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	<title>MediaMemo &#187; Girlfriend</title>
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		<title>YouTube's Music Videos: Popular, Money-Losing. For Now.</title>
		<link>http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/20081219/youtubes-music-videos-popular-money-losing-for-now/</link>
		<comments>http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/20081219/youtubes-music-videos-popular-money-losing-for-now/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 19 Dec 2008 21:12:58 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Peter Kafka</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Google]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[music]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[video]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Avril Lavigne]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[Universal Music Group]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/?p=2337</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Music videos on YouTube are money-makers for the music labels, and a money pit for Google. That may change next year: Even Google can't afford to lose money every time someone watches an Avril Lavigne clip.]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/files/2008/12/avril-youtube.jpg"><img class="alignright size-full wp-image-2340" title="avril-youtube" src="http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/files/2008/12/avril-youtube.jpg" alt="" width="250" height="221" /></a></p>
<p><strong>[UPDATE:</strong> Negotiations between YouTube and music labels are already getting unpleasant: Warner Music's clips are disappearing from the site, and <a href="http://mediamemo.allthingsd.com/20081220/warner-music-group-disappearing-from-youtube-both-sides-take-credit/">both sides are taking credit for the move</a>.]</p>
<p>Universal Music Group officials told <a href="http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-10126439-93.html?part=rss&amp;subj=news&amp;tag=2547-1_3-0-20">CNET</a> this week that they&#8217;re going to make close to $100 million from Internet videos this year&#8211;an 80 percent increase&#8211;and that most of that will come from Google&#8217;s (GOOG) YouTube.</p>
<p>I believe that may be possible&#8211;in part because people close to Universal Music Group <a href="http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/9/universal-music-group-gets-hulu-fever-wants-its-own-video-site">told me the same thing earlier this year</a>. But I think that those YouTube dollars may not continue to increase at the same rate, whether it&#8217;s for Universal or any music label.</p>
<p>That&#8217;s because YouTube&#8217;s current arrangement with the labels is a money-losing one, people familiar with the company tell me. And that&#8217;s unlikely to continue as the company renegotiates its deals with the four major labels&#8211;UMG, EMI, Sony (SNE) and Warner Music Group (WMG)&#8211;which expire throughout next year.</p>
<p>Here&#8217;s how the current deals work: Whenever someone clicks on an official video that&#8217;s been sanctioned by the labels, YouTube has to pay the labels either a per-stream fee or a share of ad revenue associated with the clip, whichever is greater. Since YouTube is just beginning to get serious about selling ads next to its content, it&#8217;s usually paying the per-stream fee, which industry executives peg at about half a penny per clip.</p>
<p>That kind of deal might have been OK during Google&#8217;s go-go days, but it&#8217;s unlikely to fly now. And as Google execs start sitting down with the labels, it&#8217;s reasonable to think they&#8217;ve got much more leverage. While music videos are some of the site&#8217;s most popular programming&#8211;look at how many label-sponsored clips like Avril Lavigne&#8217;s <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQ25-glGRzI">&#8220;Girlfriend&#8221;</a> are among the site&#8217;s <a href="http://www.youtube.com/browse?s=mp&amp;t=a&amp;c=0&amp;l=&amp;b=0">most popular offerings of all time</a>&#8211;Google doesn&#8217;t need their blessing in the way that YouTube did when it was still transitioning from rogue copyright violator to upstanding citizen.</p>
<p>Meanwhile the labels are under great pressure to dig up dollars wherever they can find them because their core CD business evaporates day by day. <a href="http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/081113/20081113006059.html?.v=1">Universal Music recorded some $4.4 billion in revenue during the first nine months of this year</a>, so $100 million in high-margin video revenue would be a meaningful contribution to the bottom line. But it may be harder to get in 2009 than it was this year.</p>
<p>I can&#8217;t show you most of YouTube&#8217;s most popular clips here&#8211;the site disables embeds for those. But here&#8217;s a less-viewed one I do like.</p>
<p><object classid="clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000" width="350" height="283" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=6,0,40,0"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true" /><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always" /><param name="src" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/MpjXyEX2Zec&amp;hl=en&amp;fs=1" /><embed type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="350" height="283" src="http://www.youtube.com/v/MpjXyEX2Zec&amp;hl=en&amp;fs=1" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true"></embed></object></p>
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