times.

As it is, searching for things on YouTube is already a chore because of the colossal amount of people who upload the tenth copy of the same video, but this time from a copy of a copy of a copy ten times removed. You see ten results for one video, nine of which are blurry blobs. It makes using YouTube frustrating, and it makes being a fan frustrating. Now, we not only have ten videos of blurry blobs, chances are good that the two in which you can discern the artists from the scenery have no soundtrack anyway.

The frustrating part comes when you realize that independent uploaders are uploading better-quality music videos than the content providers themselves (Universal Music, I’m looking at you), and so fans who truly want to appreciate a video are left to get it off Bittorrent, or, if they’re lucky and the stars align for them, buy it off iTunes. Of course, that assumes that they’ve seen the video already and know that they want to buy it. People like myself, who aren’t willing to buy a TV, sign up for cable, and sit in front of MTV or MuchMusic for hours a day, don’t get to see the videos except from YouTube in the first place.

When it comes to sites like YouTube, copyright holders (like Universal) should understand that ‘participating’ to the minimal extent possible while still being able to check off a box on their marketing plan isn’t something that endears them to the fans. We want to listen to the music. We want to watch the videos. There’s nowhere else we can do this! Our only option is YouTube (and similar sites), and the content providers are taking that away from us and providing us a shadow of what we can provide each other.

Think about that for a second. We can provide the content that they don’t seem willing to, but they won’t let us. We’re music fans. We love our favourite bands. We buy their albums, we go to their concerts. Unless you have a TV and glue yourself to MTV or MuchMusic, you can’t just check out the latest video. So, copyright-holders: stop worrying about how the internet is going to destroy your livelihood. It’ll only do that if you work against it. Work with it, and you’ll benefit richly.

Here’s an example, just to throw out there. Set up YouTube to use Flash’s streaming protocol, perhaps something with some form of DRM’ed stream, I don’t really care. Stream music videos (for example) in high-quality and HD. Let people watch them online, link to them, share them with friends. Put a giant ‘Buy’ button next to the video. Charge the same that iTunes has it for, and let people download un-DRM’ed, high-quality video. Worried it will end up on the internet? Guess what, it already is.

The same thing happened with music. “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.” Well, with iTunes shifting to DRM-free music, and the Amazon MP3 store always being DRM-free and, well, people ripping CDs when Sony’s not sabotaging their computers, I’d say we’ve proceeded to stage four for digital music.

So content providers, it’s time to wake up. Every month you spend protect last century’s business model is another month you miss out on developing this century’s business model. Hire some smart people and figure out how you can take advantage of the internet instead of trying to break it, and you’ll find that the future you’re worried about has been here for ten years – and it’s not so scary after all.