Digital video to surpass TV by 2020, says YouTube’s Kyncl

However, Kyncl had surprisingly little to say about YouTube Red, the company’s new $10-per-month streaming video subscription service – which features ad-free access to YouTube as well as some movies and TV shows – other than to say YouTube plans to invest in acquiring more original content.

YouTube Chief Business Officer, Robert Kyncl, made the HDR announcement during a keynote where he also went into detail about the firm’s partnership with GoPro.

While VR is changing digital video creation, it still comes with significant challenges in reaching a big enough audience with high production costs that require creators to make two different versions of a video. “With YouTube being a major driver of that shift”. People now find time to watch five hours of video content daily, but growth in traditional television viewership has dropped off, versus online video consumption which is growing by 60 percent annually. The company already offers a $15K, 16-camera, spherical array for professionals, and there has been speculation GoPro’s upcoming Karma drone will support 360º video capture.

Four years later, Cisco estimated that 90 percent of all Internet traffic will be video by 2019, one year ahead of Kyncl’s prediction. “1 billion views used to be an outlier”, the YouTube exec said.

Music is an integral part of YouTube, which boasts the biggest music library on the planet. Calling digital video “inherently mobile”, Kyncl stressed that as small screens become sharper, brighter, and better-suited to displaying high-quality video content, the drift away from the living room television and on to laptops, phones, and tablets will be even more pronounced.

HDR is a hot topic in technology circles right now, with both content providers (Amazon Instant Video, Netflix) and hardware manufacturers (Samsung, Sony, LG, Panasonic) announcing support for the format.

During the keynote, Kyncl was joined by music producer Scooter Braun, GoPro CEO and founder Nick Woodman, and Vrse founder and CEO Chris Milk.

Kyncl emphasized the marriage of music and YouTube makes good business sense.