Perhaps you recall the Lego Factory, an ingenious promotion that invites consumers to create and share models online; potentially leading to a profit-share with Lego.
Enter the indie Pop band “The Decemberists”. Offering a new contest “ReAnimate the Decemberists,” this CGM competition challenges fans to create the animated backdrop needed to complete the band’s video for “O Valencia!”. The video is shot against a green screen, the edits are locked and now they’re looking to their fans to finish it off.
A fan voting mechanism or a gallery of submitted videos online would improve this program considerably, but prizing is the biggest lost opportunity. Offering an iMac as the grand prize, in addition to publicity on MTVU, seems an unworthy incentive and may seriously impact the outcome of this program.
If Capitol Records wants fans to generate their media, they should be prepared to share on the revenues generated from that media. This definitive reward is core to the success of the Lego Factory and a lesson lost on the “ReAnimate the Decemberists” campaign.
Now consider YouTube, MySpace and all the wannabes. With Consumer Generated Media (CGM) business models, the more these companies grow, the more they owe their consumers for their growth. If YouTube is worth 1.65 billion, surely StarWars Kid, that Napoleon Dynamite guy and the leading traffic generating contributors deserve something of an award for their contributions.
The irony is that Universal makes a deal with Youtube, but sues MySpace. All the while StarWars Kid, with no lawyer, is left with nothing.
From YouTube’s Press Room: UNIVERSAL CITY, CA and SAN BRUNO, Calif. – October 09, 2006
Universal Music Group (UMG), the world’s leading music company, today announced an agreement offering YouTube and its users access to thousands of videos on YouTube from UMG’s extensive roster of artists covering every genre of music. In addition, under this agreement, UMG broadly embraces the power and creativity of user-generated content, allowing users to incorporate music from UMG’s recorded music catalog into the videos they create and upload onto YouTube. UMG and its artists will be compensated not just for UMG produced videos but also for the unique, user created content that incorporates UMG music.
Lucky for Universal. Not only do they get a cut of the revenue for their videos posted by fans, they also get a cut of the revenue from the videos created by fans. As for the fans, they’ll continue to create new revenue streams for the record label, while ironically, worrying about being sued by them.
What do the fans get for their efforts? Ads.
If YouTube and Universal believe so much in profit sharing with each other, why do they not believe in a profit share scheme with the users that are generating the content?
New dogs, old tricks.
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6 Responses to “Is Consumer Generated Media simply User Generated Profit?”
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December 4th, 2006 at 2:59 pm
Young Adults Not Fond Of Consumer Generated Content…
It might be old news to some, but it is widely believed that young adults make up the bulk of the MySpace, Facebook, and consumer generated content market. According to a recent study conducted by the American Marketing Association, the majority of adu…
December 5th, 2006 at 10:33 am
Is Consumer Generated Media simply User Generated Profit?…
If YouTube and Universal believe so much in profit sharing with each other, why don’t they believe in a profit share scheme with the users that are generating the content?
With Consumer Generated Media (CGM) business models, the more the companies …
December 6th, 2006 at 1:37 pm
[...] Not sure if anybody caught my rant yesterday in the office about this very issue on YouTube, If you didn’t check out my blog posting about it here. [...]
December 11th, 2006 at 1:29 pm
Consumer Generated Media Profit…
There is a lot of talk about consumer generated content (CGM) these days with the rise of YouTube, blogs, podcasts, review sites, crowdsourcing and more. Today, Radical Trust asked a question that I've also been struggling with a lot……
December 18th, 2006 at 10:11 am
here is an update, They are starting to pay out.
check out
“19 Ways to make social sites pay”
http://mashable.com/2006/12/14/19-ways-to-make-social-sites-pay/
Generation Cash
http://www.trendwatching.com/briefing/
January 31st, 2007 at 8:33 am
[...] A couple of months ago, I wrote about Universal’s deal with YouTube. [...]