- YouTube Partnership -
Cautions
One significant and often overlooked sub-clause in the YouTube Terms of Service is the following:
Part 6 Your Content and Conduct Subsection C:
For clarity, you retain all of your ownership rights in your Content. However, by submitting Content to YouTube, you hereby grant YouTube a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, sublicenseable and transferable license to use, reproduce, distribute, prepare derivative works of, display, publish, adapt, make available online or electronically transmit, and perform the Content in connection with the Service and YouTube's (and its successors' and affiliates') business, including without limitation for promoting and redistributing part or all of the Service (and derivative works thereof) in any media formats and through any media channels.
To interpret this very simply, any content uploaded to YouTube can then be used by the YouTube Organisation to promote the YouTube Organisation via any and every available media channel for eternity, without owing royalties to the uploader. So for example, if your content becomes massively famous using YouTube as a platform, YouTube is legally permitted to use your content to promote itself, without paying you anything. The Partnership Agreement extends only to advertising revenue, which is split 50/50 in any case.
Part 6 Your Content and Conduct Subsection C:
For clarity, you retain all of your ownership rights in your Content. However, by submitting Content to YouTube, you hereby grant YouTube a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, sublicenseable and transferable license to use, reproduce, distribute, prepare derivative works of, display, publish, adapt, make available online or electronically transmit, and perform the Content in connection with the Service and YouTube's (and its successors' and affiliates') business, including without limitation for promoting and redistributing part or all of the Service (and derivative works thereof) in any media formats and through any media channels.
To interpret this very simply, any content uploaded to YouTube can then be used by the YouTube Organisation to promote the YouTube Organisation via any and every available media channel for eternity, without owing royalties to the uploader. So for example, if your content becomes massively famous using YouTube as a platform, YouTube is legally permitted to use your content to promote itself, without paying you anything. The Partnership Agreement extends only to advertising revenue, which is split 50/50 in any case.
Findings
At the time of writing, YouTube has one of the widest potential viewing audiences of any online platform on the planet. The sheer scale of this audience has attracted the inevetable interest of the advertising community, and thus has profound implications for any content producer seeking to earn a living from the potential advertising revenue. Shaped by forces beyond the producer’s control, the viewing audience in a sense has the most influence over the success/failure of any producer’s content. Without the necessary threshold of views and subscribers, there is no potential marketable audience, and therefore no advertising interest. Even when a significant threshold of views is achieved, it still remains in the hands of the advertising bodies whether or not the content is viable as a potential carrier of their ads. As demonstrated by the research conducted, successful content will have a globally popular appeal, be anchored by a strong personality, and be accessable to the largest possible global population. This, in effect, reduces viable content to some general lowest comon demoninators. For anyone producing potentially alienating or niche content, there seems to be little or no room for a significant amount of advertiser interest and concordantly a significant amount of revenue. However, as demonstrated by Hugo and the team at Thejuicemedia, YouTube can be exploited for it’s exposure, channeling audience interest towards avenues of crowd funding or alternatively, merchandise.