In a blogpost YouTube let’s us know that direct payment for subscribing to YouTube channels is being rolled out now. Content owners/creators now have more (and most certainly: better) options to monetize their content. Not only advertisement, in content sponsoring/product placement, but also direct payment as a monhtly subscription.

It will be only a matter of time before pay per view will be added as an option as well. Sports organizations who are distributing tons of high quality content via YouTube now (see for example the MLB and IOC), have a solid new stream of income to pay for their expensive content.

How bright the future will be depends on one factor: are people willing to pay in the perceived free environment that YouTube is.

Hat tip to Francisco.

Already for the fifth year in a row, my top 10 in songs. Find it on spotify here, find last years Tumblr here and the older ones here.

On YouTube, I could only find 9 tracks, the somewhat bizarre “radio play” by Paul Heaton never even made it to YouTube. Some of the other tracks feature only a few hundred views. Especially my number one the Anglo-Colombian nu-cumbia collaboration ‘Su Suzy’ deserves so many more listeners/viewers.

As always, I hope you enjoy!

The Royal Dutch Football Association (KNVB) had a premiere yesterday: the entire training of “Orange” the Dutch first football team has been streamed live on YouTube. During a training in the famous Wembley stadium, the activities of superstars such as Robin van Persie, Wesley Sneijder and Arjan Robben could be viewed by every one, unfiltered.

The innovative experiment had been announced via a small press release and more important: many of the football players them selves mentioned the broadcast in their own social media.

In total 35.000 viewers watched the live stream for an average of 13 minutes, with at the maximum 8.700 concurrent viewers. After broadcasting the friendly of the Orange ladies a few weeks before, this was a second YouTube live stream experiment for the KNVB. The Dutch FA is also experimenting with the distribution on YouTube of short highlight clips during the match. The experiments will be evaluated later this year.

A great article in the New Yorker on the focus of YouTube on premium content. It’s quite a read, but well worth while. The article focuses mainly on classic non-live TV and so sports are mentioned very little.

I think this new focus of YouTube on premium content is a blessing for sports organisations. Finally the long tail of sports, the niche sports, get an affordable home on the web (and mobile of course). Not only will sports organisations cut out the expensive hosting/streaming part, but they are given an opportunity to actually make money.

Mark my words. YouTube will surely focus on AAA sports content, but the biggest benefits lie in the tiers below the IPL, EPL and NFL. The sports that don’t get airplay on TV. 

My “best of” YouTube playlist tradition is in its fourth year. Last year I made the jump to Spotify and also this year I made a Spotify playlist (and even a long list). This year I make the jump to my Tumblr blog. I put the older lists in a post a few weeks back.

Comments on the songs are in the YouTube playlist, so I will stick to the fact that the number one is surprising, even for me. But it’s a song that hasn’t left my head since I heard it first and never ceases to make me happy and sing along.

Enjoy watching/listening to all of them!

2008 (link in Spotify)

2009 (link in Spotify)

2010 (link in Spotify)