Talented developer for sure, but has a knack for developing software that piggy backs of silicon valley giants that can turn off access at a moments notice.
today it is very simple because almost everyone has a player in their pocket that connects the card to software which runs in the cloud. It wouldn't be technically difficult at all for me to host the music file in S3, R2 or Azure storage and the storage and network costs are insignificant so far as I expect these cards to be distributed. If I did that I could get in trouble over copyright, so a link to YouTube is a safe and easy solution w/ the disadvantage that people in many geographies can't view licensed music videos.
Fortunately that QR code is a redirect and I can send it to another service. I demoed the cards with quite a few people and found that they usually felt it was a letdown to go to YouTube (maybe because they go to YouTube all the time and there is nothing special about it) but that there was more satisfaction with a link to SongWhip which might send them to YouTUbe in the end but gives them a feeling of agency at the expense of another click.
Making something like youtube would be much easier technically than it would have been in 2006 or so. A solo dev could create a small scale streaming service for HTML5 video pretty reasonably.
It's the copyright that's the problem. You would be annihilated, not by YouTube's lawyers, but by UMG and Sony's lawyers, immediately after getting even a small amount of traction.
Nobody would care about Youtube if it wasn't seeded with millions of movie clips and music videos years before the copyright holders got their act together.
Alternative to working with a big silicon valley giant. If you want to integrate/use YouTube you need to deal with whatever that company puts you up with. And as the article states, you don't want them to become grumpy at you; otherwise, they will turn you off even quicker. The only alternative I see is to develop a new YouTube, which seems unreasonable given how dominant Google is.
You don’t need a direct alternative to youtube to stop using youtube. You can just not deal with it, or access it via browser when needed, and use other platforms/media more instead. It might even become irrelevant on its own, like facebook and google search are slowly becoming.
But sure, if that’s not enough and you need a clone of youtube then yes, you need to develop a new youtube.
Many content creators have started hosting videos on other services like Patreon because of Youtube's censorship and demonetization policies. Which doesn't entirely avoid the centralization problem but it's better not to put all of your eggs in one basket.
It's also possible (although obviously not always feasible) to self-host or torrent.
Worth mentioning that Rumble, Odysee, and Bitchute are all excellent alternative platforms to host videos at, without the concerns YouTube has introduced. Although, I can't speak to monetization for any of these — which is where Patreon excels here.
X.com is also trying to enter the space by hosting longer videos and allowing accounts to earn ad revenue as well as building a subscriber base who can support creators directly. It's not half bad.
Full disclaimer:
I think it might be implied, but there's certainly a lot of political distaste around these platforms since they finally freed themselves from the shackles of government-aided censorship, and takedowns that are heavily biased towards promoting progressive views (especially radical).
With that said, everyone please refrain from attacking this reply for merely mentioning these platforms as options, as they are equally valid ways to build a following and/or monetize your content, even if they support creators who run against your own views. As they say, diversity is our strength!
I can't see how you can avoid the centralization problem and also have decent monetization for the videos. But I want to certainly become convinced that it can work. Crypto made me a decentralization skeptic.
I think the idea was that they would develop apps that don't require the giants. Which sure, could be your own YouTube, but more often it's a smaller in scope project because you're a solo dev. If i understand them correctly, they're just acknowledging the risk.
Ie work in a way that doesn't require the giants shadow, as the giant may move unexpectedly. The shade can be quite lucrative though, if you're nimble.
That’s more of a statement of the monopolization of hardware access the App Store gives than it is him “piggy backing”. It’s not like you have a real choice without Apple being forced to allow software downloads via a web browser globally.
