YouTube – A World of New Learnings
An insightful presentation by Nitin Kothare – GM, Streaming/OTT
Any queries about YouTube and its operations remain clouded for a lack of knowledge about its everyday functioning. Many of our members are keen to know more about the way YouTube operates and the revenues generate. Here are a few common queries that we would like to answer through this article.
What is YouTube?
YouTube is an open platform accessible to anyone with a Google account. Different kinds of content including Music, Entertainment shows covering Movies, Educational content, Travel, Culinary, Fashion, Sports, Animation, Chat shows, Games, and a wide array of User Generated Content can be hosted on this platform.
What is YouTube music content?
Music content on YouTube is available in various forms including Film music, Instrumental music, Cover versions, Unplugged music, Audio tracks, and uploaded jukeboxes. There is also a facility that allows every user to upload his or her music. This is commonly labeled as “User Generated Content” and usually covers Birthday and Wedding videos among others. The music uploaded on YouTube broadly fits into these parameters.
The reason that YouTube today is the second most popular social media platform, can also be largely attributed to the facility offered to users to upload their content free of cost. Today almost everyone with internet access and acumen to create content has a YouTube account. Such is the level of reach and penetration generated by YouTube.
Is there any specific term used to describe content uploaded on YouTube?
Any content, including music content, uploaded on a YouTube channel is labeled as an ‘Asset’.
How does YouTube pay money to IPRS?
YouTube pays IPRS through the money they have received via advertising revenue generated on any particular song. The AVOD- Advertising model and SVOD – Subscription Model are two ways of revenue generation. Revenue on a video is generated by the number of ads played on the video, which again depends on multiple factors decided by the YouTube back-end process, the rights monitored and the monetization mechanism, UGC categorization, and the threshold rate for monetization and remittance to Ad-sense account. YouTube pays IPRS a percentage of the advertising revenue they manage to bring forth. However, the advertisers are independent and cannot be controlled by IPRS, which in turn means that they can put in their ad money where they deem fit. The views essentially are global views and can also attract advertisers from out of India.
What should the IPRS members do to gain maximum revenue from their work?
Due to the huge number of self-published works, the Indian music ecosystem is currently generating an unprecedented amount of music content. In such a crowded scenario, incorrect and improper registration of works may cause the composer or the songwriter to lose his/her rightful revenues generated from the platform. It is therefore critical for the music creator and publisher to register their works with IPRS as soon as it is released. Several other issues hinder royalty collection, including channels that have not been uploaded through the right interface which amounts to a loss in royalty monies for the creator as there is no way to track their content. Songwriters, composers, and publishers who don’t have a CMS can release their works through Aggregators to ensure proper claims and revenues.
NB: The information provided is basis the facts available with IPRS
