YouTube's a Monopsony, In Case You Hadn't Noticed

My guess is that if you're a fan of indie - or even popular but non-major-label artists, from Trent Reznor to Adele - you're about to notice. Because YouTube has just announced that it's going to be taking down content from any label that doesn't pay up to be part of its "Music Pass" program.

The idea is simple: you (the consumer) pay to get ad-free videos from labels who have also paid to be on the service. YouTube profits, everyone else loses. As a business model, it beats the hell out of thin gruel ad-supported, which is what the Google service has now. They want to be competing with Spotify et al, and they have the billions of yearly viewers to do it. All they need is providers (major labels) to pony up, and people to go along meekly. Because that's what you can do when you've gathered up enough eyeballs and browser clicks.

As with Amazon's exercise of its monopsony power, there's little that can be done about this except pay up, or pray for intervention from regulators. Rumors abound that the terms YouTube is offering amount to an even worse deal than the "pennies" that got musicians complaining about digital streaming services years ago. That's irony right there, but not particularly funny irony.

YouTube is pretty clearly aware of how much power it holds - witness how it forced G+ on everyone who used to comment on videos. Even today if you search "youtube comments" the top hits are "Youtube comments not working" or "Youtube comments not loading" and the like. But they just sat back calmly and weathered the storm. Now everyone thinks this is just fine and people still post their videos there. I expect exactly the same thing to happen with music videos; when you have little or no choice, complaining about it doesn't broaden your choices.