Google seems determined to make exactly the same mistakes with YouTube Music that it made trying to pushing Google+ down people's throats.
I.e., abuse a dominant position in one area to force users onto its other services whilst completely ignoring both the collateral damage caused and the actual stated preferences of their users. This is exactly the kind of thing that people used to (rightfully) castigate Microsoft for & it's predictable but depressing to see Google treading the same path. (I know "don't be evil" was just a slogan, but there was a time when Google stood for the principle of winning simply by being better than everyone else & it's saddening to see them resort to these kind of underhanded tactics to force their products into the marketplace.)
These kind of tactics do work in the short term of course, but ultimately they have a corrosive effect on your long term success because users cease to trust that you'll treat them fairly. Meanwhile the execs involved run off into the sunset with their bonuses extracted by burning the company's goodwill in order to drive short term metrics the way they need them to hit whatever internal targets they've set themselves.
Really it's bizarre because the service they're offering on its own is quite valuable, so they'll get user adoption eventually I imagine - maybe not 100% but that's greedy or unreasonable at minimum. Far more damage is done with an aggressive/controlling stance, future long-term revenues and negative mindshare.
Google's definitely lost their way. Got too big, too fast and didn't preserve the culture.
The biggest an organization can get and hope to have a reasonable chance of not going evil is probably some multiple of Dunbar's number. I think realistically the uppermost limit on it is going to be Dunbar's squared and assuming everyone has really high social skills and no life outside work then it's 250*250 = 62k people. But that only counts if everyone's job is doing nothing more than keeping up with the company's culture; no actual work gets done.
If you assume that you want your people to work while they're at the office then Dunbar's probably goes down quite a bit. Let's use the more reasonable 150 number that's closer to average and let's assume that you only want people to spend about 20% of their time on keeping in tune with everyone around them. That puts your group size at 30 instead of 150 or 250.
Now let's suppose that we organize hierarchically and that the senior execs really do live/eat/sleep/breathe the company. They're professional, high functioning managers, so let's give them the full 250. And then let's suppose that there are group managers who split their time between talking with their group and with senior management.
That gives you 250 groups of 30 people each or 7500 total employees. And in order to keep up with all these groups you've got to have 3-15 execs who are all on the same page and running themselves ragged trying to keep up. If you start adding more levels of management hierarchy you run the risk that as information gets passed down the chain it gets modified slightly or tremendously to serve the interests of any one individual in said chain. And there are too many bosses you have to "go over" to get a reasonable chance of talking to a real decision maker if you think something isn't right, but your direct boss is telling you to do anyhow.
I'd guess that they did between 2002 and 2004. The Google+/youtube integration debacle started in what, 2013? That means it took them a good decade before they really started to do outwardly very unattractive things. That's pretty impressive (or my theory is totally wrong).
Either way, past a certain point more employees are more of a liability than a badge of honor. It just increases the risk you do something stupid because everyone believes they're doing the right thing and there are no lines of communication to correct the misunderstanding, intentional or not.
Everything I've read suggests that the G+ / GMail / YouTube integration was forced onto the various parts of Google by executive fiat: The rank & file Google employees were against it, but a company is not a democracy so it was forced on them & by extension us.
Executive culture tends to laud the "visionary leader" who pushes their vision on everyone else. When that vision is wrong-headed you end up with situations like the G+ débâcle: it was a failure of the Google executive, not the employees.
My guess is that we have the same effect in play with the YouTube Music debacle: an "up and coming" exec who wants to make their mark by creating a new business line for Google that brings in big profits. They don't care if they sully the Google brand in the process because their incentives aren't aligned with Google's, any negative effects on Google's userbase (be they musicians, music consumers or just ordinary users of Google services) are just collateral damage in their internal political game.
There would have been many ways that integration could have occurred, so that executive direction isn't inherently the problem - it's more if there was no one to direct the nuances of doing then there's a problem.
That kind of nuanced understanding is the difference usually between successfully companies and their unsuccessful companies.
I always feel there should be a single controller that reviews all major outreach tactics - or even a team dedicated merely to that once at that scale. It's just too important to skulk at.
Interesting analysis btw - thanks for sharing. I wonder if this is per company or per leader for trickle down effect - I imagine it is per leader, the one setting pace, vision, culture, etc.
My take is that separating the two is basically intractable and I wouldn't even try to quantify it.
One person doesn't have to work very hard to communicate all his/her ideas and priorities to him/her self so there's zero communication overhead there. A few executives are going to have to communicate a lot in order to all stay on the "same page" regarding the multitude of issues that a company might face trying to execute the overarching vision irrespective of it that's from one or a couple of people.
The more time these people spend communicating with one another to ensure that they all understand one another, the less time they have to spend with their group managers, thus lowing the number of groups they can oversee. As the number of groups an exec can oversee drops, you need more execs.
But as you get more execs, now you have a coordination problem at the executive level. The problem is recursive. The CEO can only oversee so many executives, so you get a CEO/COO/CFO triple team. But those people have to spend time ensuring that they all understand one another. Rinse and repeat.
Obviously there's a "management ratio" that a person could glean out of all of this and just employ that to structure an organization indefinitely, at least in theory. The problem is that all communication is lossy. If you can communicate with 85% effectiveness (which is PHENOMENAL!) then that kind of limits how many layers you can use.
0.85 ^ 2 = 72%
0.85 ^ 3 = 64%
0.85 ^ 4 = 52%
0.85 ^ 5 = 44%
0.85 ^ 6 = 37%
This sort-of tracks with real world businesses too, it's not often that you see an org chart which has 10 layers on it because the company would be totally dysfunctional and go bust very rapidly.
The "Peter Principle" applies to businesses too, the continue to grow and gobble up more market share until eventually they stop being as effective and growth slows or stops.
It applies to society as well as Joseph Tainter points out in "The Collapse of Complex Societies" each additional unit of complexity has a fixed cost and diminishing returns for the society (or the company, or whatever) until eventually you're adding complexity which is a net negative. Things then start to go downhill.
Obviously there are exceptions to this (think "natural monopolies" and the like) and there may be years or decades of lag between the start of net negative complexity growth and collapse. Unless there's "refactoring" of the system where complexity is removed somehow, everything will eventually trend towards collapse. And achieving refactoring in real life is generally impossible since there tend to be entrenched interests in favor of some complexity since it directly benefits them.
A great example of this is the healthcare debate. Doesn't matter which side you're on. Complexity nearly always wins.
I think communication structures should inherently be clear enough to pass all critical information over, and if there become communication issues or misunderstandings then you have to eliminate that communication break - whatever that means.
I feel some of these issues can be managed by having specialized teams - but those teams would have to managing a context, not merely certain functions or tasks of a business, otherwise they won't have their hands and attention on everything that will matter.
85% communication effectiveness seems very possible - at least with enough time and enough opportunities.
I really don't understand the scandal here. This just confirms that Google is offering musicians the choice that's been suspected ever since YouTube Music Key just a rumor:
(a) Go all in on monetization (ads, Content Id, Music Key, etc.)
(b) Go all out on monetization (upload videos for free, no other commercial relationship).
They aren't offering this choice because it helps them kill puppies or whatever, but for what should be a blindlingly obvious reason: People who pay money for a service that gets rid of ads on music videos are going to be pretty ticked off if they still see ads on music videos.
You can call this evil, but you should be crystal-clear on what you're saying: Google trying to offer a service that lets people pay to get rid of YouTube ads (something lots of people say they want) is evil.
Personally, I think this isn't good or evil, but an example of the inevitable problems and complications that arise when you try to add subscriptions to a hugely popular ad-supported service with many different stakeholders. I suspect that this sort of thing is an underappreciated reason why Google is hesitant to offer paid subscriptions as an alternative to ads in other contexts.
Your (b) there means that people can upload all the licensed songs they want and no money goes to the artist and the artist has no choice in this except to agree to (a). (A) is a binding 5 year contract that forces her to release music on youtube as soon as it is done and cannot sign any other exclusive release deals on any music. Both choices remove all "choice" from the artist in regards to their own work. Imagine if github did the same to you with any code on their site, every programmer would leave for a new site the same day.
This is incorrect. The artist can still have their music removed from YouTube when third parties upload it without permission. The option that's being lost is for the artist to leave the infringer's video up and slap ads on it. The replacement for this option is to join the new subscription-based, ad-free monetization program.
That is not the only option lost (though you are right, you can chose a and remove everything).
The artist is indeed loosing the choice to just monetize the content he wants, and he indeed loses the ability to monetize content on youtube without being bound to release on Youtube first/at the same time. nosequels gist is correct: the artist has now less choice than before.
> nosequels gist is correct: the artist has now less choice than before
I don't think that's a fair summary of the original comment, which also asserted that the artist is losing the choice to enforce their copyright unless they join the new program.
Ah, now I get how you meant that. Still, that is less choice than before in general. One could before let his music be tagged and was not obliged to do anything with Youtube. Now, to have the same as before, they are trying to bind artists with a 5 year contract and release obligations. That is pretty evidently less choice, and (probably) still having the option to not get paid but remove music from fans does not make up for that.
That is not the same monetization as using ContentID to add ads to all other videos with the music. That ability would be lost when an artist is not accepting the new terms.
Right, but they aren't losing the ability to monetize the content they want, as the parent comment suggests. They are restricted from ContrntID, but they can still upload and monetize video.
Personally I don't really like these changes, but let's not be disingenuous.
Are you sure? IIRC from her article, she was saying that the only way for her to keep removing stuff from YT would be to issue DMCA complains for each and every video (which is obviously impossible).
Um, last I heard, unless you pay them, Github requires you to make any code you upload open-source and publicly available. In many ways that's even more far-reaching than what YouTube is asking, but that hasn't stopped programmers from flocking to them in droves.
That does, however, suggest to me an option (c) that Google isn't offering: Musicians pay Google to run Content Id on their behalf to simplify the takedown process. While I'm sure there are some win-wins they're missing by not offering that (possibly including Zoë Keating), I really can't fault them for that. I expect the PR and legal complications would dwarf the storm that's already here.
Um, last I heard, unless you pay them, Github requires you to make any code you upload open-source and publicly available.
Publicly available yes, open source no. You're free to choose whatever license you want:
You're under no obligation to choose a license. It's your right not to include one with your code or project, but please be aware of the implications. Generally speaking, the absence of a license means that the default copyright laws apply. This means that you retain all rights to your source code and that nobody else may reproduce, distribute, or create derivative works from your work.
All github require for their free users is that they're OK code is made viewable to the world. Nothing about github requires open source and you're free to chose any license you want.
Yeah that was not a good comparison; the problem here is that the contract applies to all music released by the artist for 5 years, not just what is uploaded to Youtube. This is vastly, vastly more restrictive than Github. Not even close.
If Github did this, they would lose everyone overnight.
Not everyone wants to be all-in or all-out. Maybe she wants her best work monetized, but has additional content she wants available for free. Ad-stamped content can be really annoying and turn people off from watching/listening when there isn't sufficient desire for the content to put up with it. Free content, unladen of ads, can help draw in followers who become willing to pay. Kinda like throwing a low-cost concert for free in hopes people who otherwise wouldn't come will, facing low/no friction, come and enjoy the free content enough to buy CDs and pay for a more sophisticated concert.
Plenty of times I've stumbled across an unknown musician playing for free, I've stopped & listened for a while when I'd have not paid to, and then bought the CD. Google wants to slather ads on the "free" performance just so the performer can offer a paid CD.
Google is demanding all-in or all-out on mixed-demand content...and is demanding adherence to those terms & decisions for 5 years, which can be a very long time for a performer.
There is a (c) as you describe it, OP just neglected to mention it. The third option is to just monetize videos uploaded to the official channel. They can continue uploading only specific songs they want to monetize on their channel.
To play devil's advocate, though, why should Google provide access to the network they have and the value it provides, while making it easy to dilute the value content creators provide?
In other words, from Google's point of view, Zoe Keating provides content for Google, for Google's benefit, not her benefit, or the benefit of her fans. In exchange, she doesn't have to run her own multimillion dollar content server. Recognizing the business they're in (advertising driven by user-provided content) doesn't seem 'draconian,' and there are other options available. If she can't accept alternatives then perhaps it proves that she needs Google a lot more than they need her.
Well, they do have that right, but Zoe also has the right to expose those terms to public scrutiny. Google and other monetization networks tend to promote the fact that buy paying them you're also supporting the artists, and if that's a lie, end users are rightly going to be pissed.
If Youtube wants to make people choose between two options, that is Youtube's choice. That doesn't mean those two options are the only possible ones though. They could have gone with a new contract that was much like what they have today, with slightly modified terms. Instead they are throwing their weight around to force musicians into unfavorable terms. That's what the scandal is.
I don't really care about the choices offered by YouTube here, but at this point you can have a scandal without them. The fact that they're lying to journalists and making such an ass of themselves in the PR department is interesting on its own now.
[Update: Sat. morning: After discovering that Keating was taking detailed notes of her conversation with a YouTube representative, YouTube appears to be re-grouping to clarify their policies and figure out exactly what artists are being told. They have also not clearly explained why they are demanding a retraction from Digital Music News. More as it develops.]
Addendum - what is key here is that Zoe's original post was balanced and rational and even-handed. Even if YouTube disputed the factual aspects of it then this was a really poor way to go about it and has merely confirmed the feeling that they are throwing their weight around with small artists.
They could have turned things around by engaging in dialog and still got their point across.
Someone at YouTube needs to go back to PR school after this.
> Someone at YouTube needs to go back to PR school after this.
I'd say that someone just needs to be repeatedly hit in the head with a copy of Carnegie's "How to Win Friends and Influence People".
Seriously, every single PR flop I've seen discussed here (or anywhere else) was a result of failing to adhere to a single basic rule: don't be a douchebag. It's really that simple. Do we really need PR schools to teach people how to be decent human beings?
Do we really need PR schools to teach people how to be decent human beings?
Probably not, but it's bad for business to be decent human beings. PR/x-relations/etc is about faking decency while unapologetically pushing a business agenda, that does take training.
That's how I feel, too. When I look at the whole area around sales, marketing and PR I can't help but wonder how come we, as a society, managed to legitimize being liars and cheats as an occupation. Lies are so common, so ordinary, that no one notices anymore.
> Google spends billions on marketing, paying lobbyists and buying influence. It funds over 150 organisations and overtook Goldman Sachs last year as the biggest corporate political donor in the USA.
Google and Microsoft wanted nothing to do with this culture, until they grew too big and those threatened started drafting legislation to curtail them. Once faced with a government action, both companies started having presences in the Capitol. It needs to buy influence to protect itself from its competitors, who already have entrenched lobbying efforts. The author's attempt to paint Google as evil from lobbying efforts fails to note the reason for this, government ability to critically damage a company.
1. Microsoft lawsuit over bundling Internet Explorer
2. Google had an FTC investigation regarding its search engine share
3. Google refused to stop advertising illegal pharmaceuticals after repeated warnings from the FDA and then eventually received one of the heaviest fines ever handed down by the US government (half a billion USD)[1].
As a Massachusetts resident, this brings the question of "two-party consent" to the forefront for me. There are many times I would like to record conversations, but cannot legally do so.
Who does two-party consent benefit more, the large corporations or the individual's right to privacy? Or is it not black and white?
I hate that law. It makes me think that some politician got caught talking about something immoral or illegal and sought to make phone conversations "safer." It certainly doesn't help, for example, a victim of domestic violence who receives threatening phone calls. He/she has to go to the authorities and receive permission.
On the other hand, in a conversation with like this with a corporation she could simply announce that she is recording it. Corporations do it all the time, in part at least to help train their customer service. And if the corp decides they don't want to have the conversation on the record, then they don't get to have the conversation at all. In other words, you say, "I am recording this conversation" rather than asking, "Is it ok if I record this conversation?"
Someone solved this once by configuring a voice menu to answer & direct the call (to the single phone): started with the heard-so-often-everyone-ignores-it line "this call may be monitored or recorded for _______ purposes; please press 1 for ..." and the sting subject fell for it when calling. Notification of recording made, implicit permission granted for continuing the conversation.
> In other words, you say, "I am recording this conversation" rather than asking, "Is it ok if I record this conversation?"
I'm not sure that is legal. I've had a few job interviews that were recorded, and in all of them I was told I needed to consent to being recorded on tape. So basically the interviewer would say, "are you okay with me recording this conversation?" and then I would say, "yes, that's fine."
Are you sure you can't record them? All you have to do is tell them that you're recording. Then they can either take it or leave it. I'm not sure how many people will hang up on you if you say that, but it's worth a try. Also, as I understand it, if you call in to a place that has a notice that they're recording you (i.e. the ubiquitous "this call may be recorded or monitored for quality or training purposes") that also suffices as permission for you to record them. (Not a lawyer, this is not legal advice, yada yada.)
The article reads like a pro-copyright/pro-SOPA hit piece, I would take it with a grain of salt.
I don't see anything too evil here, just reasonable business decision forced to them by the ridiculous copyright framework.
Google came with a simple solution: their way or the highway. Sounds harsh but anything else would require massive man-hours of development and lawyer-vetting. They rather pull your stuff rather than risking the money with very little chance of recouping the investment.
Zoe Keating, on the other side, disagrees and wants google to actually expend tons of money developing her "special case" into the system...
anything else would require massive man-hours of development and lawyer-vetting.
Why would keeping the current system - which is essentially just allowing people to use ContentID without being forced into accepting new legal terms - require massive man-hours of development and laywer-vetting? What's so difficult about it?
By the way, I fully agree vis-a-vis the SOPA comments. But it just goes to show the adversary of my adversary is not always my ally.
Keeping the current system and not doing YouTube Music Key isn't very difficult - but there are more than a few reasons to think it is worth doing (all the people who block YouTube ads and/or use unauthorized downloaders, for example).
Doing YouTube Music Key and writing in special cases for independent artists while simultaneously making sure not to open any loopholes that would let, for example, Sony hold the service hostage later... that strikes me as very difficult, at best.
It's clear in the conversation that she could always just quit this deal and move to the normal Youtube Partner program to make cash out of ads like any other partner.
What she would lose is automatic content identification that would also give her ads revenues from OTHER video that has her content. There's no alternative to that, she would have to send a ton of DMCA herself to remove that other content and that doesn't even allow her to get that revenue.
I don't see this as a solution to the ridiculous copyright framework, it's a way to abuse the ridiculous copyright framework. They have a great tool that can help her fight against copyright infringement but the only way she can still use it is to either abandon her YouTube revenue or to give YouTube all her music right.
Could someone tell me what this whole thing is about? From what i gather it is the following:
1. Users currently can monetize using contentID - any videos uploaded anywhere using their shit and they get a cut of the ads (if there are any).
2. Google is making paid streaming version, artists now have two options:
2a) Agree to have everything on paid and free side and get money. Also, everything you release everything must also release to Youtube (I assume this is the main sticking point??).
2b) Don't agree and only have shit be on free side and not get money. You can upload whatever you want when you want.
2a) … The release on Youtube must happen at the same time and in a specified quality.
2b) … Everything that has been uploaded by her before will be deleted.
The obligation to release on Youtube is of course completely unacceptable. I like to think it would be quite illegal in many countries outside the US as well.
The Register article goes on for a while about the "weakening" of copyright law that allowed this to happen, but never actually says what legal change occurred that makes this possible. Anyone know?
If I had to guess, I'd say they mean the DMCA Safe Harbor provisions; which allows a user-content site like Youtube to exist at all - previously, you could be liable if you were distributing any kind of unlicensed content, so I believe that legally, you had to vet each upload.
Can anyone make sense of what the Google representative is saying in the last paragraph of the transcript, the part that goes "your channel will be separated from the deal and you can enter into a regular youtube partner commercial terms which allows you to monetize the content"? What music would be monetizable under that scheme?
From what I understand about the Youtube Partner thing, it essentially allows you to make money from the videos uploaded to your channel, but not from videos uploaded by other users, even if you hold the copyright to those.
Essentially, they pay you for the "service" of uploading the videos and drawing users.
Dear journalists who are covering this story. (1) get the actual contract. Does it back up what this artist is claiming? (2) Find out the name of the Google employee who was telling the artist these things, corroborate the testimony of the artist and determine whether the employee was a high-level executive or lawyer within Google, or if they were just a customer service representative who had no authority to be giving legal advice to a customer on behalf of the company.
With all due respect this article does not go into any specific detail of what real evidence exists to back up this story.
The same thing will happen to any competitor. You get big enough and record companies will want to control the shit out of you. They will sue you and write laws against you and intimidate the crap out of you.
I am not going to waste my time with a low quality video (often with only a static image) when I can have the high quality of Soundcloud. Soundcloud also has an interesting comment system and a better community.
I don't know how about in other circles, but recently Bandcamp and Soundcloud are much more popular among my friends (of whom a lot are musicians) as it offers better terms and control of how your music used. They skip Youtube altogether and if music "video" still ends up there, it's usually uploaded by a fan. Sadly, I don't know any really good video alternatives to Youtube yet.
Doesn't that make it easier to disrupt? Younger people are less habit forming and more likely to try new services. I would think the licencing with record labels & infrastructure requirements would be the tough part for a new entrant.
> Younger people are less habit forming and more likely to try new services.
Younger people are not less prone to forming habits. There are, of course, always new young people who may not have the same habits as the last round of young people, though.
It is if you manage to topple the absolutely gigantic mindshare and you manage to build a similarly complete catalog of official and user-supplied content.
> I would think the licencing with record labels & infrastructure requirements would be the tough part for a new entrant.
And how. Check youtube's all-time top viewed videos, and the vast majority are vevo channels MVs. If you remove vevo and psy, you're left with a pair of videos of the top 30 or 50.
vevo is a joint venture between UMG, Sony, Abu Dhabi Media… and Google.
At the risk of being modded down along with you (hi Google fans!), I'll say that even though I have a much lower opinion of Google lately, I was still surprised by their actions in this case. I know that Google has never, ever cared about the individual, but this is surely an abuse of copyright far worse than what the record labels could ever dream of.
Still, I have to wonder if this is just the Youtube division of Google acting this way, and perhaps once the big heads at Google HQ get wind of what's going on (or more accurately, the PR department), they will intervene on Ms. Keating's behalf.
Then again, that would open the door for who knows how many other independent artists under Youtube's Draconian contract to go after them for the same deal.
And of course, I'm happy to see that Ms. Keating is getting some free publicity out of all of it. Even if she ultimately can't pursue Youtube for lost ad revenue, she still has the power to publish her works in other media.
Your parent was modded down for bringing nothing to the conversation. It might as well have read "lol google."
Unfortunately other similar media aren't as lucrative. Even if they pay as well, not being on YouTube creates an exposure problem. I hope there's some way to work this out, but to be honest, Google still seems to me like the least sleazy company to help you monetize your music, and that's not a compliment to Google.
> Google still seems to me like the least sleazy company to help you monetize your music
I don't know...even if you sign with the worst of the traditional record labels, once your contract is up the rights to monetize your own works revert back to you. With Youtube (so far) it seems that if you refuse to sign with them, they still claim the right to monetize your works even if you don't upload them yourself. They take away the artist's control over their own works without even a contract in place. That's extremely sleazy if you ask me.
Yeah, although Google and others were always willing to monetize your work without your knowledge or consent. To some degree that's how the internet works and it's not _entirely_ a bad thing, and a lot of it is not intentional (photograph a painting, share it on forum with banner ads.) But with Google, their change is now they're unwilling to give back without a contract.
I.e., abuse a dominant position in one area to force users onto its other services whilst completely ignoring both the collateral damage caused and the actual stated preferences of their users. This is exactly the kind of thing that people used to (rightfully) castigate Microsoft for & it's predictable but depressing to see Google treading the same path. (I know "don't be evil" was just a slogan, but there was a time when Google stood for the principle of winning simply by being better than everyone else & it's saddening to see them resort to these kind of underhanded tactics to force their products into the marketplace.)
These kind of tactics do work in the short term of course, but ultimately they have a corrosive effect on your long term success because users cease to trust that you'll treat them fairly. Meanwhile the execs involved run off into the sunset with their bonuses extracted by burning the company's goodwill in order to drive short term metrics the way they need them to hit whatever internal targets they've set themselves.