YouTube Previews Crowdfunding Initiative
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- May 29, 2014
Creator Preview also hints at monetization of mashup music videos
By James DeRuvo (doddleNEWS)
Looks like YouTube wants a piece of the crowdfunding pie, hinting that the streaming portal plans on offering crowdfunding options directly from creator channels. And that’s not all, as the video portal plans to offer not only better management and commentary tools from mobile devices, but also hinting that videos which mash-up and cover eligible popular music may be able to finally revenue share.
I’ve seen how creators have tapped into their connection with fans to get funding… but the problem is, a lot of this funding happens off YouTube. And I’ve been thinking about how we can bring this to YouTube so fans can help fund creators that they really love. – Jehan Ratnatunga, Product Manager
Responding to a semi-annual global satisfaction survey that YouTube conducts with its Creators, YouTube seeks to find out what they would like from the portal to make the experience a better one. And the replies that got not only included a need for better management tools and revenue sharing, but also that YouTube gives them a heads up about what the streaming portal is working on. The result is their first ever Creator Preview video (see below). And in it, they outline a series of initiatives that they are working on to make the experience better for Creators, and to give them the ability to bring crowdfunding in house.
According to their video and companion blogpost, YouTube is planning the following:
In the coming months, you'll hear more about:
- A separate mobile app that puts the creator features that are most important right when needed
- A feature that allows fans to fund their favorite creators on YouTube
- A way to harness the power of the crowd to create captions and subtitles for your videos in 60+ languages
- Revenue sharing of mashups and cover tunes of eligible song videos – presumably from YouTube’s new Music service
- Expanded Creator Academy
You can imagine why YouTube is offering crowdfunding … by letting services like Kickstarter and Indiegogo do all the heavy lifting, to the tune of $5.1 billion in 2013, and of that,?between 4-10% in fees, the streaming giant has been missing out on a huge piece of the crowdfunding pie. So, naturally, they want to lure their Creators into bringing their crowdfunding in house.
The only question is, how much will YouTube take as a percentage? Will they rely on industry standard, or will they take less, at least initially, to give creators motivation to move away from Kickstarter, Indiegogo, and others? That would be a good move. They could also take more. Then again, they could just rely on the ad revenue as well and offer it as a perk. Who knows at this point?
The other interesting development is that YouTube plans to allow Creators who do musical covers and mash-ups of eligible popular songs to monetize and revenue share. This is sure to be a legal licensing nightmare, but I presume that this will be part of the YouTube music service, and any music publisher who wants to be on that will have to agree in principle to allow their work to be covered or mashed up for a piece of that revenue.
How will Creators know which song is eligible and which aren’t? Well, YouTube plans to use the ContentID system, which will now offer a monetization tab on eligible songs. So when you upload your cover or mash-up, if you see a tab that says “Monetize my video,” you’re in. Just look for the "Matched third-party content" notification and a gray dollar sign icon. Click on the dollar sign, select the Monteization tab, and submit. YouTube will then review it and let you know if you qualify.
But there are two instances where videos will not be eligible…
- Videos that contain a commercial sound recording, such as an instrumental or karaoke recording
- Videos of live concert performances
For more information on that, Visit Google’s help page here.
All in all, a very cagey and smart development from YouTube which should give Creators plenty to work with.
Hat Tip – NMR
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