YouTube has just turned six years old, and has more milestones to report to the world on its relentless growth.
Founded in 2005, YouTube’s ease of use and potential has attracted hundreds of millions of people to the service. The idea that a video in almost any format could be uploaded by the user, and then converted and provided on its own YouTube page (and could be embedded anywhere else) attracted drones of people to the service.
That growth only seems to accelerate for YouTube, which is now reporting that over 48 hours of video is uploaded to the site every single minute. So in just one minute, two whole days of video content has been added to YouTube’s incredibly vast digital vaults.
To compare that to last year, it represents a 100% increase in the amount of content being uploaded at any given time.
All of that content needs viewers to have any purpose on the video sharing giant, and YouTube is now reporting that it delivers 3 billion video views every single day.
Now YouTube is challenging its users to keep up the momentum , so that it can one day in the near future reach 72 hours of video footage per minute, and 4 billion daily views. To help this, the service is constantly making improvements to aid content creators and to provide its service on as many platforms as possible.
Result for: video content
After originally pledging to support both H.264 and WebM content, Google has decided it will ditch the H.264 video codec from Chrome and go with its WebM format instead.
H.264 video is widely used, currently being the de facto industry standard for encoding digital video. It is used with Blu-ray disc and is supported by a wide variety of consumer electronics devices. However, H.264 technology is patented and adopters pay royalties to the MPEG-LA group.
Google acquired On2 Technologies in 2009 to gain access to the VP8 codec. It opened op the VP8 codec and created a new royalty-free media format called WebM. WebM gained support in the Firefox, Opera and Chrome browsers, but Apple and Microsoft declined to officially support WebM (although WebM support can technically be added to Internet Explorer).
The growing split on the Internet between H.264 and now it’s growing royalty-free competitor WebM is likely to cause problems for content producers looking to use HTML5 to display video content on the Internet.
It is unclear how Google’s removal of H.264 from Chrome will affect Google’s other web services, particularly YouTube.
Result for: video content
Billboard is reporting this week that UMG (Universal Music Group) has pulled its artist’s music videos from MTV.com, due to a breakdown in negotiations over licensing fees.
UMG has long licensed music directly to MTV but it now does all its direct licensing through Vevo, the joint venture site which includes Sony Music, YouTube and AT&T as stakeholders.
MTV’s deal with UMG has now expired and Vevo was in negotiations with MTV before the talks broke down. The deal is only for online properties and also includes the sites for VH1 and CMT.
The popular TV network had this to say on the matter:
“For almost 30 years, we have enjoyed long and colorful partnerships with all the music labels, including UMG and their talented roster of artists on MTV, VH1 and CMT. As the industry evolves, we continue to seek out new and innovative ways to connect artists with their fans that are mutually beneficial to everyone. However, during our recent discussions with Vevo, we were unable to reach a fair and equitable agreement for rights to stream UMG artists’ music video content. As a result, UMG has elected to pull their music videos from our web sites. We are disappointed by this move and sincerely hope that UMG will work with us toward a fair resolution and allow their artists to once again connect with the millions of music fans who visit MTV.com, VH1.com and CMT.com every month.”
UMG struck back with the following:
“MTVN has been unwilling to negotiate a fair syndication deal with Vevo to carry our artists’ videos and consequently our videos will not be shown on their online properties. We believe that using Vevo as our online music video syndication platform is the best way to maximize revenue for our artists, our songwriters and ourselves, while bringing our videos to the widest possible audience. In less than 8 months since its launch, Vevo has already become the web’s #1 rated video network with over 49 million unique visitors monthly, dramatically eclipsing those on MTV’s online properties, while attracting scores of major advertisers and tens of millions in advertising dollars. As a result, our artists are enjoying tremendous exposure on Vevo on YouTube and Vevo.com, and will enjoy even more as Vevo continues to complete syndication deals supplementing the existing arrangements with leading destinations as AOL and CBS Interactive.”
