David Emery Online

Hi there, I’m David. This is my website. I work in music for Apple. You can find out a bit more about me here. On occasion I’ve been known to write a thing or two. Please drop me a line and say hello. Views mine not my employers.

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Youster? NapTube?

17 May 2006

YouTube is the new Napster.

The main original reason people started going to YouTube was the copyrighted content, such as TV shows etc.

YouTube is also pre dot-com bubble burst.

While still continuing to have a huge amount of users even though they’ve mostly removed the good content, YouTube now face a much bigger problem: Money. Or the lack of it.

YouTube seem to be running their business in the same way everybody else did, before we realised that we had to, you know, actually make some money at some point. From what I hear, YouTube are burning through about $1million/month in bandwidth alone. And yet, other then venture capital, they don’t really have a revenue stream. They claim that they are advertising based – but they don’t really have any – go on, have a look; I couldn’t find any.

Venture capital really isn’t a business model.

Mark my words*, YouTube won’t be the biggest video site anymore in 2007, and quite possibly won’t exist at all by 2008.

* Yes, a prediction. I reserve the right to re-write this paragraph in 2007.