User Generated YouTube Videos Bring in More Revenue than Official Music Videos…

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The IFPI (International Federation of the Phonographic Industry) has just released their annual Digital Music Report.  The report includes some very interesting details on user generated YouTube videos.

DMN has documented some of the emerging success stories that surround user generated YouTube videos.  These include mashups, covers, and re-creations.  Some examples are the “Harlem Shake” videos or the “Lisztomania” spin-off videos.  These videos can be automatically detected so ads can be placed on them.

As these videos continue to grow in popularity, so does their monetization potential.  According to the Digital Music Report, this potential has translated into massive revenue.

Revenue from advertisements on user generated videos has surpassed revenue generated from official videos.

Francis Keeling, Global Head of Digital Business for Universal Music Group, told The Star:

“It’s a massive growth area. We’re very excited about the creativity of consumers using our repertoire and creating their own versions of our videos.”

15 Responses

  1. Anonymous

    Yes, Google invented the perfect solution to stop YouTube piracy: Fans upload whatever they want, YouTube makes money and right holders make money. Everybody’s happy!

    Now, Google needs to create a similar solution to stop its search engine piracy.

    But first, the company has to be sued for piracy. This is the only language Google understands. So let’s hope it’ll happen sooner rather than later. Google is the portal to organized copyright crime today. And that can’t go on.

    • Anonymous

      Is any artist outside of the 1% happy with what they’re getting from Youtube? Sub-Pandora rates. I’m certainly not anywhere close to happy. They’re the biggest service in the world, the largest volume of streams, and they pay less than anyone else. It’s a crock.

  2. hippydog

    Thanks for putting in links more often Nina! You “news articles” are getting better all the time ! thx

    from the “report”
    Quote “Revenue from performance rights generated from broadcast, internet radio stations and venues — saw strong growth.
    Performance rights income was uS$1.1 billion globally in 2013, increasing by an estimated 19 per cent in 2013, more than double the growth rate in 2012, and accounting for 7.4 per cent of total record industry revenue.”

    7.4 % eh?
    I would like to know one day how much of that comes from venues?

  3. anon

    “But first, the company has to be sued for piracy. This is the only language Google understands. So let’s hope it’ll happen sooner rather than later. Google is the portal to organized copyright crime today. And that can’t go on.”

    Utter bollocks. You can demand that google block all the pirate sites you want — others will just pop up and there’s no way for google to fix that without *constant monitoring of the entire Internet and its results,* which is not only technically impossible, but would turn the Internet into a copyright police state. This problem isn’t google, it’s the fact that piracy is still a money-making venture. Cut off the money (by offering better legitimate services, as youtube has), and the piracy will die down. Suing Google is a blunt tool and it only makes the music industry appear ignorant of how the web actually works. Plus, suing google hasn’t been proven to work well…

    • Anonymous

      ” others will just pop up and there’s no way for google to fix that without *constant monitoring of the entire Internet and its results,* which is not only technically impossible, but would turn the Internet into a copyright police state.”

      And yet they have no problem doing this with porn results without turning the internet into a copyright police state? How come blocking piracy is IMPOSSIBLE again? We know it’s technically possible.

      • Anonymous

        “How come blocking piracy is IMPOSSIBLE again? We know it’s technically possible”

        Yes, it’s very easy for Google to stop mainstream piracy immediately.

        Their recent efforts against child porn proved that.

        And yes, Google will lose money when they close their piracy portal — probably a lot more than they lost when they finally had to close their child porn gateway — but there’s no way back now.

        Google is at war with every single content provider and creator in the world: From the unknown musicians, writers, movie directors and software developers to the biggest companies in Hollywood & elsewhere. And that’s a war they can’t win.

    • Anonymous

      “suing google hasn’t been proven to work well”

      On the contrary!

      ContentID is the direct result of Viacom’s $1,000,000,000 lawsuit against Google!

      Nobody knows the terms of this week’s final settlement between the two. But we do know this:

      YouTube would still be a piracy site like Google Search and the Pirate Bay without Viacom.

      Now, we’re just waiting for the next Viacom to start the next battle. It could be any big player; Google is at war with them all.

      Only two things are certain:

      Google will stop its piracy — and there’ll be blood!

    • David

      ‘Constant monitoring of the entire internet and its results’ is a pretty good description of Google’s core business!

      Of course, they can’t cover the ‘dark’ net, but because it is ‘dark’ the average casual internet user doesn’t have much to do with it.

      Note that when it comes to *spam* Google not only constantly tweaks its algorithms, but employs hundreds of people to manually review suspected spammy sites and remove them from search results if necessary.

  4. GGG

    Each video isn’t necessarily (there’s probably a couple that have) surpassing the official videos; it’s aggregate, right? So the study is basically saying the tens or hundreds or even thousands in some cases of fan-made videos per each ONE official video is making more money.

    I guess it’s good to know fan videos are monetized, but the headline is sort of misleading. An official music video might get 30M views and the user generated ones get anywhere from like 20k-2 million (numbers are arbitrary, don’t read into them). So the official is still make more than all those, but there might be 300 fan made videos.

  5. TuneHunter

    Mr. Francis Keeling needs long trip to Tibet to clear his mind from the religion of free and semi-free MUSIC.

    His Veevoo and all other tricks done on YT with license to “play it all” and “own it all” is just a suicidal activity. They will choke sales, they’ll choke Radio and will arrive with give all Tube Player and few streamers earning 15 billion dollars from ads and subs. Music as a merchandise will vanish!

    In the meantime few bold moves can bring discovery based 100 billion dollar industry.

    All old players, like labels and terrestrial Radio and all new kids like Spotify, Shazam, XM, Pandora and YT are destine to at least quadruple. Someone has to do it!