MySpace have announced the launch of a new premium content section for MySpace Video in a direct challenge to YouTube.
In the coming months, MySpace Video will launch branded channels with content from National Geographic, The New York Times, Reuters, The Daily Reel, Expert Village, Flow, IGN Entertainment, Octane TV, Kush TV, Ripe TV, VBS TV, and Young Hollywood.
Jeff Berman, General Manager of Video for MySpace said in a statement that the upcoming branded channel launch continues the growing momentum of MySpace Video, “empowering [MySpace] partners to customize their own video channels and use it as a hub to create niche experience for users”. He also went on to say that the announcement was a sign of things to come for MySpace Video.
The new branded channels are provided from within MySpace Video and will contain varying video content from each provider.
It’s an interesting move by the News Corp owned MySpace. Most observers have been waiting for the launch of a new Fox driven multi-network YouTube competitor which we wrote about in December. Whether the drive to use MySpace as the conduit to take on YouTube is the long awaited move from News Corp or we are yet to see a new stand alone YouTube competitor is still unkown. Certainly you’d question News Corps strategy if they were to build MySpace in to a YouTube competitor in the premium content marketplace only to later launch a new stand alone site that would compete against both.
Who’s going to watch tv now?
I don’t think any amount of proprietary content can help MySpace steal market share from YouTube. Every music video I want to watch is still on YouTube. When one goes down, five go up. – that’s the nature of viral content. You cannot stop it. And the smart musicians don’t let their managers/labels pull their content off YouTube. And the ones who do, lose out on major promotion. Instead of watching some Rihanna video, I’m watching indie stuff like Harlan.
This is another smart move–video branding is a huge untapped market for businesses and media conglomerates–too many are relying on viral campaigns with no branding, with content doing more to help YouTube grow than the actual companies producing it.
Yesterday’s Washington Post highlighted a cool web retail event that American Eagle did with a client of mine–notice that the reporter mentions how long the webcast concert was: 2 hours. What she didn’t have space to mention was that nearly 80% of the thousands who came watched the whole event. That’s two full hours watching content with an American Eagle logo and branding right on their desktop in their line of vision.
Branding + video = smart marketing.
I agree with Smaran, proprietary wont make a difference- FLV rippers are a dime a dozen now, the whole DRM game is quickly proving itself an antiquated utopian ideal who’s time has past. On the other hand, I don’t know that any one site needs to be “king” of online media any more. While it is true, YouTube will remain the space to find every video eventually, despite attempts to clear out copyright materials, broken links in emails and forum posts back to something you found funny makes that approach transient.
I agree with the idea of leaving free publicity like a riped YouTube video up, but the issue of making enough money to continue to produce quality work comes into play. As a result, I think you’ll find originating URLs on most video in the future, advertising where it came from, as well as overlain advertising and sponsor logos at the head and tail of each. The key to retaining quality, watch-worthy content will be to charge advertisers, sponsors, and perhaps subscribers/customers for the piracy. A pay-for-piracy approach admits to the fact all will eventually be ripped by someone, and distributed, at which point remaining advertisers with ad placement and overlain graphics continue to have their message spread, which must be accounted for in the billing structure.
Chasing the DRM smoke trail is ultimately an exercise in futility.
What is interesting is how MySpace is trying to be everything to everyone. Youtube really hasn’t changed and gone after the other attributes of MySpace. I guess we will know who has the most traffic in the coming months.
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Interesting news! Personally, I do not think that MySpace will overrun YouTube by the addition of video channels for branding. It is not because the big boys want a spot on MySpace that they are going to neglect YouTube, nor will YouTube audience suddenly rush to MySpace because of that.
YouTube is generally used as a search engine tool where you find almost everything. That is not going to change overnight as Smaran rightly remarks.
I don’t think piracy is a real problem, Pierre. If you create good quality content, viewers will follow your work and if it is exceptionally good, they are prepared to pay for it. Regular Peer to peer networks are therefore beneficial and I do not believe in the myth that piracy is costing producers money. On the contrary, it is freee publicity that is highly viral. That said, I will have a look at your system.
John Rothko,
http://www.mira...letutorials.com