If you’re a fan of Japanese music and other forms of content, you may already know of YouTube Red and likely find it problematic. YouTube Red is YouTube’s attempt at an ad-free subscription service. It's similar to subscription services such as Apple Music, where you pay a fee in order to gain access to ad-free, exclusive content from the site. In addition to exclusive content, YouTube Red even offers certain privileges such as being able to download videos offline. However, while this sounds all fun and good, it’s causing problems for a good majority of people.
Over the course of this week, several YouTube channels from Japan have been blocked in the United States thanks to the launch of YouTube Red. Even channels from well-known acts such as Dir en Grey or AKB48, as well as sonymusicnetwork and Columbia Music Japan, can no longer be accessed by American users. All you get is the “:/” face and a tagline in which tells you that the content you are trying to access isn't available in your country. Here is a screenshot from the channel direngreyweb, which is pretty ironic considering the video is for their North American tour:
Incidents such as this have caused a great deal of frustration for users, whom are already worrying if their access to acts outside of Japan will be limited as well. Though you can still find some of these musicians’ content on outside channels, access to each artist’s exclusive content is incredibly restricted. Smaller acts are especially affected by the restriction, as their videos will likely be left to the wayside due to little recognition and support.
So what’s the deal? Why are they blocking our access to this content?
Well to be simply put, channels that earn ad revenue but don’t agree to YouTube Red’s revenue share deal will have their content hidden or removed. So not only does the incident affect users, but this also means that channels will lose out on revenue from their content. Given the fact that creators are paid about 55% of the revenue, which is less than its competitors (Apple Music pays creators about 71.5% of revenue), YouTube seems to be looking more and more like the bad guy in this situation.
This incident comes shortly after ESPN had to remove all of its content from YouTube after dealing with copyright issues, leaving behind an empty channel. While some channels have become available again, others are still unable to be viewed by American users. Whether these channels will become available again or not is unclear, but fans can only hope that they’ll be able to access content from their favorite musicians once again.
For more information on this, these two sites will help you out:
So what do you guys think of YouTube Red? Do you love it or hate it? Let me know in the comments below!
