Good news, Madonna, Rob Thomas, Wayne Coyne, Jim Morrison, Frank Sinatra, Billy Joe, Jeff Tweedy, James Hetfield, Enya, Regina Spektor, James Blunt, Ray Charles, Flea, T.I., Keith Sweat, Peter Buck, Jerry Garcia, Faith Hill... uh, Linkin Park: The Strike’s over. You’re going back to work.
The giant music company that isn’t EMI, Warner Music Group (WMG), finally struck a new deal with local indie-startup video website YouTube this week, after some nine months of separating us online music video fans from crucial Burt Bacharach videos and the like. In other words, videos from your fav artists will once again be allowed to waste your precious time with their outrageous online antics, after a spat in December of 2008 led to the hasty and probably Lars Ulrich-approved removal of WMG’s content from YouTube. And aside from once again being accosted with Ulrich’s ugly mug from time to time, this is a pretty good thing for us lazy, underemployed, freeloading, downloading, uploading, commie-socialist types.
So what’s changed? Well, basically, the new deal is that Warner itself will now be in charge of selling ads for its videos rather than the ‘Tube. This will allow the label to set its own prices for those advertisements as well as keep the majority of the ad revenues that result. Sweet. In return, YouTube will receive some sort of cut of all revenue under the terms of the agreement. Hey, let’s all have a money fight.
“We feel this is a sustainable model that works for both parties,” YouTube’s head of music Chris Maxcy said stoically, trying as hard as he could to bite his lip and not LOL at how rich he’s gotten. “It puts control and success of their future in their own hands.” (It was difficult to hear the rest of his interview, because there was a money fight happening in the background.)
In order to help create one of those illusory, McDonald’s-like “premium environments” around which to sell these ads, YouTube will also allow Warner to create custom channels within the service dedicated solely to Warner artists. “Members of the YouTube community will not only be able to access videos and other music-related content from Warner Music Group recording artists and songwriters, but will also gain access to an enhanced user experience on YouTube with a feature-rich, high-quality premium player and enhanced channels," Warner said. The label will then populate these channels with higher-quality video than YouTube’s usual shlock, and the two are developing some kind of branding presence that would help identify Warner videos from all of that pedestrian crap out there. Direct links to artist websites, chat capabilities, and other additional social networking capabilities are also apparently in the works.
But it’s not all “premium roast coffee” and “top choice angus beef” for us users with this new Warner music video channel thing, either. For example, it hasn’t been determined yet whether YouTube users will be able to embed Warner music videos from YouTube on other websites like they can now with regular videos. But concerned sources say if the fidelity of Lars Ulrich’s aforementioned hideous face can’t be replicated through the embedding process, it may not be allowed. Also, user-generated YouTube videos will not be allowed to appear on the premium music video player. And fans will have to wait for Warner’s official music videos to appear on YouTube before they can include label-owned songs in their own “Kiss From a Rose” fan videos and junk, as the label wants to launch its music simultaneously across the service.
But either way, the bottom line is that Warner’s music videos will start reappearing on YouTube in the months ahead. YouTube expects the process will take the remainder of the year to complete (including the time it takes WMG to insert its videos into the YouTube system, as well as the time it will take YouTube to finish building the premium video player and ad platform). And even if you hate Led Zeppelin as much as I do, there will still be plenty of... Genesis... and... Sean Paul... oh crap.
