There are a few truths worth knowing about YouTube. First, YouTube accounts for 2x as many plays as Spotify. Second, YouTube pays out to artists (and song owners) at fractions of what services like Spotify pay. Third, all of that may be about to change.
The folks at Re/Code, citing unnamed industry sources, claim the world’s biggest video site is readying a slate of programming that will only be available to people who join its upcoming subscription services. In other words, exclusive content that will only be visible to paying YouTube users. This appears to be the next step in YouTube’s mission to actually fund famous YouTube stars to create content for the service.
Either way, the general consensus in the media industry is that YouTube will announce some of that programming, which it is helping to fund, at an event at its studio/event space in Los Angeles this Wednesday, October 21.
Why does this matter to you? Beyond the idea of having to pay for YouTube for the first time ever, there’s a small wrinkle—YouTube insists that any content creators who make money off the site’s advertising must play ball in the new paid ecosystem. Upload a sweet vocal top line you wrote hoping to get the attention of a big-name DJ? If it gets enough views to start generating ads, YouTube will likely have the right to include it in their new paid tier. Meaning you start making Google quite a lot more money.
It is unclear how the paid tier will be structured, and how payouts will differ from the current ad model. It is also unclear how payouts will be structured if, say, you upload an unlicensed remix of a large artist’s track and it takes off. All we know for certain is what these sources have been told, and that we can all expect to get answers this week.
(h/t: Re/Code)
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