YouTube way bullish on digital video

YouTube chief business officer Robert Kyncl’s keynote speech at CES 2016 in Las Vegas on Thursday didn’t contain any big announcements on par with the we’ve-gone-global boast in the previous day’s eynote by his former boss, Netflix co-founder and CEO Reed Hastings. But Kyncl, whose last name rhymes with “tinsel”, stands by the number 75. “Video is more important to music than ever”.

To explain why YouTube will continue its impressive growth, Kyncl offered four reasons why digital video will win the decade, displacing TV. Current projections now show we’ll hit that mark a year earlier, in 2019.

While he pointed to mobile viewing and virtual reality as drivers of the shift to digital, he also said his prediction is based on lower TV audiences.

“Think back to your childhoods: how many of you had to argue and compromise with your parents and siblings when deciding what to watch in the living room?” The mobile video experience is thus improving. Artists earn revenue from YouTube plays, and the company has to-date paid over $3 billion to the music industry.

More than a million Google Cardboard viewers were sent to NYT subscribers as part of the initiative. YouTube “is a democratic platform…anyone can create something everyone can watch”, he said. “Many of these creators started with nothing but a webcam and a YouTube account”. “It is a lot more attainable to be the next PewDiePie than to be the next Tom Cruise”.

In case there was any doubt, YouTube is serious about music. Continuing his previous point, Kyncl said that anyone’s music could become a phenomenon on YouTube. Even though current trends suggest that’s overly optimistic, “This being Vegas”, Kyncl said on stage at CES, “I’m doubling down”. That’s looking set to change, with GoPro planning a “casual” camera that will let people without the production budget of the average blockbuster to make their own 360° content. “If I feel something, I’m just guessing someone else will feel something too”.