You do realize that high resolution video hosting and serving is about the most expensive thing you can do on the internet? Just see Vimeo's fee schedule.

Apparently, the Danish musicians don't realize this value, thinking the platform is free to maintain if they can host videos for free there.

> Danish musicians

I don't think Danish musicians had any choice in this decision.

Correctamundo! This is an argument between a government sanctioned "artist association"(it's really record label manager association) and Google. No artist is part of this at all.

But Danish musicians are still free to host their own music on YouTube, this argument affects only the unlicensed use of music in third party videos.

One wonders if the folks in Denmark arguing about their economic rights realizes this.

I'll never understand why music requires high res video, but is ok with a shitty mp3 stream.

Because the number of people who can tell the difference between 480p and 1080p is much greater than the number that can tell the difference between 128kbps mp3 and 24/96 FLAC.

EVERYONE can tell 128kbp vs FLAC if they listen even a bit. 128kbps was always bad, especially if it's an old upload.

320kbps (which is ~Spotify 'extreme') vs FLAC is a different story, you do need some reasonable (read at least a $30 soundmagic E10 in-ear, not some wunderbar looking designer latest fashion trend on-ear for $200+) equipment and some training to spot that.

EDIT Also doesn't tackle the problem that most people hear music, not see it, so 480p vs 1080p for MUSIC isn't a deal breaker now, is it?

I've always wondered if 320 is supposed to be distinguishable from lossless.

Like, wasn't MP3 encoded at 320kbps designed to sound like a CD, while still being compressed? If it's still possible to tell 320 from FLAC in enough circumstances, then is that a failing of 320? If so, why stop at 320? Why wouldn't there be a bitrate somewhere between 320 and uncompressed that makes it impossible for practical purposes to tell the difference between lossy and lossless?

Does a 1% compression jpeg _supposed_ to be distinguishable from the orginal? Probably not, until it goes into a 4m x 3m print.

MP3 does the same to sound that jpg does to colour: those similar enough become one. And it also cuts off the "inaudible" sounds. If you open a spectogram, 320 still cuts at 20khz, whereas most CDs have until 21-22khz - because there are people out there who hear those sounds. (There are some "ultrasonic" cat & mammal scare away devices, which I hear, and they are literally painful to me.)

But answering your question: no, the goal was to have a good enough, but massively smaller file. The goal was never not to be possible to tell them apart.

FLAC compresses a CD to roughly half of it's size - that's already a big win.

128kbps sounds awful and artifacting is painfully obvious with adequate playback equipment.

Perhaps he should have rephrased it as number of people having 4K screens and full HD on all devices they use is far higher than number of people have good audio devices

What about a decentralized solution like PeerTube?

Decentralized alternatives such as PeerTube pay musicians less in ad revenue (about $0.00) than Youtube does.

In other words, PeerTube doesn't provide the same benefits to musicians (audience size, recommendations discovery, ad payouts) that Youtube has.

The trigger for the disagreement between Koda musicians and Google is about money payments and not about storage & bandwidth costs. PeerTube in its current incarnation is not relevant for Koda.

Another relatively decentralized alternative, LBRY, pays at least some YouTubers significantly more per view than YT: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EWoZhKGQtzI (this one seems to get payed about ten times as much per view).

> less in ad revenue

Yes, let's make music rely on the glorious ad industry as well. /s

As so many things, it gets a lot cheaper once you are a monopoly. Can't very well not peer with YouTube.

Only one side in this argument is a monopoly... and it's not YouTube.

It's still really expensive.

Didn't Google brag about investing 2 billion dollars/year in just their network a few years back ?

So expensive companies pay You for people viewing the content. https://clipwatching.com/

yes, that's the subtext to my comment

And you always have Spotify which is a brand from those parts anyway.

Sorry I forgot the part that they are complaining with Google for underpaying artists...