The Utube Blog

Jet Li’s YouTube channel is here.

In March, YouTube launched a free service called AudioSwap.  As a part of its licensing deals with the music labels, YouTube was able to get the labels to offer some recordings for everyone to use in their videos as background music.  In the past, many YouTube users simply did so with copyrighted songs, but (presumably) without permission.

This program for “synch” licensed music is a great idea.  But, after three months, the program is languishing.  Basically, I see two problems.  First, the number of songs offered on YouTube is very small, almost embarrassingly so for a site that receives 70,000 video uploads a day.  To take an example, in the pop song category, YouTube’s program only has 6 artists.  That’s it. 

Second, YouTube’s audio replaces all other audio on a video.  You can’t do a voice-over and you can’t keep the original sounds from the video that you took.  Most editing programs allow you to synch music while preserving the video’s original sounds. 

Hopefully, YouTube will fix these problems.  At least the second one is something that is totally within YouTube’s control.  Users probably could tolerate limited song selection, but if the editing tools are worse than what everyone else is already using, I don’t see the program going anywhere. 

She’s out on tour with Justin Timberlake.  Their video together just went over the 6 million mark (in about 38 days).

So YouTube is doing a great job in featuring the presidential candidates on You Choose. This week, Jim Gilmore (R.) gets a chance in the Spotlight to ask YouTubers a question here. Each candidates gets 1 week.

News: Avril Lavigne has the 2nd Most Watched Video (all time) on YouTube (over 41 million views) with her video “Girlfriend,” in which the lyric goes “I Don’t Wanna Be Your Girlfriend.” The 70s band The Rubinoos has just her sued her for copyright infringement because the song sounds amazingly similar to The Rubinoos’ song “I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend.” The similarity was obvious to one music critic in Billboard when he reviewed Avril’s album and stated: “the chorus of “Girlfriend” was a “total lift from the Rubinoos’ ‘I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend.’” (More here)

Here are two comparisons:

Analysis: My copyright class would love this. I usually have an entire class devoted to music copyright infringement cases during which we compare music tracks.

Hello, YouTube. Here’s my latest video. One thing about the title: the video was 3 minutes and 20 seconds, but I added credits at the end, which made it longer.

The original song at the end is “Song for Paige” by Lee Wadlinger, one of my former students. He’s great. Go here for more about his music: http://www.myspace.com/leewadlinger and http://nextbestrecords.com/

I hope to make a few more YouTube videos this month, so stay tuned.

News:  Report from New Westminster, Canada.  YouTube is becoming an important law enforcement tool.

News: So all it took was about a day and a half for the EU’s controversial video mashup of different sex scenes from European films to go viral. Apparently, sex plays well. If my memory serves me correct, the video went from a little over 20,000 views on Tuesday to over 2.4 million views! That’s the fastest growing video on YouTube in a 24 hour time span, from what I know.

I still find it hard to believe that the European Commission is responsible for this titillating mashup. As I said before, the video itself is probably PG-13 by U.S. standards. You can judge for yourself here on YouTube.

News:  Just a day after I reported about the EU’s channel on YouTube, there’s news about one of its videos promoting European films.  The video strings together several scenes of people having sex from different European films.  There’s no nudity and the clips go by very fast, but it’s still probably PG-13 material in the U.S.  No one would ever accuse Europeans of being prudes about sex, but it’s hard to believe the European Commission is responsible for the ad!

If you want to see the ad, it’s on YouTube here.  [Probably PG-13 material, viewer discretion advised]

News: From the start, YouTube has kept ads to a minimum within videos. No pre-roll ads. But I just noticed an internal ad that pops up for a few seconds within one of LisaNova’s video. You can see it in the photo, too. This is the only pop-up ad I’ve seen so far, but I will try to do some more investigating.  The pop-up doesn’t show from embedded videos on other sites; it only shows if you are on YouTube’s website.

Photo

This video is hilarious, especially the ending.

Dear readers,

First, let me thank you for coming to my site.  It’s been a wonderful ride so far.  YouTube never ceases to amaze me, so it’s hardly a task for me to follow its developments everyday.  I’ve been most impressed with the creativity of so many different people–all amateur creators–on YouTube.  It’s inspiring.  So, this month, I hope to create several more videos of my own.  (During the school year, it’s tough to do so, but I managed to create a couple last year, see here.)  The first in the next line of videos I hope to unveil soon. 

I plan to make a few videos about YouTube, chronicling the stuff I’ve been following on this blog.  But I also may do some other videos that are about completely different things.  Please feel free to send me ideas for videos at utubeblog [at] gmail.com. 

But just remember, I’m a novice. One last thing: my video making may mean that, at least for a short time, my blog posting diminishes.  Stay tuned.  And thanks again!

News:  Sammy Stephens made an ad on YouTube to promote his flea market in Montgomery.  It was all pretty funny until Ellen DeGeneres featured him on her show.  Now, he’s getting not only more customers, but also numerous people and businesses asking to hire him to do their ads.  He’ll be part of a segment on a VH1 show on July 6.  (more)

She’s on tour with Justin Timberlake. It’s funny at the end when she says the band “A-ha” (who sang “Take on Me” in the 80s) would be music her father listens to.

News: It’s called EUTube. The EU Commission is one of the governing bodies of the European Union, which basically oversees much of the economic and political terms for 27 countries. The basic idea is to create one common market among the EU countries, ruled by the same laws and principles.

News: Terra Naomi, the first musician to be discovered on YouTube, had an interview with Cisco as a part of its “Human Network” feature. You can see the video on Cisco. I’m not sure if a text copy is available on Rolling Stone. Terra also performed “Close to Your Head” for the interview, see below. The song is one of my favorites.

Terra Naomi, “Close to Your Head”

In March, Anne Coulter called John Edwards a “faggot” (here).  This week, Coulter said that she wished he would be “killed in a terrorist assassination plot” (here). Elizabeth Edwards then called Anne Coulter asking her to stop with personal attacks.  The exchange is on the video.

Back when I was a real practicing lawyer, I always looked for signs when a witness was uncomfortable or on the defensive.  Fidgeting in their seat, playing with their hair, smirking nervously, they’re all telltale signs of basically squirming.  You can judge for yourself how Coulter comes off on the video.      

News: YouTube apparently has given the Smosh boys (Anthony Padilla and Ian Hecox) back the 24 million views that were erased from their overall view count after YouTube removed Smosh’s most popular video involving a Pokemon lip synch (notwithstanding a strong parody fair use defense for Smosh). The video was removed after the copyright holder to Pokemon sent YouTube a DMCA notice.

The other big news is that Lonelygirl15 just got passed by Fueled by Ramen, an independent label.

News:  Sen. Dodd is up this week for YouTube’s Spotlight.  He takes a back-handed slap at Hillary Clinton for using her YouTube spotlight question to ask people to select her campaign song.  (Turns out that video was the most watched video on YouTube of all the candidate videos.  What does this say about democracy?)    Dodd wants the media to focus on the real issues that people care about.  Stop focusing on Paris Hilton, or John Edwards’ haircuts. 

Whether you agreed or disagreed with his policies, Tony Blair has left his mark at least in one respect:  he’s the most powerful elected official of a country to regularly post videos on YouTube.   He’s the YouTube King Prime Minister.  Here’s why:

News:  Latest survey from Hitwise (which measures unique visitors to a site) shows YouTube with 60.2% of the U.S. traffic in May.

MySpace was second at 16.08% of the traffic.  Google Video, 7.8%. Yahoo, 2.77%.  MSN, 2.09%.

This means that YouTube has more U.S. traffic than the next 64 competitors in the market combined!

Analysis: For the companies looking for a “YouTube killer,” good luck.

Analysis: I haven’t tested this out yet (it doesn’t come out until June 29 at 6 p.m.), but I think the biggest question is the lack of a buttoned keyboard for people who use Blackberrys and text messages. Have you ever been to a Panera Bread store and watched their cashiers use a pen cap to type on the keyboard screen? That’s the problem.  And there’s the cost.

News: Many media companies are plotting to create the so-called “YouTube killer,” the site that will take down YouTube in videos. Today, it’s MySpace’s turn. MySpace is launching a new, freestanding site called MySpaceTV.com.   More about the new site here. Here are the key features:

1. Free standing website

2. Greater attempt to feature professional content over amateur ones. Sony is exclusively airing its “Minisodes” of Different Strokes, Silver Spoons, and Charlie’s Angels — which condense an episode into 5 minutes or less.

Analysis: MySpace is a serious competitor to YouTube. I would place it as No.2. As far as the changes go, I have a mixed review. First, I think having a free-standing site is a smart idea. That will help distinguish MySpaceTV from what most people will think about when they hear “MySpace,” the social networking site. On the other hand, I don’t like the design of the new website. It looks almost exactly like the regular MySpace website. MySpace needs to distinguish the look of the site more, so that people know it’s about videos. As it is, the site’s so cluttered. There’s just too much going on there to crowd out the video component. Finally, if MySpace wants to take a gamble on professional content over amateur content, then it needs to highlight the professional content on the front page. At least in my quick review, I couldn’t find any mention of Sony’s “Minisodes” of Different Strokes, Silver Spoons, and Charlie’s Angels. Although I probably wouldn’t bet against amateur user-generated content myself, I really love the Minisodes idea.

Here’s one Minisode video of Charlie’s Angels. If you go to MySpaceTV and search for the shows, you can find more.

News:  After The Utube Blog complained about the removal of category searching on YouTube, YouTube has announced that it will restore the function.  OK, I wasn’t the only one who complained.  Lots of people did.

News:  NYT has an article discussing this mashup video made by Guyz Nite about the Die Hard movies.  Guyz Nite is a “comic rock” group that tries to summarize the plots of the entire Die Hard movies in 4 minutes flat.  When FOX movie studio first saw the video, they sent YouTube a DMCA notice to have it taken down.  Well, afterwards, FOX had second thoughts and realized that the fan video was a great way to promote the upcoming Die Hard 4.  So FOX asked Guyz Nite to put the video back up, even paying the group and sending them some preview clips of Die Hard 4 to use. 

Analysis:  FOX made a wise decision.  User-generated content can often be great, free marketing. 

Instead of writing more of my own views about Keen’s book, I’ll let this YouTuber have her say.  She didn’t even read the book, but she understood its basic idea.  Here she speaks specifically about journalism and news.

Book review:  I’ve discussed Andrew Keen’s book “The Cult of the Amateur” once already.  I’m not sure the book deserves much more.  It’s a rant, sweeping in its attack, but thin on its evidence of support.  Today, I’ll mention one more problem I have with Keen’s argument, his romanticization of so-called “experts.”  

The Cult of the Expert in Keen’s world:  Keen romanticizes “experts” as being the preservers of “our culture.”  For example, he writes:  “the free, user-generated content spawned and extolled by the Web 2.0 revolution is decimating the ranks of our cultural gatekeepers, as professional critics, journalists, editors, musicians, moviemakers, and other purveyors of expert infromation are being replaced … by amateur bloggers, hack reviewers, homespun moviemakers, and attic recording artists.” (p. 16)

In my view, this argument is just wrong.  It’s true that, in some areas, we need experts — medicine, law, economic policy, etc.  But Keen’s not talking about those areas.  He’s talking about experts in “our culture,” which includes art, entertainment, music, movies, books, publications, news.  His idea is that experts in these areas should filter out for the rest of us things that are worthy of our time. 

There are two problems with this argument.  First of all, it’s elitist and anti-democratic.  Maybe Keen would have us elect a Minister of Culture in the United States who would decide for us what content is worth consuming?  As I asked in my last post, what “expertise” qualifies Keen, a Silicon Valley enterpreneur, to tell us what is good for protecting “our culture”?  Second, many of these areas involve matters of taste or prediction for which so-called “experts” are virtually useless.   I don’t need an expert to tell me why I do or don’t like Britney Spears’s music.  I just listen to her music and decide for myself.  Except for maybe journalism and encyclopaedias, I don’t think any of Keen’s examples involve matters where expertise can determine a “right” answer.  It’s all subjective, matters of taste.

Business and innovation are pretty similar.  There’s no “expertise” in predicting what’s the next thing that will take off.  I’ll end with a quote from the co-founder of YouTube Jawed Karim, who gave the commencement address (video) at University of Illinois this year:      

“What I learned next may sound counter-intuitive:  Don’t listen to so-called experts.  When the time came for responding, initial reactions from investors were mixed.  Some of them called the website cute, but they questioned its long term growth.   They told us get advice from experts on what to do with your website. That’s when I realized that there were no experts because, after all, if those experts really existed, how come they hadn’t built this website?  We realized that we were now experts and it was up to us to figure out how to proceed.  Within 18 months, YouTube had a far greater impact than anyone, including us, could have predicted.

“People often ask me what do I take away from this phenomenon. To me, it just shows that there are talented people everywhere.” 

News: In June, YouTube announced several changes to the site. Some vocal YouTube users have been very unhappy with one of the changes: YouTube’s removal of the “most viewed,” “most discussed,” “top favorited” search indicators when you conduct a search by one of the subject matter categories, such as music or entertainment. Instead, YouTube now gives only the Editor’s pick. See the photo below. The only way you can search for “most viewed” etc. is under the “Browse” feature, but that doesn’t break anything down by category.  The controversy is so big it just hit the New York Times.

Analysis: I don’t like the change, either. It’s fine if YouTube wants to add Editor’s picks, but removing the other search features (by Most Viewed, etc.) within the categories just doesn’t make sense to me. For example, I used to scroll through the 100 Most Viewed Musicians on YouTube, but now I can’t. It’s gone.

News:  After weeks of a ban for objectionable content (clips making fun of the Thai King) (see here), Thailand said it will restore access to YouTube this week.  More.