Children to permanently work around age ratings, government announces

The entirely pyrrhic move of making pop videos display age ratings (or, rather, some pop videos on a couple of platforms) has achieved whatever low bar of success it was aiming for, and will now have its pointless life extended permanently, the government has announced.

So far, the BBFC has rated a massive 132 videos from the estimated 10 million plus music videos (about one third of videos on YouTube are music videos of one type or another; Quora estimates there's more than 80 million videos on the service).

I'm assuming the idea is that you're so unlikely to find an age rating on a video that you'd forget the way your workaround the requirement to prove your age by the next time you come across one.

The equally vapid labelling will apply to Vevo as well.

Music popular-ish on YouTube

MusicAlly has done some analysis of what's popular on YouTube:

The headline stat is that music accounted for 62 of the top 250 channels ranked by annual views in 2014, with 43 of those falling under the Vevo banner.

In other words, music doesn't dominate YouTube, but it is mostly significant, but what really thrives are channels run by the big labels.

This is quite interesting:

Also notable: the low ranking for some of the traditional stars of social/digital media: Justin Bieber had the 43rd most popular YouTube channel in 2014 – admittedly a quiet year for him musically – while Lady Gaga was 158th and Britney Spears 203rd.

Although I think that says more about what MusicAlly thinks is happening on social media (All three stars are long past their buzz stage, surely?)

Record labels pirate football game

Oh, dear, major labels - don't you realise that copyright theft is a SERIOUS CRIME? Do we need to send Britney Spears over to remind you that illegally streaming a football game at a VEVO party is no different from stealing a CD from a store? Tut. Tut. Tut.

TechCrunch's Jason Kincaid saw ESPN streaming from an unlicensed feed:

My hunch is that the team hooked up a computer to the TVs throughout the venue so that they could accomplish this synchronized star-caressing — then, rather than rework their entire setup just to play the football game for a few hours, they opted for the easier route and looked for a stream on the web.

Which perfectly underscores everything wrong with the media industry’s approach to piracy. They’ve long made out pirates to be lawless thieves who think they’re entitled to receive everything for free.

But the reality is far less black-and-white. Sure, there are some people who will duck the bill when they can — but many of them were never going to buy the content they downloaded in the first place. And a huge swath of ‘pirates’ are driven to their ways because it’s easier to stream or download something via an illegal site, not because they’re averse to paying for content. Stick a bunch of DRM and ads in front of the media they’ve already paid for, and they may opt to go with the path of least resistance next time.

VEVO stutter that, you know, it's probably not them:

As for who actually decided to play the stream, or why, VEVO says the public had access to the computer being used so they can’t say for sure who exactly was responsible. Which is dubious (and almost certainly spin) — there was clearly someone actively controlling the computer, because they refreshed it when the connection stalled, and I’m pretty sure it wasn’t a random attendee who was taking the helm. Must have been one of those nasty pirates.

Now, remind me: what is the attitude of the music industry when someone says that somebody else must have been using the computer at the time of an illegal download? Like in the case of Patricia Santangelo, when the RIAA insisted that because she owned the house the computer alleged to have shared unlicensed files was in, she was liable.

I'm sure VEVO executives will be handing themselves in at the local cop shop. After all, piracy is a serious crime. They will want to be punished to the full extent of the laws their colleagues have had created.

Vevo - here we go

Apparently Vevo had never actually launched properly in the UK. It has now.

And, quite clearly, isn't going to be wasting money throwing it down the MySpace hole:

"When News Corp ring you take the call," [Chief executive Rio Caraeff] said, adding that there are no talks or plans involving MySpace on the table. "We are focussed on executing our current business model and not getting distracted."

Actually, News Corp called round ours last night, trying to offload MySpace (they were also selling dusters and buckets). I hid behind the sofa.

MySpace: You can't expect lots of visitors in a little month

Against a background of mutterings about a possible merger with Vevo, the team in charge of MySpace desperately try to keep up spirits and value.

Mike Jones, CEO, talks to Business Insider and tries to explain the collapsing audience figures:

BI: When I look at MySpace traffic charts, just from ComScore or any of the outside auditors, it looks like a crumbling mess – a halving year-over-year situation. What numbers are you guys looking at to have a more optimistic picture? Please explain.

MJ: That's a fair question. First, February was a short month where we and a lot of other sites were impacted.

Yes, Mike. February 2011 was a short month. I'm pretty certain Febuary 2010 was also pretty short, too, so how does that explain a year-on-year fall?

Still, next year there's an extra day in February. Something to cling too.

Jones then tries to explain how 'audience tumbling away' is actually some sort of delicate rebalancing act:

In addition to that, we have an expected audience shift. We launched a new product in November, we've substantially changed the value proposition for our audience, and we expect that we're going to be changing the nature of our registered userbase, which is something that's been impacting us on our monthly metric basis.

What Comscore doesn't necessarily capture for us is the internal metrics that show success against the strategy.

What Jones appears to be saying is that because fewer people are coming, that's making the visitor numbers look bad.

But the strategy - oh, think of the strategy!

It doesn't show that we've roughly doubled our mobile traffic in the last few months because of products that we've offered on the mobile platforms.

Given the massive boom in the number of Smartphones, you'd expect a rise in mobile traffic. It does you little good if all you're doing is shifting what's left of your audience from one platform to another.

It doesn't show an increase around our content products.

The bits that are doing well are doing well.

I would say we're going into a new market that's an extremely large market of entertainment content. I think that we're migrating portions of our current audience against that strategy. We're attracting new audience against that strategy and we have a portion of our audience that's a legacy audience that has to decide whether they want to be a part of that strategy.

I think this sort of talk from the management - "you're part of our oldest audience, so shape up or ship out" - might be the reason why MySpace is broken.

MySpace Music decides to do without a President

Courtney Holt, who was president of MySpace Music, has decided to follow the herd and has stepped down from the role. He's not being replaced, either, with MySpace CEO Mike Jones taking responsibility for Music, too, which pretty much looks like a "keeping it going until someone takes it over or kills it off" position.

MySpace Music still does pretty good numbers in terms of visitors in the US, but hasn't been able to turn the ears into anything saleable; to add insult to injury, half-assed YouTube spin-off Vevo now outstrips it for visitors.

Universal yanks videos from MTV website

Americans seeking to watch Universal acts through the MTV website will now feel like they're British: they're just going to be told no, as Universal have withdrawn a licence deal which let MTV stream their videos.

Universal had been trying to force MTV to basically embed Vevo versions of their catalogue; MTV were quite keen to not slap in all the Google-centred advertising that would imply:

In a statement, Universal said: “MTVN has been unwilling to negotiate a fair syndication deal with Vevo to carry our artists’ videos and consequently our videos will not be shown on their online properties. We believe that using Vevo as our online music video syndication platform is the best way to maximize revenue for our artists, our songwriters and ourselves.”

"... although, of course, not in that order."

MTV tried to put a brave face on it:

“We continue to seek out new and innovative ways to connect artists with their fans that are mutually beneficial to everyone. However, during our recent discussions with Vevo, we were unable to reach a fair and equitable agreement for rights to stream UMG artists’ music video content.” The company added that it was “disappointed” by Universal’s decision.

The worry for MTV is the calculation by Universal that the brand value of the MTV name in bringing an audience is so small that it can happily cut them out of the equation.

Given that this a record label, and they're not exactly on their best turf when dealing with digital matters, Universal could be totally wrong, and MTV can probably cling to that if it's looking for hope. But given a focus on the mainstream, losing one-quarter of the majors is going to be a bit of a blow nevertheless.

The illustrated Hello: Willy Wonka

Willy Wonka. The famous, fabulous, fictional factory owner who made a special invitation for a lucky few to come inside his sugar walls...



No, no, Sheena Easton, not now.

Wonka was created by Dahl, brought to life by Gene Wilder, and then destroyed by Johnny Depp in a pointless remake (Kind of the Nestle buyout version, I'd guess). Wilder got to sing in the 1970s version, in this clip which represents, I think, the first-ever appearance of Roy Kinnear on No Rock:



One of the winners of the golden tickets allowing a trip round Wonka's factory was Veruca Salt. A spoiled brat who got everything she demanded (and, you'd have to suggest, more than a little cribbed from the mighty Violet Elizabeth Bott) - what better name could you pick for your indie guitar band?



By law, that had to be played on every edition of The Evening Session, that did.

[Buy: Resolver - Veruca Salt
Manthology - Gay For Johnny Depp]

[Part of The illustrated Hello]

Decade Null: 2006 - Metric

Excitingly off that there Vevo service, Metric's Poster Of A Girl from Live It Out:



[Part of Decade Null: 2006]

Vevo: Still moving ahead, apparently

Vevo - somewhere between the RIAA companies attempting to create a Hulu for pop videos and a glorified webpage with YouTube embeds - is still a going concern, it seems. They've appointed someone to sell advertising on the site. This suggests we're still at the exciting 'phrases written on whiteboards' stage of the endeavour. Still no word on why they're building a site, rather than working on monetising a site which has already got the audience, but I'm sure corporate boxes have been ticked and signed.

Vevo in vitro: YouTube, Universal make a deal

You can call it, if you wish, Universal's attempt to create a musical Hulu: YouTube and Universal have shaken hands on a plan for a site under an ugly brand to "highlight" UMG's artists:

Google’s YouTube and Vivendi’s Universal Music Group will be launching a new site, dubbed VEVO, that will highlight UMG’s videos. The site will launch in “coming months” according to a press release (below). And YouTube users will still be able to watch UMG clips from the likes of Lil Wayne via a “new VEVO channel through a special VEVO branded embedded player.”

When I was a kid, the corner shop was called Vivo. One time, the assistant took all the neck-labels off the Daddy's sauce bottles so I could send away for the free Basil Brush toy they were offering without the need to tiresomely purchase the three bottles of sauce required. I was too shy to tell her that I didn't really want a Basil Brush, but it was awfully nice of her to do it. Although if you came in later and bought a bottle of sauce, and liked Basil Brush, you might not think so. But there are always losers.

You can see why YouTube might be hoping that a safe area, with only official stuff, might give a chance of selling some advertising against its massive, expensive video inventory.

You can also understand why Universal might hope this will work - nobody on the top floor of labels has ever really quite understood that, for most labels, and for most of the audience, the label that a track comes out on means nothing; that nobody is going to think "I wonder what fine artists Universal might want to entertain me with today".

Ironically, the only way VeVo is going to work is if websearch is brilliant at delivering people looking for the artist's videos to the site, which means they're going to be more reliant on Google than ever.

VeVo, VeVo, it's off to work they go

Universal and Google are going to launch a premium online video service, VeVo that uses YouTube technology to play music videos. And adverts.

Yes, it sounds a lot like YouTube, only this will be different by, erm, not featuring music from other artists and not hosting debates where insults are hurled at those who suggest that rather than filming an epileptic dog and putting it online, the owner should take their animal to a vet.

It's the first of this omissions that is most striking: are record labels still clinging to their belief that people relate to music in terms of 'which multinational company deals with distribution'?

A service offering one-quarter of the majors' product is only ever going to be a service with 75% of its effectiveness removed. If it's not all in one place, you're just encouraging someone else to take it and create a one place where everything will be. That's why YouTube works.