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Comment by IanCal | Hacker News Reader

Something particularly interesting there is the way the money will be split:

> Individual partners' cuts will be apportioned based on how much time their viewers spend watching their channels

This could provide a nice incentive to have longer videos rather than shorter ones (for quick views). Particularly for full episodes of something.

I wonder if that's the route they're hoping to go down? If they had a good selection of films & tv shows then this could be quite nice (much more so with offline viewing!).

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It will mean minute physics will get very little and any random let's play will get a lot more.

That's one side, but a very specific example.

If you pay for views rather than duration you incentivise short videos, if you pay for duration you incentivise long videos.

If you go for duration the risk is that you have lots of long easily made videos getting money instead of short hard to make videos. Is that going to harm more things than paying for views?

I think I'd rather have a 10 minute lets-play earn 10x more than one minute physics video than have a playlist of the ten funniest 6s cat videos earn 10x more than one view of minute physics.

Thing is though, making one minute of lets-play costs a lot less (time / money) than making one minute physics or crash course or you name it.

Also, I probably watch hundreds of hours of youtube every month so the amount that ends up at each channel will be extremely small 5.50 / monthlyHours * oursPerChannel isn't going to be very much in the end.

The biggest winners are going to be MCNs (Multi Channel Networks, which most Let's Plays are part of) which take another 20-30% of the revenue generated by each of their partnering channels.

If you want to support single channels, something like Patreon is still going to reign superior in terms of actual money received at the other end.

> Thing is though, making one minute of lets-play costs a lot less (time / money) than making one minute physics or crash course or you name it.

Well yes, as I say it's a tradeoff. A 10s video of a cat falling off a chair takes less time and money to make than any of those.

Here's a way they could solve it: give ability to donate money directly to channel(s). So let's say I want to give $1/month to MinutePhysics - I donate, and get this channel ad-free. Or maybe I want to donate $10/month to be split in half between MinutePhysics and Scott Manley, so I do that, but since I'm over $10, I get the whole no-ads plan as well.

YouTube will take an ad fee anyway, and the current option could stay as the default ("I don't care about any channel in particular, I just want no ads!").

I don't really care about the playlist of cat videos - assuming youtube divides based on the individuals time spent there and not globally - they aren't getting much from me. I do care about lets play/minute physics because that is what I watch.

And I actually like to incentive short videos because that way I get the info I want faster.

> I don't really care about the playlist of cat videos - assuming youtube divides based on the individuals time spent there and not globally

Ah yes, now this is quite an important distinction. If it's my $10 split over what I watch, then that's different to splitting everyone's money globally.

I thought it was the latter from this part of the story:

> Subscription revenues will be pooled, with partners receiving 55 percent of the total. Individual partners' cuts will be apportioned based on how much time their viewers spend watching their channels, though

However, I'd like to see something that more clearly defines what it is.

I think one big issue either way is that watching a video doesn't define how much value I derive from it, and the value is what I personally want to incentivise. One five minute video of a random lets-play is not equivalent (to me) to a five minute smarter every day video, even though both would get one view and 5 minutes of watching time from me.

But, provided they don't just take the full length of the video - you have to keep those people entertained for that full length.

That's not very easy (except perhaps for let's plays where the persona is amusing)

Indeed, I would expect it's viewing duration, otherwise we'd see 20 hour videos with 1 minute of content.

A better system would be to take the the higher paying of either duration based or view based pay.

> A better system would be to take the the higher paying of either duration based or view based pay.

I'm not sure how this would work when sharing profits between people.

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