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Comment by myusernameisok | Hacker News Reader

I don't know if that's necessarily true. Youtube is to Netflix what Soundcloud is to Spotify. Netflix and Spotify are successful because they charge a small fee to allow users to consume high quality content. Youtube and Soundcloud are both free and allow users to consume community-generated content. This is a bit of a rhetorical question, but why is Youtube so successful when Soundcloud isn't?

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YouTube seems successful because Google is paying for it. It's never made a profit.

No. It's successful as a profitable product otherwise you wouldn't have so many content creators get paid a lot of money for creating videos. It's ad revenue sustains itself, and those that create on it quite well.

You have any numbers to support that profitability claim? YouTube wasn't profitable when Google acquired them, and it wouldn't surprise me if they still were not profitable now. I'm sure they make substantial ad revenue, and it's entirely possible they are profitable. But running servers and content creators getting paid are not proof of that - Google has more than enough money to subsidize the endeavor.

Google also seemingly hasn't been trying very hard to make Youtube profitable. Spotify has a free tier, but you only get the "standard" 160 kpbs bitrate, as well as ads. To get the "extreme" 320 kbps bitrate you need to subscribe. Youtube could have easily restricted 720p and 1080p to paying customers, but didn't. I think now it's too late for Youtube to reverse their decision on that without some backlash.

Spotify also has other restrictions on the free tier, though (for example, you have to have a premium account to run Spotify on a Fire TV Stick (or any other Amazon device AFAICT)). Google/Alphabet might be able to get away with imposing similar restrictions on certain YouTube integrations without too much backlash.

Actual YouTube-based advertising revenue is notoriously incredibly low. Most creators will ultimately make more money from Amazon affiliate links or sponsorships than Adsense. In terms of actual numbers, I've often hears that the Social Blade estimates are well above what actually ends up with creators.

I could be wrong but as of last year, YouTube is still a loss leader for Google.

Youtube not only is not profitable as far as anyone knows, but has vastly reorganized its funding model for creators and most now make pennies on the dollar from what they did before.

Youtubers themselves were screaming about this recently, and almost always with any algo/payout change, and that is pre-Youtube red renegotiations.

Humans are a very visual-oriented animal would be my best guess. Videos vs. audio on the internet is a very different animal.

I've never really used SoundCloud because the ui is confusing and haphazard and it just doesn't feel like Spotify, which I pay for. Spotify makes sure and shows you the album art etc. My recollection of SoundCloud from when I tried it in the past was some sort of waveform you clicked on to listen and visualize the music.

Soundcloud is a very different platform to Spotify though. I wouldn't pay to subscribe to Soundcloud because not all of the artists I like would be on there.

Soundcloud was more of an independent artist platform, and I think Soundcloud might have been able to get artists to pay for some services like sponsored songs, pay to let users download their tracks, artist page perks.

But it's hard to know if that would have worked. Especially in retrospect.

I think it's probably as simple as two things:

(1) Video content engages a wider audience and commands more focus than audio content

(2) Video advertisements dropped into video content are more effective than audio advertisements.

But that's a guess with no empirical base.

Radio stations still exist and they survive primarily on audio advertisements. That's also without any of the internet fingerprinting which can be used to cater advertisements and potentially make Soundcloud's advertisements more lucrative.

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