When NBC Universal and News Corporation-backed Hulu launched in Fall 2007, it was a signal that old television media might actually grasp the distributive power of the internet. Not only were great programs made available for free as streaming videos, users could grab and embed them anywhere online – in their entirety or just as clips.
So it’s a bit of a shame to see another giant media conglomerate, Viacom, buck this trend and actually clamp down on the embedding of videos from the MTV Network. Yesterday in a post to its developer blog, a staff member for MTVN developer services announced that video embeds would no longer be available through MTV’s API, starting sometime in early March.
Currently, developers can build websites that embed videos from MTV, VH1, CMT and Logo (such as this one that also embeds videos from YouTube). But soon developers will be allowed to display only thumbnails and meta data associated with MTV’s videos. If users want to watch the actual videos, they’ll have to follow links back to webpages that are owned and monetized by MTVN.
This not only means that developers can no longer build websites that automatically incorporate MTVN’s high quality video content; you simply won’t find legitimate embeds from MTVN anywhere, since you’re already not allowed to embed the videos as an end user (Correction: End users can actually grab an embed code from the player and there’s been no announcement as to whether this will change as well).
We don’t know yet why MTVN decided to pull the plug on the most useful part of its API, but we do know that at least several developers are angry, especially since they helped MTVN debug the API only to see their capabilities limited. We’ve sent an email to the staff member who posted the announcement and hope to hear back from him soon.
Update: MTVN Corporate Communications representative Mark Jafar has gotten back to me with the following details:
All of our online video is and will remain embeddable for end users, just like Hulu. That includes music videos, clips and full-episode content across MTV.com, VH1.com, ComedyCentral.com and our entire Web portfolio.
The only thing we’re pulling back is fully open access to our music video API, and it’s purely an issue of economics. Every music video we stream through the API costs us money due to our deals with the record labels, regardless of whether an ad is attached or not. So, allowing developers to use the open music video API can be a money-losing proposition for us. However, we’re absolutely open to extending the music video API to third-party publishers who are willing to work with us to monetize. It’s all about striking that right balance between innovation and commerce as we continue to move forward and try new things.
Hulu’s like the BBC but for America right?
You can’t watch hulu outside the USA because you haven’t contributed to America right?
Hulu’s share method is a link, not an embed.
So what are you really trying to say here?
How could you possibly have an embed for content that is only US licensed? The BBC doesn’t have embeds either. That’s why you can’t embed Dragon’s Den or their other boring programming on TechCrunch. You have to copy it to youtube, THEN embed that.
So what is the point of this article?
ok, i guess there is a way.
So can our international friends see this embedded video or am I doubly wrong?
I use Hulu with Playon, in my ps3, so I am not super viral with my content. Sorry about that mistake.
“We’re sorry, currently our video library can only be streamed withing United States…” that is what I’m seeing instead of video, so Hulu does not work for Russia, but to be honest the same is for MTVN videos, most of them also blocked to Russian users.
In my own defense, when you watch Hulu on your HDTV with MediaMall PlayOn, none of the sharing options are shown. It just shows up as a media server on Xbox or PS3.
I know that’s no excuse, but hey. I don’t like watching TV on the internet.
Dude…just stop.
As they say,
If you’re in a hole … stop digging!
Anjali Sen
@Chris
You are an idiot
Why would the guy be an idiot??
It’s a fact as tall as the Eifel Tower that people outside the USA CAN NOT watch Hulu stuff.
I’m in Belgium and I see the message “Sorry, our video library can only be streamed within the United States”.
I’m sure TC-contributor Robin Wauters, very Belgian like me, will join me in this one.
well, they never made a latest video rss feed, so i just watched the ones posted in headbangers blog
too bad they pulled the plug before they even had the chance to see what developers could whip together with their amazing content….another case of the “we’re in suits and dont understand technology so lets just keep things the way they were so we dont have to learn anything new”.
too bad they dont even realize that most of the videos people want to interact with have already been uploaded to the dozen other video sites with open APIs
It does seem quite silly. They could have run ads in the videos and also created a youtube like system for charging for downloads.
This seems like just a bad business decision. Developers are your friends, not your enemies.
Anjali Sen
Here’s an example of what can be done with the API…
http://www.dipi...m/mtv?q=Madonna
Search for any big-name artist or browse the top videos through all time.
The data is pretty messy, at least the dates. They definitely don’t correspond to the actual release date of the videos. E.g. Ray of light shows 2004, but was actuall released in 1998. Anyway, minor quibble for a cool feature. I’d guess MTV is killing this to cut costs. They are eating bandwidth and probably more importantly, licensing/royalty costs.
MTV hasn’t been relevant in years, nor will they be again. Seriously who watches that stuff besides 15 year olds.
@please explain
As someone who manages a digital media team at a media company, let me try to explain.
Streaming video is very expensive. It is hard to monetize embedded video. The economy sucks. So when I am asked to make up for shortfalls in revenue, I need to find a way to reduce operational costs. The last thing I want to do is lay off staff, especially if they are talented. So my best options are to reduce expensive budget items that bring in no revenue, embedded video.
Believe me, I want to do all sorts of cool shit with technology, especially video. It sucks to have to pull back, but layoffs suck even more.
“Believe me, I want to do all sorts of cool shit with technology, especially video. It sucks to have to pull back, but layoffs suck even more.”
No, you flush Akamai, Brightcove and Castfire, and you build a cluster to stream the video with lesser backbones.
And continue to hog bandwidth streaming your videos everywhere.
If you’re talented people can’t build a fallback cluster on cheap rack servers from China with gigabit connections to cobbled cheapo 3rd party duplex bandwidth, then they deserve to be fired.
I know how much these CDN services cost. I almost worked for one of the above mentioned, and I use the others.
They make absolutely free money. So does Amazon.
Suits shouldn’t make technology decisions.
“If you’re talented people”
You’re should be your. I hate bad grammar too. BTW, PentiumDs are like $20 in bulk now. Clustered computing and SAN software is free. Even something like Google’s mapreduce, not that you would even need that.
I will go a step further, and say that if somebody, say Sun Microsystems, would make a push button CDN in a single Sun Fire box, that could take nodes in different locations and load balance automatically,
they would be extremely rich. The solution would also have to bridge bandwidth.
So many companies are looking to drop CDN fees it’s unbelievable. There is a HUGE market in this for both hardware and software solutions.
This is a multi-million dollar space and this post proves it. BIG MONEY, BIG MONEY for the solution provider that will kill centralized CDNs.
You’re the 40 year old virgin that flames people on techcrunch with inane comments on Valentine’s Day. Hope you had a good night sleeping in your mother’s basement. You should re-evaluate yourself man and try saying something constructive (sorry if this is harsh).
Chris, this has nothing to do with CDNs. It has to do with paying the record label to play the video and not being able to sell ads that offset that expense. Business, not tech. Get it?
I think this trend will continue. The only way to effectively monetize video content online is to charge for it, or release it exclusively on one platform.
Chris,
your a genius.
Hey, I work with CDN every day. I see the tragedy, the complaints, the cache flushings, the humanity.
The QA team that just can’t tell whether somethings wrong, or whether it’s an old file in CDN.
CDN is a plethora of problems. Not just one brand, but any CDN brand including video CDNs.
The final solution is to use the power of cheap hardware, and free software and dump CDN once and for all.
Limelight and other providers will fool you with “Tier 1 backbones”
You don’t need them. Bridge your bandwidth together and load balance through multiple datacenters in different locations.
Set up fallback DNS entries and do it that way.
The best way to do it is to have a cluster that simply takes images of your production servers and updates the SQL and host entries.
If somebody could offer this as an easy solution they would totally make a fortune. Decal some chinese rack servers with your logo and load it up with clustering software and sell it as a “Akamai CDN killer”
instant fortune. This is actually part of my real job, so I won’t go further. No, I am not working on a commercial solution for CDN, but I certainly would find that interesting. Nothing on CL about that type of position though. LOL
Somebody’s really good at sticking decals on low budget 1Us, and reselling them!
http://reviews....xmas-google.jpg
At any rate, another solution would be to have people in the industry fund a “non-profit” or NPO CDN.
They could then share the CDN services at cost minus the cost of the employees. Like the music industry funds the RIAA.
This would be an even more cost efficient and attractive solution, but would require industry collaboration to pull off.
It doesn’t have the DIY appeal.
The point of all my comments is that you shouldn’t have to cut back on content, or make a choice between content and employees. People ALWAYS come first before anything else.
We are not robots after all.
If somebody’s gauging, you should cut out the cost bottleneck instead of cutting back.
Back in the 90s Microsoft was gauging for IIS and Zeus, ect….
Remember? What happened, Apache and Linux happened.
CDN’s are gauging costs with minimal maintenance fees. I know the owners of one of these CDNs personally and they told me they had 5-6 employees(they don’t even own a building, they do it all online as a team with a virtual business address) running millions of dollars in streams.
I mean? WTF? You know what I mean?
I’m all for making tons of money, but at some point you have to at least try to be smarter than they are to save yourself.
gauging should be gouging. I had a few vowel typos there. Sorry.
Makes sense MTV is old school, they won’t get it
That’s a great way to “repair” the brand…
MTV was big several years ago, but not so much anymore.
The problem is you have old and or techless corporate side controllers that have no concept of how the Internet truly works in terms of usage. They come along looking to save cash then say, “we’re giving away our content to who for what??” and then it’s back down the hill you go. Buckle up and restrict content to just your site. Genius. This is the sort of thing that popped the Internet bubble, they assume usership based on content and overall Internet activity but kill themselves by not allowing anyone to actually find or see it unless they explicitly come to their websites. Old hat thinking and greed kills the true working model of the modular content and data sharing that developers and users finally understand is required to be succesful and utilized.
Might be related to the latest news about TVinci’s financing round?
Viacom and TVinci have had their cooperations in the past in MTV Poland and MTV Israel, and if they’re shutting down embedded videos, it might be because their about to push a new video service using TVinci.
If you ask me, that’s bad for business for them. They need all those incoming links to keep the website popular. They’ll learn though.
This is a responce to the piratbay legal action, youtube and others know think they can know finally monetize there content, foooooooollls
I sure hope this works itself out soon and we can figure out a way to monetize great content on the web. Otherwise we are going to be missing our favorite shows when there is no way to pay for them.
“They just don’t get it.”, “It’s bad for business”, “Developers are your friends”, blah, blah, blah.
Maybe when tech geeks realize the world does not revolve around what they do, they’ll get it. It’s about making money. Giving the farm away (video content in this instance) is NOT a business. It’s their content and they should be able to monetize it on their terms. The internet = free access = rich VC’s and a few lucky cash outs. The era of ad supported free is coming to an end my friends.
It’s not their content. Its the labels content. When the labels wake up and realize that they dont need MTV to show off their shiny videos anymore MTV will look back and say “oops” Perhaps we should have embraces the web more.
Big corporations NEVER get the web. They always lose to some little nimble start-up who figures out how to do what the people want in a fast and cheap manner.
I put this into the who cares pile.
CDN cost are a factor but I think the drastic drop in CPM’s for video ad inventory is also to blame here. 2 years ago you saw $4-$6, now there is a glut of inventory available. Google Ad Sense for video is getting what, like $0.60?
zzzzz idiots.
Viacom is a genius company creatively, but has been far less innovative with new technology and chasing new consumer behaviors. Bottom line, they are fearful (very) of the MSOs and as a result avoid any risk that might disrupt their current model. There is no cohesive strategy, each channel is left to go their own way. It’s a shame, they should be rocking it, they are the original disruptors, the talent there is second-to-none, they out-niched the broadcasters and are now being out-niched, by um….the broadcasters (who are really aggregating niches (in Hulu) and in doing creating leverage that viacom will ultimately have to succumb to). Yes, the economics of online video pale in comparison to TV, but new models will emerge and when they do Viacom will be poorly positioned to take advantage of them. They should either relent and join Hulu or buy a Joost, partner up and go head to head.
This is all I have to say…
http://veejay.t...-the-music-died
I really hope we can figure out how to keep the API alive!
Its true, due to their deals MTV has to pay a fraction of a cent to the labels every time a video is streamed. To expose all their catalog videos through an API only to ultimately have to report and pay back on streamcounts really doesn’t make much sense from a business standpoint. Its not due to bandwidth issues. Blame the labels.
Not surprising
Theres many other sites to watch TV episodes online.
Cool!
wuz up what r we talking abount