Looking at Internet history at some point Google bought Youtube, and they started to replace Flash videos by the rather new video codec they bought, developed and made open source. Youtube became so big that probably millions of people became and are either hooked or dependent on it.

Question 1 : How can Youtube get away with offering copyrighted music (and films) ? And how do they make the selection of what can stay and what needs to be removed ? (A friend told me a few years ago that Youtube downloads have lower bitrates so it was not so interesting for him, but I don’t hear quality loss myself though I am into playing and listening music myself)

Question 2 : Despite Youtube being very popular the music service Spotify became pretty big as well (And I guess iTunes and Last.fm are not super small). How did that come about ?

  • Perhaps Youtube could be labeled as “precarious music” listening. You never know when videos get removed, and what the quality of new uploads are (If you search for music, it can happen you see a few hits which are e.g. 5 minute 40, but also 5 minutes 21 etc. and what is the quality of the uploads ?)

And who knows whether someone mixed in some spoken advertisements to eject in your subconscious ;)

Question 3 : What would be an effective approach to make a radical change and get away with the giant dependency on Youtube ? There’s projects like Funkwhale, Jamendo and Peertube of course, but would there be other ways to break the chains of our self imprisonment with Youtube ?