Warner Music Is Only Going off YouTube Officially

The online media news du jour is certainly Warner Music's decision to pull all of its videos from YouTube, but, for all the headlines, one has to wonder how effective this attempt to control distribution of its content is going to be. As an experiment, I did a search early this afternoon on YouTube for "Madonna video" and the first link was to her official YouTube channel. Her label? Warner Music. It was also still possible to subscribe to the Warner Bros. Records channel.

Of course, and most importantly, YouTube was still awash in content from Warner Music that was uploaded by fans.

Even once the record company manages to pull down all of its content, consumer uploading of it will probably continue unabated, and that's what makes Warner Music's decision just another battle in an unwinnable war. In fact, some fans will probably view it as a moral obligation to make sure YouTube visitors can still go there to see their favorite Madonna video and spend their quality time uploading every scrap of Madonna video content they own. Since consumers harbor the belief that it is they, and not content creators, who own media, this is simply the way things work.

Warner Music is in the process of pulling down its content because it feels it isn't being fairly compensated by YouTube. That's understandable. But while pulling content gets a point across, it doesn't necessarily resolve anything. The real choices for the record companies are to either come to terms with YouTube and get paid for licensing their content, or let consumers take over uploading it and not see a dime. In the latter scenario, the only entity that wins is YouTube. YouTube isn't the only game in town, but, unfortunately for Warner Music, it's far and away the game that matters most.