YouTube is offering 3 months of YouTube RED for just a dollar!

YouTube RED – A paid service from YouTube which gives you access to some extra features (Background listening on mobile, ad-free content and more..), exclusive content and a better way to support your creators!

YouTube has just started sending out newsletters informing users that you can get a three month subscription for just a dollar! That’s right just a dollar for three months of service!

The offer is valid until 6/17/2016 and is unfortunately not available for users who have used the free-trail before. After the three months, if you haven’t canceled your subscription it’ll automatically renew for $9.99/month.

YouTube Rewind 2015 has dropped!

Towards the end of every year YouTube makes a REWIND video to showcase the year’s biggest hits. Many popular YouTubers and Musicians get together to make a very “hype” video!

This year’s YouTube REWIND video has just dropped a few minutes ago and it’s amazing!

Here are some of the things featured in the REWIND 2015 video:

Justin Bieber – What Do You Mean?
OMI – Cheerleader
Silentó – Watch Me
Major Lazer & DJ Snake – Lean On (feat. MØ)
Just Do It! – Shia Labeouf
The Weeknd – Can’t Feel My Face
“Dance battles”
.. and of-course “Hotline Bling – Drake”

The video is featuring many popular YouTubers like:

YouTube RED: Removes ads, Background playback, Downloads and, Google Play Music service for just $9.99!

YouTube’s new “RED” subscription service allows hardcore viewers to support the creators with features in return.

The Subscription service is just $9.99 per month and let viewers have some sweet features like:

Ad-Free Content

With the YouTube RED subscription ads on YouTube videos are removed and YouTubed has promised that creators are going to make the same (If not more) amount of money they would’ve made with the viewer just watching a traditional ad.. It doesn’t seems clear how this can be with the amount of other services provided with the subscription.

Save Offline

Saving offline just allows you to easily and legally download YouTube videos within the app to allow users to save data or to just watch a video on the go.. All the playback statistics will get report back to YouTube just like if it was a regular YouTube video as soon as you come back online, so there no loss to creators.

Background Play

Background play just allows you to keep listening to the content even when you change apps or put your phone into sleep mode.

Google Play Music subscription

So from now on if you already have Google Play Music subscription (Also known as “All Access”) then YouTube RED is going to be included.. If you don’t have an All Access subscription then once you signup for YouTube RED it will be included too. All Access is very similar to iTunes Music which allows you to stream and download and music you want.. You can learn about All Access: here.

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Both the All Access and YouTube RED subscriptions are free to try out for 30 days.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YL9RetC0ook

YouTube’s 10 year anniversary is marked with unicorns, cats and double rainbows!?

YouTube is celebrating it’s 10 year anniversary the way we know it. YouTube has chosen 26 of it’s best moments of videos from A to Z! It’s also spreading them though out May – A letter a day.

On YouTube 300 hours of video is being uploaded every minute compared to the first video that was uploaded to YouTube by it’s co-founder Jawed Karim – “Me at the zoo” which was only 18-seconds.

YouTube was founded on February 14th 2005 in an apartment above a Japanese restaurant. The idea for YouTube was born after the creater couldn’t find footage of 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami and other events. In 2006 YouTube was purchased by Google for only $1.68 Billon.

YouTube is also ranked #3 Globally and #4 in the U.S. on the famous site ranking site Alexa.

But, this is how YouTube puts it’s self:

YouTube is a portrait of our global culture, seen through the lenses and perspectives of people around the world. It is a portrait built by a creative community of bold and fearless individuals. Built by comedians, gamers,activists, artists, performers, teachers, and pranksters. Built with cats and rainbows and blenders and ninjas and unicorns. It was built on the silly. It was built on the profound. It was built by you.

Of-Course you can’t forget that we are also on YouTube and are making great tech content!

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Test out the YouTube’s new player! PRE-BETA

YouTube has started testing out a new style of HTML player. The new player is a lot more simplistic and modern.

The new player is has a semi transparent bottom bar along with different and new animations and icons! The new player is still in testing mode and If you decide to use the new player be sure to keep in-mind that the player is not finished and is still being worked on.

From my own opinion I feel like that new player still needs a bit work on like that fact that the video title and some player elements stay blurry and don’t scale properly while in fullscreen mode.

Ads on the new player just fine but the new cars UI is just not great and glitches out the whole player at times. Annotations also are not existent in the new player hinting at a fact that YouTube might be ditching the annotation system.

If you want to try out the player yourself it’s really easy all you need to do is install the EditThisCookie plugin on chrome and when you go to youtube.com click on the plugin in the toolbar and find “VISITOR_INFO1_LIVE” and change it’s value to

Q06SngRDTGA

from whatever it already is and save.

Next time you open a YouTube video it will load the new player! Have fun trying out the player and keep in mind that it’s still pre-beta.

If you want to go back to the original player then remove everything in the value box of “VISITOR_INFO1_LIVE” and save.

UPDATE: YouTube has made a full move to the new player. There is no need to do this anymore!

BREAKING: YouTube wants to get a cut of your sponsored videos!

YouTube is now starting to clamp down on creators who are working directly with companies to sponsor their videos with overlay ads and YouTube now wants to get a cut of your sponsorship money.

YouTube has not updated it’s ad policy to block “graphical title cards” from sponsors to promote their product or service.

A revised FAQ document states that video overlays of sponger logos and product branding are no longer allowed – Until the Sponsor itself pays Google to advertise their product or service.

The sponsor wants to have a title card before the video with their brand name and product information. Is this ok?

We allow text-only title cards where there is Paid Product Placement for the purpose of paid product disclosure only. Graphical title cards, including the use of sponsor logos and product branding, are prohibited unless there is a full Google media buyout on the Partner content by the sponsor. You can contact your Partner Manager for more information and assistance.

That is what the updated FAQ document states. This been you are not allowed to put a brands logo that is not yours in your video, as simple as you can’t have a coke can clearly visible in the video.

You can have a logo if you are covering the news!

A YouTube representative is saying that this is a clarified version of it’s exiting policy. This is intended to keep viewers from being stacked with ads.

This prevent YouTube stars and Multi-channel networks from creating sponsorship deals with brands without Google/YouTube getting a cut of it. It seems like YouTube has made this move because it just wasn’t making enough money from the 40% AdSense cut.

However you CAN put a brand’s logo on screen if you are covering the news – For Example: You can have Apple’s logo on screen if you are taking about the new iPhone.

YouTube now does have a new package which advertisers can buy to have a 6 second pre-roll that is not integrated into the video. It’s called “product card”!

Questions:

How does YouTube know that you are doing a news story from you doing a sponsorship. Right now YouTube’s Content ID system is really bad already so, that question is how is the system going to differentiate a sponsor spot from a news story?
How much cut of the money will YouTube/Google will take from my “product placement”?
How I sign up so YouTube/Google gets a cut of my sponsor-spots? Can I do it or the advertiser has to do it?
What about the video on YouTube that already have a “product placement”? Will they be taken down?
What If I accidentally have a “product placement”. Like in my vlog where I show a food that I really like or show the logo of a restaurant that I go to?
Will I have to blur out every single logo out of my vlog that’s not mine?

All of these question have not yet been answered by YouTube.

If YouTube is keeping this policy and keeps doing stuff like this then it might not be far when we all move to Facebook or any other video streaming platform for our videos. Remember, These “product placements” are a big source of money for some YouTubers other then AdSense.

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