And either you know I'm going to claim the whole nutty fandango is somehow relevant to the Future of Journalism or you're new around here.
Now, let me make this clear at the start: I don't mean the Future of Journalism is home-made wedding dance videos, OK? Every time I write that journalism nerds can learn something from, say, Amanda Palmer's Twitter adventures or Dave Carroll's music video about United Airlines breaking his guitar, I get letters saying things like "But I'm not a hot singer, so that won't work for me," or "I'm not a songwriter so I can't do that."
So: No, I'm not suggesting the editor become a choreographer, the reporters and columnists form a chorus line.
But look what happened. The video exploded in popularity on YouTube last week. About 10 kajillion people saw it. And heard it. Chris Brown's song "Forever" is the soundtrack. And it's all free. Ten kajillion people heard that song and nobody made a dime! No royalties got paid. This is why the music industry is circling the drain!
But then look what happened next. YouTube owner Google notes in an "official" blog post that the rights holders on the music were able to monetize the clip's viral success through the YouTube Content ID System.
Brown's label, Jive, would have had to have been living in the cave with you not to know about "Forever" being the song in the famous wedding dance video, but YouTube's tools allow it to identify more obscure uses of its properties as well.
Jive was able to put transparent overlay ads on top of the video with click-to-buy links to Amazon and iTunes. Those links helped the song, which was released last year, to bounce into the top 5 of the singles chart at both retailers. The click-through rate on both the wedding video and Brown's official video for "Forever," which also got a big boost, has been much higher than the average rate on similar overlays, Google says.
Gee, shouldn't the label have tried to shut down the video for unauthorized use of its copyrighted material?
Instead, with YouTube's help, it did the smart thing. It saw a crowd of 10 kajillion people and found a way to make a little money off of it by selling those people something they wanted to buy.
Jill and Kevin Heinz, the happy couple, are getting in on the revenue act too, though they're trying to monetize for a cause. They've set up a Web site for the video, where they're asking people to donate to the Sheila Wellstone Institute, a "national center for training and leadership development for the progressive movement," according to the institute's Web site.
As of this item's posting time, Jill and Kevin had not responded to an e-mail asking how much money they'd raised.
But, once again, there's money being made, and it's not being made from what you might call the main event, the video. The money's being made around it. That's the lesson, once again, for Future of Journalism nerdland. The wedding video is great, just as any individual piece of journalism, the main event in our field, can be great. But there are so many great videos out there, people are unlikely to pay to watch one, just as they're unlikely to pay for news.
Once the crowd is gathered, though, there's a chance for commerce. It takes open-mindedness, creativity, some luck and most likely, in journalism's case, one or two things we don't know about yet. It takes changing how you think about these things.
mandalp1
Richard Davis
Chris Rywalt
Blue Roses
whitenoise
Anupum Mehrotra
Salon.com
Comments
I get where you're coming from with the overall theme, let's look outside traditional revenue stream models to provide revenue but one can't run a sustainable business on the last two examples provided. Viral marketing is a bigger gamble than rolling black in Vegas, to run a business with that as any major segment of your revenue stream should get you a Gambler's Anonymous Introductory packet.
Amanda Palmer does provide a better example and some encouragement but what she did would, as I said, would have to be tweaked to be repeatable and sustainable.
But it does provide food for thought.
And yeah Kevin, something is wrong with ya if you can't feel joy in that video.
Record Exec 1: These radio stations - they keep playing our records!
Record Exec 2: You mean people get to hear them for free? That's really bad!
Record Exec 1: Yeah, but that's not the worst part. The really, really good songs? They get played a *lot*. Our best albums, and people can hear it for free, over and over again.
Record Exec 2: Then no one will ever buy them! Think of how much money we are losing! We need to stop these radio stations from playing our records!
I am comfortable with that assessment, yes.
@The Buzz
Actually, that's not really true. My memory's a little fuzzy on how this all works, but, best I remember, the radio stations pay for a license that allows them to play the songs. That money goes to the performance rights orgs (ASCAP, BMI, etc.), which represent the publishers of the songs, not the record companies. Those orgs then pay the song publishers royalties, based on extrapolation. As far as both the record company and the listener is concerned, it's a free transaction. I've gotten royalty checks from radio play (small ones), and they came from BMI. The label makes its money when the consumer likes the song so much, she decides to buy the record.
Radio play is essentially advertising for the records. That's where the "free" analogy breaks down. There's no equivalent product that free journalism content on the Web is going to drive me to. At least not now. Some labels are understanding that free content like the video above can play the same role as radio. Of course, if the song were the background for bum fights or something, the label might object, however viral it went.
king
Oh, and this piece as a whole was interesting too!
I don't like beets. Does that make me a pedophile?
The idea that budding "journalists{ are looking only for a gimmick to cash in on is not why I spent the better part of my life working in a mostly thankless business. If this is the future of journalism, I guess I'm glad I got out while the getting was good. Not that anyone who is a true journalist ever really stops being one.
And what worries me is how, in journalism, it would impact the neutrality of pieces, and even the priorities of what gets covered - decisions based on profit potential (or even the encouragement of corporations, lobbyists, etc.). I know this problem exists already; I just think this model might take things to a new level.
Of course, this goes back to your point about keeping an open mind, and I'll try to do that as I think about it all some more. You make interesting points.
I do believe that many shows are missing the boat by trying to block their content. For instance, I believe being able to access Saturday Night Live skits on Youtube would greatly increase their viewership. Not only that - I would pay money or sit through ads to access some of these skits. Couldn't youtube work something out that was an advantage to all parties in cases like these?
"Saturday Night Live" is blocked on YouTube because it's on the NBC-backed competitor, Hulu.
http://www.hulu.com/saturday-night-live
king
EVERYONE thinks they're a writer/reporter/journalist. Forget about the 4 years of college spent (wasted?) in Journalism classes, with more and more "free blogs", why should anyone expect to make a living as a professional writer?
Anyone with a video camera thinks they're a "movie star" or a Director when they can reach an audience of thousands who can watch them on-line.
Royalties? They're shrinking by the second. See the Authors Guild's latest suit against Google on out-of-print books, and the reason the Writer's Guild went on strike for all those months, which gave birth to all these "reality" shows that, for some reason, people want to watch.
When the smoke clears, it will always be the creative person, either music or writing, that stands on the very last ring of the totem pole, and plenty of creative marketing pros out there to take full advantage of their creativity.
My alternative: monetize content by recovering obscene amounts of money raked in by the service providers. More here:
http://interimtom.blogspot.com/2009/07/fuck-piper.html
I do live in a cave, in southern Taiwan, but I did catch a glimpse of this video on the local Taiwanese TV networks last week, dubbed into Mandarin, and I thought it was cool and funny. But it's not the future of newspapers. It's the future of viral videos and marketing mavens making money. And don't forget the role that CNN and all the TV networks of the world had in making this dance video so popular! But future of news? No way. I am going to crawl back into my cave.
Danny