
Amazon Targets YouTube with New Online Video Posting Service - petethomas
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-05-10/amazon-targets-youtube-with-new-online-video-posting-service
======
CryoLogic
I run a popular YouTube educational channel (in the top 10 for it's niche) and
have had some serious issues with YouTube that have nearly made me quit.

I had a young (pre-teen) boy who filed copyright claims on several of my
tutorials, and they where taken down instantly and took months to resolve via
email. I lost about $1500 in revenues which was never returned.

Beyond that, YouTube is taking a ~50% cut of your ad revenue AND any donation
revenue on the site which seems pretty extreme. They also don't do good when
it comes to new content discovery, as the YT search promotes mostly popular
content (basically, bad for new creators).

~~~
stephenr
If YouTube is such a crap fest, why not use an alternative like Vimeo?

~~~
Grimm665
Vimeo has a reverse business model from YouTube, creators must pay Vimeo to
host their videos. They also do not have an ad-revenue sharing program for
creators to make money back from.

Brady Haran and CGP Grey discuss their YouTube business and their gripes with
the platform on Hello Internet.
[http://www.hellointernet.fm/podcast/58](http://www.hellointernet.fm/podcast/58)

------
Someone1234
It is prime time for competitors of YouTube to come out of the woodwork.
Everyone is incredibly tired of YouTube's bonkers copyright complaints system
which has already resulted in many people moving to Twitch.

To beat YouTube you essentially need to reproduce YouTube then create a more
balanced playing field between content creators and copyright owners. At the
moment the content creators exist in a "guilty until proven innocent world"
where the copyright owner are the judge and jury too! It is bonkers, fair
usage is dead on YouTube.

~~~
fredley
The real question is how would a competitor deal with the immense pressure
from the music and film industry bodies? I mean, YouTube has nothing to gain
from making life difficult for content creators - they are acting in this way
because they have essentially been compelled to. If a competitor became
popular enough, the same thing would happen.

~~~
Someone1234
For one thing they could require people to submit real DMCA notices. YouTube's
system isn't DMCA-based, and as much as I dislike the DMCA, it still provides
greater protections than YouTube's system does.

That's how bad YouTube's draconian copyright system is, the DMCA is an
"upgrade."

~~~
wnevets
how does something like that scale to the size of youtube?

~~~
dmoy
It doesn't, not without lots of labor, and that's sort of the crux of the
issue...

A YouTube replacement will be better in this respect only as long as they
remain small and under the radar of the movie/record industry. :/

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westernmostcoy
Amazon has a very bad track record of integrating with other services: do you
think you'll be able to watch this on a normal Android phones? or an Apple TV?
or a Chromecast? will they let other places on the internet embed videos
easily? how will they be substantially better on copyright/DMCA complaints?

On top of all that, I think this needs a nice clean discoverable UI for this
type of thing to be successful and they've really struggled with that in the
past.

I'm also sad about what keeps happening to Prime. This has a benefit that I
wouldn't consider strong enough to sign up for while the rest of the business
continues to sneakily weaken the shipping benefit I _did_ sign up for.

~~~
ecobiker
Back when Kindle launched, it was very common to see the story of Kodak being
floated around (film vs digital) to claim how Amazon is flexible. Fast forward
a few years, Amazon video and music services are the worst in terms of cross
platform support. The primary reason I don't buy/rent anything from Amazon
Digital is because I can't stream it to my Chromecast. Considering the
adoption for Chromecast I would have expected Amazon to support. Instead they
ban it from Amazon.com.

~~~
hatred
Well I think Amazon just played the tit for tat card here. Historically,
Google took the first slab by banning Amazon from it's app store:
[http://techcrunch.com/2014/12/11/google-removes-amazons-
app-...](http://techcrunch.com/2014/12/11/google-removes-amazons-app-listing-
from-google-play-search-following-addition-of-appstore-instant-video-
integrations/)

No wonder Amazon is now reciprocating by explicitly disallowing chromecast
devices on its own site.

tl;dr; Google ain't a saint/good citizen either. No one is.

~~~
westernmostcoy
Google removed Amazon's app for violating the ToS, which clearly states that
you may not sell your own app store through Google's.

This is still entirely on Amazon's bad behavior.

Also, your theory sort of excuses Amazon but does not explain why they also
banned Apple TV.

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tmaly
I love Amazon, but I wish they would integrate more with other companies. Did
they really need to make their own app store?

I own several kindles, and I was hoping to play a few learning videos for my
child on the kindle fire. Well, the Youtube support is quite lacking.

I am not sure if this new video venture will work out. Youtube has quite a bit
of momentum, and it has far more support across the mainstream devices than
anyone else.

Vimeo is second place in my mind, but I have not watched a video on there in
ages.

~~~
Finnucane
"Did they really need to make their own app store?"

Yes, they did. Not for your benefit, but for theirs. They're a retailer, and
they want to control their own ecosystem. Does Walmart let Target have a
corner of their stores to sell stuff in? No,they don't.

~~~
Splines
There are few real-world analogies for the vertical that is Amazon. We don't
have brick and mortar construction companies that also are a retailer (as far
as I know). Amazon is like a company that builds houses, and will only allow
Amazon appliances inside the house, even though other appliances generally
work fine. Your buddy across the street has a house made by Google, and their
house can have any appliance, which kinda irks you.

~~~
Finnucane
Well, not quite. The point is that you can't get anything for your Amazon
"house" that Amazon isn't taking a cut from the sale.

(And in ye olde days, there was a time when you could open the Sears, Roebuck
catalog, and order, literally, a whole house and everything that needed to go
inside it, and have it delivered to you.)

------
Apocryphon
I am reminded of an old Hypercritical podcast: "Everybody Wants to Rule the
World" ([http://5by5.tv/hypercritical/74](http://5by5.tv/hypercritical/74)).
Everyone wants their own stack to have full control over. So now we've got
multiple gardens (of differing openness) tended by cathedrals.

------
thenomad
This is HUGE for the independent film world.

It's currently incredibly hard to sell an independent film online via a well-
known and trusted channel that people are used to buying through. The nearest
equivalent before this was getting onto iTunes through an aggregator, which
costs $1500 or so per film.

I'm tremendously happy Amazon have taken this step: it'll be a huge benefit
for indie filmmakers.

~~~
chx
Interesting. Isn't vimeo an avenue?
[https://vimeo.com/ondemand/startselling](https://vimeo.com/ondemand/startselling)

~~~
thenomad
Last time I checked they required you to create an account before buying a
film. That's an absolute conversion-killer.

Also, there's a huge difference between most people's comfort level in buying
from Amazon and buying from Some Random Site - and Vimeo still counts as Some
Random Site for most people. (As does Gumroad and similar.)

Finally, the discovery aspect is significant. People are searching Amazon for
films to buy and watch. They, by and large, aren't searching Vimeo for that.

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jvolkman
Presumably I won't be able to watch the videos using my Chromecast.

~~~
Buge
While Amazon Prime does not currently support the Chromecast, you should be
able to at least cast the browser tab.

~~~
westernmostcoy
That is not an acceptable alternative, sadly. :(

~~~
Grazester
You would unfortunately have to take that up with Amazon

~~~
westernmostcoy
Yep, this is totally on them. It's led me to stop using their video products,
and we're not renewing Prime after this period expires.

~~~
blakeyrat
I agree it sucks, but you could have bought a Roku or something you knew
_already supported Amazon Prime_ in the first place instead of a Chromecast.
It's not like there's never been competition in that space; Chromecast is a
super-late-comer.

~~~
westernmostcoy
I could have, although I've owned a few Roku boxes and they've all been slow,
unresponsive and crash-prone. We actually upgraded from Roku to Chromecast.

Amazon would prefer I buy their Fire TV stick thing, which they would then use
as a hook to sell me more Amazon stuff. Given Amazon's attitude towards Apple
and Google's streaming devices, chances seem decent to me that if Roku ever
increased its market share then Amazon might cut them off.

I'd rather just use another streaming video store.

------
CM30
Aside from Youtube's copyright system, I also hope something like this works
out because of their UI. I mean, let's face it. Youtube just seems to change
their layout and features every few months or so, regardless of whether they
make the site easier to use or not and regardless of what anyone actually
wants said changes.

If Amazon can come up with a good, user friendly UI and then not screw it up
by making constant changes, they could do quite well here.

~~~
TaylorGood
As a light user it's relatively the same for me..

Upvote on purpose :D

------
kmfrk
Something like two months later, I still have not managed to get my custom
YouTube URL. Everything to do with YouTube (which is completely filtered into
G+) is a miserable experience, and I can't wait for more competition.

~~~
TaylorGood
Implying you've met standard requirements, correct? Did you try "advanced"
method of claiming ownership of URL to use name?

~~~
kmfrk
I've tried just about anything, including contacting support who never got
back.

They've got this dumb system where you can claim a custom link, but it's

    
    
       youtube.com/c/TaylorGood[]
    

where you have to fill in [] with something. It makes no goddamn sense, and if
I do it, that's going to be the new permanent url, which I clearly don't want.

Google are so clueless sometimes.

------
Taylor_OD
This is huge. Amazon has the firepower to take on youtube. Hopefully Amazon
can come up with a clean UI that makes people WANT to use their service unlike
amazons current video streaming service.

~~~
tracker1
Funny, I was thinking the opposite... I was wondering if people would actually
use this system, and how Amazon would distinguish the naming... part of why
"YouTube" is successful, is it stayed "YouTube" instead of "Google Video".

A separate brand for a separate product is important, as anything else dilutes
the brand, which is already doing that to itself pretty well. Google has been
better than many companies with this imo. Apple, better still.

It will be interesting in how this works out and ties into Twitch, as I think
that will be the more natural conduit for integration. As it stands, it's just
another place for clickbait sites to embed video from.

------
JohnTHaller
Is this going to be tied to Amazon's crappy app store as well so regular
Android users won't use it?

~~~
petra
maybe they'll make it available via sideloading from the web directly.

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petra
In the article they mention 15cents/6cents per hour. Is it considered a lot
compared to ad revenue ?

~~~
Buge
I have a video that got 17600 views and 25000 minutes watched according to
youtube analytics. It made $22.50 from ads. So that comes out to 5.4
cents/hour.

------
arzt
Total aside, but now that they are encroaching on Google's territory in video,
I would hope they move to create a free mapping service for AWS users.
Startups that try to generate revenue are so hamstrung by the baseline $10,000
maps for work license.

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ilamont
The Amazon service requires close-captioning. Is that hard for video producers
to set up?

~~~
Buge
There's free software that allows you to create subtitles/captions. For your
average consumer who just wants to shoot a family video and upload it, that is
a very large barrier to entry compared to youtube. For a high quality video
creator who puts a lot of effort into editing videos, it's not much extra
effort. This would be one way to ensure most videos are high quality.

~~~
Splines
> _This would be one way to ensure most videos are high quality._

I'm not so sure of that - Amazon can't possibly police every single video to
ensure correct closed-captioning. There are likely tools that can take a
video, rip the audio stream and machine generate a subtitle file for you. If
you have a person uploading a family video this will pass the "good enough"
bar for you. You'd get something close to Youtube's automatic closed-captions.

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serge2k
If I'm a big video content producer what incentive do I have to remove myself
from the user base of youtube?

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chx
I have pocket recorded (imagine the quality) a Les Miserables show in 2011 and
uploaded to YouTube at the end of 2012 when it became clear a legal CD won't
happen (it should've!). It was taken offline and a copyright strike lodged
against me last week. Do they own the copyright? Sure! But there are no legal
recordings of that particular cast. So tell me how was their business affected
by my upload? Mind boggling.

~~~
talmand
A free version online would inhibit sales of any future releases if they
choose to do so. Just because you can't legally purchase it today doesn't
allow you to harm the future sales of tomorrow.

~~~
chx
People miss completely miss my point. There is a demand for this, there are
forums, there are forum trackers where people trade bootlegs, illegal
recordings from shows. Why are these not released? Just put it out as MP3, it
doesn't need to be anything spectacular, if you do not want do not even spend
money on editing just put the soundboard recording out. There will be people
who would _die_ to pay for these, I know. There is nothing to lose -- wait
until the cast changes (perhaps even just the lead) and then upload the
previous cast recording. Done! Why, why, why this is not done? I need to hunt
down musical shows from 16 years ago, why I can't just buy them? Who loses a
single cent from me copying a 16 year old show which was not released legally?
Piracy is a service problem doubly, triply so in the musical world because
there is no legal supply and there is demand.

~~~
golfer
dura lex, sed lex.

"The law is harsh but it is the law."

~~~
chx
Ha! I presume I deserve that. But what I am asking is -- why is the law this
way? And, of course, the next step is, how do I change it? Or much rather: how
could I convince the rightsholders to serve us better? For many years I have
been yearning to be able to speak up and be heard in copyright-related matters
but I can't for my life figure out how.

~~~
talmand
Such things have been done. It's a matter of researching the people
responsible and trying to figure out what they would respond to. Bring enough
folks to the public outcry and maybe they will see your point. There are
several movies that exist almost solely because of public outcry, so I would
think it might be possible to get an official recording done.

Or run for office and work on legislation to change the law. But I seriously
doubt you would make many friends in the entertainment industry if you try to
change copyright law too much.

