As music companies try to replace lost CD revenue and ring new profits from their catalogs, many of the recent deal making has been in the video space. WMG just announced its own ad supported online channel. Yesterday EMI joined other majors in cutting a YouTube deal and Apple just added YouTube to AppleTV. The list of new video deals and partnerships goes on and on.
But yesterday came an announcement that may send shivers up the spines of record executives before they even get to add video revenue to their bottom lines. (Do record executives have spines? OK that's another story.) The latest version of the popular RealPlayer being released in June enables users to save online videos from YouTube and almost anywhere else for viewing later and to burn them onto discs for "personal use".
The new RealPlayer will give you the power to download Internet video instantly.
"Your nephew's first steps. The speech that moves you. The hilarious clip your co-worker forwarded. With the new RealPlayer, you'll be able to download them all to your personal video playlist. Grab videos from thousands of Web sites with just one click. Watch them anytime, create a video playlist or even burn your greatest hits to DVD. Find the Web video you want - and Real it in."
Real is just "providing a service", but doesn't this sound familiar?
Do you remember the outcry when labels and retailers realized that kids
were burning CD's from their friends instead of buying them? It was the
beginning of the end for CD's. Of course most of the new video services
are ad supported, but what happens to viewer numbers when one person
watching a video channel grabs the hottest video(s) and shares it with
friends offline as a file or disc?
