ehh, youtube is barely profitable, you can tell when it is because they make a big stink about it being profitable! in investor stuff. and then they go quiet the next year.
google absolutely doesn’t need more money, but youtube doesn’t really make money. also creators struggle more to get paid these days. I don’t really think googles solution here is the right one, it’ll just drive people away. But getting free stuff forever, and never watching an ad, in this case just hurts small content creators
They could restructure executive pay and be more profitable. Throwing ads in it seems like the lazy way to turn a profit, but it IS Google and that IS what they do.
whilst I would normally be in agreement with this kind of thing, youtube is just one of those services that is incredibly expensive to run. over 500 hours of content are uploaded to youtube every minute, all of which needs to be re-encoded to multiple formats and resolutions, and then served on a super wide CDN - as well as all the other 500 hours of content uploaded every minute for the past decade
They could cut every youtube exec to 0 pay and it wouldn’t make a dent in the costs
Executive pay makes up up a much much smaller portion of business expenses than people think. I crunched some numbers for Lowes a while back after they got featured in story about CEO pay, and if you simply vaporized the CEO and redistributed his pay, Lowes employees would get an hourly raise of two cents.
And there are a hell of a lot more YouTubers than there are Lowes workers. Executive pay really is not the unlimited money pot people think it is.
I’d say that the monetization is what hurts small content creators.
Content creators ought to make videos to present their ideas using visual and audio when that is the best media to do so. However most just make videos to make money.
Small content creators who don’t monetize their content don’t get shown.
Instead it’s all clickbait through and through to get those nickels.
Remember the days when people posted videos just to post videos and share them and not expect to make money from them? I do. In fact, I'm old enough to remember the entire Internet operating this way.
I’m also old enough to remember that this is a bullshit memory. Everyone was finding ways to get paid even back then. No one is producing endless content for your free consumption for the shits and giggles.
People sold dvds and merch, and most ran off youtube like blip.tv because you could make money that way. When youtube finally enabled monitisation, people were so excited because they could finally get off these terrible alternatives.
Maybe you are thinking about the late 90s? I was there for that too. That was all funded by the dot com bubble, people got paid. No one wants to entertain you for free. You aren’t so special.
Yes, I remember that. “Content creator” was not a concept that existed. Just private people uploading funny or informative shit to the intrawebs without any form of production past maybe that WMP newspaper preset lol
The first instance that introduced me to the content creator mindset was justin.tv, the predecessor of Twitch. Not saying that was the first glimpse of that, just the first time I noticed.
I watched all the ads when they started. I installed an adblocker when the ads became more of a nuisance than a short break. It is always a service problem always.
I think the problem here is that the ads you saw earlier weren’t bringing in enough money. Let’s not forget that the model here is tv which has several minutes of ads every ten to fifteen minutes. A single 15 second skippable ad doesn’t really make it work out.
Realisticly I just don’t think the ad supported model works anymore, but also people won’t pay, you went from ad supported to blocking instead of paying at least.
bstix@feddit.dk 8 months ago
Yeah, but do they need more money? It’s ruining their product.
echo64@lemmy.world 8 months ago
ehh, youtube is barely profitable, you can tell when it is because they make a big stink about it being profitable! in investor stuff. and then they go quiet the next year.
google absolutely doesn’t need more money, but youtube doesn’t really make money. also creators struggle more to get paid these days. I don’t really think googles solution here is the right one, it’ll just drive people away. But getting free stuff forever, and never watching an ad, in this case just hurts small content creators
google will go on even if youtube shuts down.
ArgentRaven@lemmy.world 8 months ago
They could restructure executive pay and be more profitable. Throwing ads in it seems like the lazy way to turn a profit, but it IS Google and that IS what they do.
echo64@lemmy.world 8 months ago
whilst I would normally be in agreement with this kind of thing, youtube is just one of those services that is incredibly expensive to run. over 500 hours of content are uploaded to youtube every minute, all of which needs to be re-encoded to multiple formats and resolutions, and then served on a super wide CDN - as well as all the other 500 hours of content uploaded every minute for the past decade
They could cut every youtube exec to 0 pay and it wouldn’t make a dent in the costs
BraveSirZaphod@kbin.social 8 months ago
Executive pay makes up up a much much smaller portion of business expenses than people think. I crunched some numbers for Lowes a while back after they got featured in story about CEO pay, and if you simply vaporized the CEO and redistributed his pay, Lowes employees would get an hourly raise of two cents.
And there are a hell of a lot more YouTubers than there are Lowes workers. Executive pay really is not the unlimited money pot people think it is.
bstix@feddit.dk 8 months ago
I’d say that the monetization is what hurts small content creators.
Content creators ought to make videos to present their ideas using visual and audio when that is the best media to do so. However most just make videos to make money.
Small content creators who don’t monetize their content don’t get shown. Instead it’s all clickbait through and through to get those nickels.
TimeSquirrel@kbin.social 8 months ago
Remember the days when people posted videos just to post videos and share them and not expect to make money from them? I do. In fact, I'm old enough to remember the entire Internet operating this way.
echo64@lemmy.world 8 months ago
I’m also old enough to remember that this is a bullshit memory. Everyone was finding ways to get paid even back then. No one is producing endless content for your free consumption for the shits and giggles.
People sold dvds and merch, and most ran off youtube like blip.tv because you could make money that way. When youtube finally enabled monitisation, people were so excited because they could finally get off these terrible alternatives.
Maybe you are thinking about the late 90s? I was there for that too. That was all funded by the dot com bubble, people got paid. No one wants to entertain you for free. You aren’t so special.
Karyoplasma@discuss.tchncs.de 8 months ago
Yes, I remember that. “Content creator” was not a concept that existed. Just private people uploading funny or informative shit to the intrawebs without any form of production past maybe that WMP newspaper preset lol
The first instance that introduced me to the content creator mindset was justin.tv, the predecessor of Twitch. Not saying that was the first glimpse of that, just the first time I noticed.
danque@lemmy.world 8 months ago
I watched all the ads when they started. I installed an adblocker when the ads became more of a nuisance than a short break. It is always a service problem always.
echo64@lemmy.world 8 months ago
I think the problem here is that the ads you saw earlier weren’t bringing in enough money. Let’s not forget that the model here is tv which has several minutes of ads every ten to fifteen minutes. A single 15 second skippable ad doesn’t really make it work out.
Realisticly I just don’t think the ad supported model works anymore, but also people won’t pay, you went from ad supported to blocking instead of paying at least.
LinuxSBC@lemm.ee 8 months ago
If they don’t make money, YouTube will get shut down, and we’ll lose the archive of past videos.