Keith Watanabe * NET 2.0

Eric Schmidt mentioned in the news maybe a month ago that Google is still contemplating how to monetize YouTube.  Naturally, the desire to put ads on everything is at the core of Google's business policy (and when I say business, I mean making money).  With the Viacom case looming and rearing its ugly head, and in reading that Stratovarius keyboardist's complaints about earning money, I thought of an interesting strategy for helping the artists and Google/YouTube.

First, I think that Google/YouTube should create a new sector for employment within their company.  For artists, they ought to hire them full time for the rate of a good junior to senior level engineer.  Say between $40k - $120k/year.  Many artists complain that the biggest problem in file sharing is how artists get swindled by the recording industries and "need to put food on the table for their kids."  Well, in the case of people like Scott Wieland, or Lars Ulrich, their kids must be pretty obese by now with all the millions their parents make.  And in many of these artists' cases, most of the money goes to luxury goods and bad drug habits.  So if someone pay them a reasonable rate like a full time employee, then they'll benefit without becoming mentally fucked up like Britney Spears, Paris Hilton or Tom Cruise (I blame the money not Scientology for this one).  I mean, if really all these people want is food, shelter, water and transportation, that salary range is quite good in fact!  Besides, do we want another MTV creating yet more generations of skanks, drug induced losers and poor role models for our kids?

The thing with the recording companies traditionally been the whole issue of mass producing and marketing their artists.  These days anyone can honestly mass produce their own stuff.  Just go to iTunes, or some other online distributor.  So the real big issue is marketing.  The videos, branding, interviews, etc.  We already cut cost down tremendously in this schema by eliminating the need to physically produce goods (which has been said to be one of the largest cost).

Well, videos are great but I think they mostly send the wrong message regardless.  When you see hip hop videos, they tell you to be a slut, stupid or dress in a certain way (hence being a conformists).  Rock videos glorify sex, drugs and rock n roll.  Pop music simply induces stupidity and besides those so-called artists are just puppets propped up in front of a mic so that some puppetmaster in the background can vicariously use them for their own incapabilities.

So that leaves branding and promotion.  Well, branding is bullshit most of the time because marketing is telling us to buy something that is really worse than it is.  Or they're telling us that without something, we suck.  So I think branding can be eliminated from the equation.

That leaves promotion to improve distribution sales for the artists as well as the management aspects for venues.  Unfortunately, venues are typically run by a different mafia (i.e. Ticketmaster or the Yak in .jp).  So we have to avoid that.  But most management are just leeches in all of this anyway.  And if an artists does not want to perform, they either are 1) closet artists that really should be sharing their music with friends; or 2) fakes because they don't care about their fans.

As a result, the real thing in the end is the promotion aspect that would be in the hands of Google/YouTube. 

So here's where everything comes together for Google/YouTube.  The problem with music is that it's all trend based.  As I mentioned, labels don't really support their artists.  It's like a guy who is 60 years old, been a veteran at software engineering but only knows COBOL.  Now and then, these veterans have their comebacks (Y2K bug, Rolling Stones), but most companies and labels prefer keeping them in their pastures or moving them to a different role (management, producers, etc.).

The truth is that the labels should never stop supporting their artists.  So if we end the whole notion of the "in-artists" and create the "intern," "junior," "mid-career," "senior," and "lead" type of artists just as we have created for engineers and similar positions, then the game changes entirely.  And if we promote these artists in a similar way, say veterans with their larger catalogs can be in the forefront to represent certain categories of music or headlining shows while younger people are proving themselves in learning the business, we might create a new, less vicious model of handling the music business.

But alas!  I still have yet to reveal the model of making money for Google/YouTube.  I mentioned before about how music (and other digital goods) is priced at an inequitable level because of the way supply and demand works in the electronic/online world.  So if Google sets up a "credit" account where users can employ different methods for compensating artists, then that's where Google can earn their money.

Here's some possibilities:

• Charge as you go.  .02 cents/song for a full download.  Video requires .10 cents/viewing or .20 cents/download.
• Users must click on ads.
• Users get credits for spreading the music/video to other friends
• Users receive viewing credits for actions performed (creating Google Application spreadsheets, signing up with orkut, sending out an email from GMail)
• Users receive credits for performing some exchange service for the artists (e.g. building a fan page, signing up with a fan site, etc.)

The thing is that none of this has to be directly monetary.  We're seeing online games do creative campaigning for giving users credits who don't have money.  Eventually, these actions convert into something between businesses (partnerships, revenue sharing, traffic sharing, etc.)

I think one problem that needs to be resolved is that artists have to become multi-millionaires with these excessive lifestyles.  I don't think it's fair that a guy like Tom Cruise can earn $25 mil + 20% gross at the box office for doing so little.  Or watching some jerk like Vince Neil tell everyone that living like a rebel is great then become a fat slob with numerous personal problems with drugs, alcohol, etc.  Sure there's an artistic glory to it, but is this for everyone?  Why is it that some fake artists with no talent like Jennifer Lopez make tons of cash for shaking her phat ass, but hard working artists like Fernando Miyata get little recognition (until recently)?

I think giving these artists fair compensation with stable jobs (not treating like session players) is a great thing.  I don't like the idea of a middle man still, but the recording industry is just too ruthless and handles their people worse than cannibalism.  At least this model seems fair at the surface, except for the ruling elite.  But those people already made their money and maybe it's time to send a message to them as well.