THE FACEBOOK GUY
My friend got a call the other day. The guy said “Hi, I’m from Facebook, the advertising department.”
My friend was watching TV, but was intrigued, he said, so he muted the TV.
“Listen,” the Facebook guy said, “there’s a guy in Fredericton Maryland, named Jimmy Johnson … Jimmy needs you to look at his thing.”
“What?” my friend said …
The Facebook guy chuckled, “He’s got an ad, really it’s just a regular old post, and he paid us $5, so what we’re doing is calling around, trying to find him 2,000 more viewers. You use Facebook, right?
My friend paused, and said “What?”
ALMOST EVERYBODY’S DOING IT
My little story doesn’t make any sense!
I made it up! And the point is, Facebook is a great example of the way the web works today.
All the big players, except one, filter everything, then try to upsell you through their inexpensive advertising program. Just backwards think for a second – if I pay $5, and I get 2,000 more viewers on Facebook, where do those viewers come from?
Seems obvious … they were already there!
THE YOUHUMAN
My friend hangs up the phone, a little bewildered. It rings again.
This time it’s YouTube.
“Hi! What are you doing! I’m from YouTube, a real human, and we’re just calling around to see what you happen to be doing right at this moment!”
My friend says, almost embarrassed, “Ha, ha ha, well … watching TV!”
My friend felt a little intruded upon, but the YouTube human was very friendly.
“Do you ever listen to music?” it asked …
“Ha, ha, yes!” my friend said …
“Where do you listen to it?”
“Well, frankly, YouTube!”
The human laughed, then said “YouTube is for videos, but I’ll set you up with our music services.”
“No, sorry,” my friend interjected, “I’m good.”
“What’s the matter?”
“I’ve used Google Music, and it does funny things to my tablet, and doesn’t let me listen to music while I’m looking at something else, and it drives me nuts!”
“But I’m not talking about Google Music. I’m YouTube. Yeah, Google owns us, and yeah, we already had a music service, but basically, since everybody listens to music on YouTube, and has to make a video for every song because YouTube doesn’t accept music all by itself, we’re giving in.”
He continued … “Since nobody likes Google Music, we’re calling it YouTube Music!”
“What?”
“So, it’ll be music on YouTube … yeah, I’ll set you up.”
My friend – “Okay, friend!”
And, we’ll set you up with YouTube TV, it’s the only thing you’ll need.
“YouTube what?”
WHAT YOUTUBE’S DOING
YouTube is changing the world, and they didn’t mention it to anyone, while every other platform, including Facebook, Amazon, eBay, and Twitter, filters even the most potentially viral post, stopping it in its tracks, to sell visibility upgrades.
Nobody uses iTunes to play music, ever since they integrated apps, and turned it into control central, with a badly nagging online store, because all the user wanted was to listen to one song.
YouTube saw it coming, Google knelt, and we’re now watching YouTube advertising its own television station, a platform that includes local TV … as well as YouTube Music.
Their passive-aggressive style deals with the only problem, the one they had previously hurdled by signing every popular musician to a get-paid-scheme through YouTube, yielding to the fact that that’s where everyone goes for music.
EAR CANDY
Now it’s “YouTube Music.” That’s “tube” for video. It’s a video platform. Now everybody doesn’t have to make a music video for their music.
If that last sentence doesn’t sound very industry-disruptive to you, very significant, think of both, both the newbie indie-dude with his guitar, lost in the crowd on YouTube, because yes, we are here … but also think of these simple points …
1. To take James Taylor as an example, James had a lot of great hits …
2. Back then, he didn’t make a music video for every song on each record.
3. Within the past 10 years, an endless stream of listeners has insisted on listening to music on YouTube, despite that it’s a video channel.
4. YouTube figured it out, eventually giving up …
5. Music listeners continue to this day to listen to music on YouTube. Just like Google did with “Earth,” they’ll let the public build the entire infrastructure, uploading what’s basically meaningless video, just to get the song, the hit, so they can “get hits.” If somebody hadn’t already, the logic is, it’s a good idea to upload that big Rihanna hit to YouTube, if you want traffic to your YouTube channel. Voila! The largest music library in the world is built, by volunteers.
6. YouTube, originally forbidding copyright infringement by telling you to take the video down, without saying anything, just stops telling you you can’t do it. If you put up the Rihanna song, you’ll start to realize they don’t always prevent it, and you’ll get an email saying “copyright infringement,” but you don’t have to worry about it, you just have to let them put their own ads over it. YouTube now allows copyrighted music.
7. As part of this, James Taylor has done a deal somehow, and it’s a big one, ’cause everybody’s done it, and everybody’s getting paid when they get played on YouTube. But more specifically, when the video plays. The system, at this point, does not accommodate music that doesn’t have an accompanying video. You can see why this is significant, with all that hit music from the 70s and 80s sitting around … but there’s not an accompanying video. It’s not just the indie-hopeful that was being asked to make a music video. The patch was, let the the mere mortals fill in the blanks, while we develop a plan B …
DISRUPTION INTERRUPTION
But the hurdle, the new one, was still permission-related. In order to pay James Taylor, you don’t want to interrupt his song, so visual ads laid over a who-cares-what video, on YouTube, served the purpose. It was implied people actually looked at the ad, because it was a video channel.
“YouTube Music’s” solution is to turn off the music when the player loses focus.
You can’t, for example, read the words to a song, with YouTube, not through its app anyway, playing the song, all on the same tablet.
As soon as you switch to your text editor, the music stops! The new problem, no music player working in the background, has spread to Spotify, and everywhere, quickly.
This is because of the property-nature of the music, and the functionality of viewing an ad for artists to get paid.
It’s an aggressive apple-nibble, too! Today’s smartphones and tablets evolved from the iPod, the jogger’s best friend! Now, if you jog with it, it turns itself off!
Basically, YouTube is manipulating how players “don’t” play in the background, in the name of IPR. They’ll fly it, maybe appearing as a coincidence, all the way to the moon.
YouTube charges a subscription fee for “YouTube Music.” The only thing the “YouTube Music app” does, is allow you to play the song in the background. This proposition will take off industry-wide, because, remember, YouTube is where everybody listens to music!
YouTube is well poised to simply charge less for what everybody already pays for. Both television and music.
The future is still up for grabs, but you’re going to have to keep paying to get real functionality everywhere … Spotify, Rhapsody and all subscription services will suffer dramatically, and iTunes and any music native to iPhone or iPad, will continue to get less user-friendly, and falter.
FACEBOOK ZUCKS THESE DAYS
There’s ongoing trust issues with Facebook, combined with their new “algorithm,” another word for “we manipulate all the data, including everything you see, and robots are involved, so it’s complicated.”
In the heat of a congressional hearing, and flooded with edgy hate posts, Zuckerberg, tail between his legs, possibly wisely, decided to divvy people up moreso than usual, permanently, through an algorithm, which has resulted in it seeming like nobody’s around anymore!
Adding gasoline to the fire, a lot of people had become hidden Facebook users, or left altogether, because of all the arguing, and when they realized Facebook was guilty.
The world’s most famous college-kid-done-good’s best moves in the next 10 years will only help Facebook survive, and that will be an uphill battle.
YouTube will embarrass all the other players with its final swipe, taking over TV and music.
All the dominoes are lined up. And that includes Derek’s!
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