The same thing will happen to any competitor. You get big enough and record companies will want to control the shit out of you. They will sue you and write laws against you and intimidate the crap out of you.

Is YouTube turning into Uber?

The huge problem is Youtube is the go-to place when teenagers and young adults want to listen to a piece[0] and they know it.

[0] the alternative being torrents, and they're very much non-instant.

My friends and I tend to always go to Soundcloud first.

This.

I am not going to waste my time with a low quality video (often with only a static image) when I can have the high quality of Soundcloud. Soundcloud also has an interesting comment system and a better community.

I don't know how about in other circles, but recently Bandcamp and Soundcloud are much more popular among my friends (of whom a lot are musicians) as it offers better terms and control of how your music used. They skip Youtube altogether and if music "video" still ends up there, it's usually uploaded by a fan. Sadly, I don't know any really good video alternatives to Youtube yet.

> go-to place when teenagers and young adults...

Doesn't that make it easier to disrupt? Younger people are less habit forming and more likely to try new services. I would think the licencing with record labels & infrastructure requirements would be the tough part for a new entrant.

> Younger people are less habit forming and more likely to try new services.

Younger people are not less prone to forming habits. There are, of course, always new young people who may not have the same habits as the last round of young people, though.

> Doesn't that make it easier to disrupt?

It is if you manage to topple the absolutely gigantic mindshare and you manage to build a similarly complete catalog of official and user-supplied content.

> I would think the licencing with record labels & infrastructure requirements would be the tough part for a new entrant.

And how. Check youtube's all-time top viewed videos, and the vast majority are vevo channels MVs. If you remove vevo and psy, you're left with a pair of videos of the top 30 or 50.

vevo is a joint venture between UMG, Sony, Abu Dhabi Media… and Google.