YouTube now supports 360-degree live streams and spatial audio

 

YouTube will today begin supporting 360-degree live streaming on its service, confirming reports from earlier this year stating that such a feature was in development. One of the first videos to take advantage of this more immersive format will be this year’s live stream from music event Coachella, where select performances from the festival will now be live streamed in 360 degrees.

Also new today is support for spatial audio for on-demand YouTube videos, the company says.
With this announcement, YouTube is the first to launch 360-degree live streaming and spatial audio at scale, we should note.

Spatial audio means playing sounds the same way people actually hear – or as YouTube explains, it’s about letting you listen as you do in real life – “where depth, distance and intensity all play a role,” writes Neal Mohan, Chief Product Officer for YouTube on the company blog.

Google had already been rolling out support for spatial audio elsewhere in its product line, including most importantly, for its VR platform, Google Cardboard. In January, it made it possible for developers to support this option in their own apps, with updates for the Cardboard SDKs for Unity and Android, for example. So it’s not surprising to see the technology being expanded on YouTube.

At launch, however, spatial audio is only available for on-demand videos, not live videos. That means streams like the Coachella concert won’t include this option. The feature is also limited to Android smartphones used with headphones. (Google published a sample playlist here.)
The bigger news today, though, is the launch of 360-degree live streaming.

For YouTube creators, all that’s required to take advantage of this new feature is a camera that supports the technology. Other than that, there’s no change to the current live streaming process, YouTube tells us.

YouTube additionally announced the support of 1440p 60fps resolution for live streams on its service today. Live streams at 1440p have 70 percent more pixels than the standard HD resolution of 1080p, to give you an idea of the nature of this improvement. This not only offers a great experience for the new live 360 streams, which are best enjoyed at high resolutions and high frame rates, but will benefit video game streams, too. The latter will benefit YouTube’s Twitch competitor, YouTube Gaming.

Meanwhile, from the end user perspective, there’s no extra technology or headsets required to watch 360-degree live streams – they’re available on any device, including desktop, tablet, iOS or Android. That makes them more accessible than the higher-end VR technologies currently in development, which require hefty upfront investments on consumers’ side and still struggle with a lack of content.


(Above: an example of a 360 degree video)


To make support for both 360 live streams and spatial audio possible, YouTube has been working with camera and software vendors including VideoStitch, Two Big Ears, ALLie, Vahana VR and Orah 4i, it says.

In addition, today YouTube says it’s also opening up its “Live API” which will allow any camera manufacturer interested in 360 the ability to use YouTube’s Live Streaming API to send 360-degree live streams to the service. This addresses the questions raised around industry adoption – that is, how YouTube plans to support the different manufacturers and solutions on the market today.
Of course, not all video creators who want to experiment with either 360 degree live streaming or spatial audio can afford to invest in their own equipment. That’s why YouTube says creators will be able to try the technologies at YouTube Space locations.

These are the studios YouTube runs in cities like L.A., New York, London, Tokyo, Paris, Berlin, and elsewhere, where creators can produce content, learn new skills and collaborate with others in their local video communities. YouTube says 360 degree live streaming and spatial audio will be available at all its Space locations worldwide.

These launches are significant for YouTube which is betting big on new technologies as a means of attracting a wider audience to its site in an age where more users than ever are consuming YouTube’s content, and especially on mobile. The company said in July that watch time was up 60 percent year-over-year, and mobile viewing had doubled.

The company’s investment and speed to launch with these technologies is also notable. It first debuted support for 360-degree videos last March, and the feature has since been adopted by a number of musicians, athletes and brands, the company points out today. It also showed off its own VR camera rig, the Jump VR video camera, at its 2015 I/O conference and then put it directly in the hands of creators later in the year.

This November, it brought VR videos (360 degree videos with depth perception) to Google Cardboard, and made all YouTube videos compatible with Cardboard.

While all these technologies offer a new means of telling stories through video, they’re very new. That means their ability to boost user viewing metrics in terms of engagement and minutes watch in the long-term still remain unproven. That said, there’s definitely growing consumer interest in 360 degree videos and VR. For instance, Google said this January it’s shipped 5 million Cardboard viewers to date.

Starting today, anyone will be able to do live 360-degrees on YouTube, the company says. Coachella will happen on the weekend, and will be the first high-profile example of the new live streams on the site.



Source: Techcrunch

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YouTube acquires BandPage, a music start up

YouTube has acquired the online music platform BandPage. Terms of the deal were not disclosed, nor was there any mention of whether BandPage would be shuttered in the process.

BandPage is a marketing platform for musicians to connect with their fans and also promote their music on Facebook. Beyond the popular social network, BandPage also has a product called BandPage Everywhere that enables musicians to build a website and update their other promotional sites in just a few clicks. It’s likely that the value of the startup closely matched the synergies of YouTube — an artist can post their music video on the Google-owned social network and then have it instantly distributed to other online sites.

Over time, BandPage has moved beyond Facebook to partner with other services like Spotify, Ning, SoundCloud, StubHub, Rdio, iHeartRadio, and Twitter.

This isn’t a random acquisition as both companies share a common bond. Mike Cassidy, Google’s vice president and project leader of Project Loon, is an advisor to BandPage.

In a blog post, BandPage announced that it “is dedicated to helping musicians build their careers by growing their fan bases and increasing their revenue on the largest digital music services in the world. By joining forces with the team at YouTube, we can help artists reach their fans in more powerful ways than ever before.”

“YouTube already offers a global distribution platform for any artist to be discovered and some of the best self-publishing tools for musicians and other creators. The team has a lot of things planned to help musicians succeed on the platform, and more broadly across the BandPage network,” the post continued. “Our collective goal remains the same: to grow an open network of digital music services, develop intelligent new tools for managing/distributing artist content and commerce, and create new revenue opportunities for all musicians, on YouTube and beyond.”

BandPage claims to have more than 500,000 musicians on its platform, including Alicia Keys, Beyonce, Bruce Springsteen, Carrie Underwood, John Legend, Justin Timberlake, Maroon5, P!nk, Usher, Snoop Dogg, Rihanna, and Paul McCartney.

Since being founded in 2009, the startup has raised $27.6 million in funding. Investors include GGV Capital, IDG Ventures USA, Mohr Davidow Ventures, Northgate Capital, Walden Venture Capital, and several individuals. It competes with the likes of AAMPP, Sound Rink, Listener Approved, BandCamp, and others.



Source: Venture Beat

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These Are the Tech Giants That Won 2015

Running a business is tough. But for some, the chance that one can leave their mark on the world—or, as Steve Jobs famously put it, “make a dent in the universe”—is wildly alluring. A few even manage to pull it off.

In 2015, a few tech companies did more than make a dent. They showed that technology now defines the terms of business. Sure, they also made billions. But more significantly, they forced the rest of the world to reckon with the ways they reshaped the landscape.

Amazon Controls the Cloud

Amazon is a 21-year-old company. Isn’t that crazy? Yet, despite being old enough to legally drink, Amazon has continued to follow the startup mantra of “growth before profits.” Until 2015, that is. This year, Amazon reached a pivotal moment in its history. It began to turn a profit—consistently.

But the biggest reason for that growth wasn’t retail (though that business was a strong performer, too). It was Amazon’s cloud.

In April, for the first time, Amazon broke out its Amazon Web Services revenue and revealed a massive $4.6 billion business—with really good margins. Amazon pioneered the idea of providing instant access to computing power over the Internet when it introduced AWS about a decade ago. Now, many businesses and developers rent out access instead of setting up their own machines. That’s slowly eaten away at the businesses of a handful of entrenched tech giants—the so-called “walking dead” of tech. And while Amazon’s cloud is now facing challenges from similar services offered by the likes of Microsoft and Google, Jeff Bezos and company have established an enormous lead in a market that could be worth $191 billion by 2020.

Netflix Wins on Hollywood’s Terms

This year, Netflix became much more than a cord-cutting alternative to watching TV. The company first stepped into the realm of original content to challenge HBO’s premium fare when it acquired the high-profile House of Cards in 2011. But 2015 it really went all-in on original programming. Today, its portfolio includes documentaries, comedy specials, variety shows, original movies (ones that generate Oscar buzz), and drama series. Its slate now dwarfs the offerings of both Amazon and Hulu.

In short, Netflix is killing it. But what’s perhaps most interesting about the fact that Netflix is winning is that it’s not exactly winning at being a tech company—though it does rely on user data to engineer audience hits. It’s winning on TV and Hollywood’s terms. Netflix dominated the Golden Globes, SAG Awards and the Emmys this awards season. Along with critics, shareholders are also very pleased.
Instagram’s Out-of-this-World Success

Instagram, everyone’s favorite little social network, isn’t so little anymore.

The Facebook-owned company, now five years old, is still experiencing luxurious and steady growth. In 2015, it surpassed Twitter in its number of monthly active users: 400 million, versus Twitter’s 320 million. Twitter in general had a pretty rocky year, struggling to appeal to the mainstream and find better footing in the stock market.

Instagram, by contrast, appeals to just about everybody. Here’s something else that should scare Twitter: the image-based social network is getting damn good at news. Its straightforward feed of photos is often much simpler to decode than Twitter’s lightning-fast, text-based stream. At least one huge institution has recognized this: In July, Instagram scored a major coup when NASA decided to debut its first surface image of Pluto on the social network.

Uber Leaps the Regulatory Hurdles

Uber is now a global giant with billions in financing in its coffers. Its current reported valuation: $62.5 billion. That eye-popping figure sent Uber sailing past Xiaomi, last year’s most valuable startup, to become the single most valuable privately owned company in the world in 2015.

Not that the status came without hurdles. In California, a class-action lawsuit potentially involving hundreds of thousands of drivers is winding its way through the federal court system, challenging the ride-hail giant to make its drivers official Uber employees. Losing the suit could have immense impact on the so-called on-demand economy, which depends on the work of independent contractors. A jury trial is set for July next year.

Still, there’s no denying that Uber’s growth has been astronomical. It’s muscled its way into markets both in the US and abroad and run successful campaigns against regulators. The surest sign yet of its domination: its biggest rivals have come together in a global anti-Uber alliance.

Disney Sets the Rules

Let’s not kid ourselves. We all know that Star Wars ruled in 2015. So of course Disney, which owns Star Wars, ruled by association. How could you miss the synergy? (We certainly didn’t.)

But this year, the old-media powerhouse was a winner in other, subtler ways, too. The company, with its many divisions and subsidiaries, often dictated the terms in every facet of media and entertainment, even in the world of upstarts where players like Netflix and Buzzfeed seem to dominate. ESPN, for instance, is the last major holdout in most households to cutting the cord completely. And from Marvel to Pixar to ABC, Disney’s cultural jewels know (almost) no bounds.

Still, Disney is starting to show signs that it is ready to embrace the future. It’s getting into apps, and has even signed a deal with its frenemy Netflix, where its films will start appearing next year. After all, while traditional media still holds a lot of power, consumers want great content served the way they want to watch it—and Disney understands this.

Facebook Video Explodes

Facebook wants to become your whole world. This mission was clear, especially in 2015. It was the year the company launched products like Instant Articles (news), digital storefronts (shopping), Facebook M (artificially intelligent personal assistance), and an expanded Messenger as a platform for services. The common thread running  through all these efforts? You never have to leave Facebook to accomplish anything you wanted to do.

But perhaps its most surprising triumph has been in video. In 2015, Facebook suddenly encroached on YouTube’s turf as the place to watch Buzzfeed clips and Star Wars videos, serving up what the company says are billions of video views a day. That success came with some controversy, as heaps of videos were uploaded to Facebook in such a way that content creators couldn’t make money from them, something Facebook eventually addressed. Facebook, after all, isn’t one to get in Facebook’s way, especially when it comes to owning the world.

Apple’s Biggest Prize? China

Sure, Apple is doing great, but the reasons behind its greatness have changed year to year. Once, it was because Apple dominated music. Now, Apple’s winning because of its iPhones. And that’s largely thanks to trends in China.

Consider this: the smartphone market is becoming saturated. In 2015, for the first time, growth in the worldwide smartphone market sank to a single digit. In China, first-time buyers have all but disappeared, too—meaning the potential for growth is now mostly in premium phones, a category that Apple rules. In China, Apple saw a 99 percent revenue growth last quarter. And it has enormous market share all over the world (though it’s slipped from the No. 1 spot from time to time). Still, even if the company doesn’t sell all the phones, it makes all the money.

YouTube Pushes Into Music and Virtual Reality

YouTube is still by far the clear leader in online video. It’s the platform on which entire ecosystems have been built to support the creation of Internet videos—from viral video businesses to social media talent agencies. But that’s not exactly why we’re calling it a winner this year.

No, we have to give it to YouTube for pushing past its comfort zone in 2015, from finally launching a subscription service in YouTube Red (which really, could end up meaning a better YouTube for everyone), to lowering the bar of access to virtual reality (with a smart partnership with Google’s cheap Cardboard VR set). Even more intriguing, this year YouTube put its hat in the ring for streaming music. It arguably has more music content among all other players, even in an incredibly crowded field. Think about it: While Taylor Swift once readily pulled her stuff off of platforms like Spotify, she never made the same move on YouTube, because it’s still a way to reach 1 billion-plus users—and fans—all at once.

WhatsApp Offers a Window to the Web

There are lots of messaging services, including Facebook Messenger, Tango, Kik, and Snapchat, not to mention good old text messaging. But of all the messaging options out there, no one is winning messaging the way WhatsApp is winning—especially overseas. Even while the US media often has little to say about WhatsApp, the Facebook-owned service that Facebook spent $19 billion to buy last year, it’s used by more than 900 million people globally, in places like the Middle East and Africa—and all that with just 50 engineers on the team.

It’s hard to overstate how remarkable that is. For so many people around the world, WhatsApp brings the Internet to places that don’t have it. It acts as a kind of gateway to connectedness. And it’s how Facebook will dominate the world, infiltrating places that wouldn’t get access otherwise.

Atlassian Shows Tech Can Successfully IPO

Right before Atlassian went public, it was being touted as a referendum on the prospects of other “unicorns”—private tech companies with valuations of over a billion dollars that some were calling dubious. If the public market validated the billions it was supposedly worth when it was still private, the thinking went, maybe these unicorns actually deserved their labels.

Thankfully, Atlassian’s IPO went well. And yes, that was still a bellwether of sorts—but not for unicorns. The Australian company had been profitable for more than a decade, and mostly bootstrapped, meaning it didn’t have the piles of VC money many other startups, including Airbnb, Dropbox, and Snapchat, boast. Either way, Atlassian’s triumph over Wall Street expectations was a bright spot for tech IPOs, which should soothe at least some jumpy investors in the industry.


Source :Wired

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YouTube will stop direct video uploads from Webcam next month

Google has announced that it will be shuttering YouTube’s Webcam recording feature on January 16.

The option to record from your computer straight to the video sharing site came about in 2006 when Google acquired YouTube but according to the company, it never took off and is rarely used.

Google also says the fact that it runs on Flash, which is no longer supported, is another reason for its removal.

One of the draws to this feature is the fact it requires no upload time after recording a video. The only options remaining if you don’t have an external camera after January 16 will be to use other software, like Photo Booth on a Mac or Camera on Windows to record a video with a webcam and upload it to YouTube after.


Source : The Next Web

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YouTube Gaming For Android Gets A "Cardboard Mode" For More Immersive Viewing

YouTube Gaming, Google's answer to Twitch, is trying to stay ahead of the curve by adding new functionality quickly. One such feature is only available for Android right now, and its a “Cardboard Mode” that allows you to watch any video with a theater-type big-screen setting feel.

Basically, it'll feel like you're sitting and watching a big screen. While the gameplay recording feature only supports 2D recording right now, one could expect that VR with full 360 degree/stereoscopic 3D video will be coming sometime in the future.

Put simply, YouTube and Google aren't waiting around to see what happens with virtual reality, they're going to swing for the fences.

Source :TechCrunch

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#YouTubeRewind celebrates all that is 2015 with epic mashup video

Today, YouTube dropped its epic end-of-year rewind on us that featured the “videos, people, music and movies that made 2015.”

The video features the highlights of the year, including current and former YouTube stars and television personalities doing sketch-like takes on popular videos.

Inside, you’ll find music from The Weeknd, Silentó, Major Lazer & Dj Snake, and OMI.

If you’re more of a YouTube classics type, you’ll be happy to see the re-imagined inclusions of videos like: ‘Charlie bit my finger,’ ‘I’m On a Boat,’ and Rebecca Black’s, ‘Friday,’ all seamlessly laced with familiar backdrops from this year’s popular videos, such as the cage from Sia’s, ‘Elastic Heart,’ and Shia Labeouf’s rather infamous ‘Just Do It‘ green screen speech.

If you want to dive even further into the rabbit hole that is YouTube, the service announced its YouTube Trending tab that keeps the party going.

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YouTube Enters The App Store’s Top Grossing Charts, Thanks To YouTube Red Subscriptions

YouTube’s plans to convert a portion of its user base to a subscription-based, ad-free service known as YouTube Red appears to be gaining traction. The company’s iOS application is now ranked as one of the App Store’s Top 10 Grossing apps on iPhone, following the launch of YouTube Red in late October. This indicates that a number of users who initially signed up for the free, one-month trial have since converted to paying users as that trial ended. However, the question now is how many of those users did so unintentionally – that is, did they forget to cancel their subscription before the monthly fee kicked in? Or did they mean to pay?

YouTube Red, to catch you up, is YouTube’s ambitious effort to generate a new revenue stream for both the site itself and its creators. Instead of watching videos peppered with ads, YouTube Red users get ad-free videos as well as other premium features, like the ability to save videos to watch offline, and the ability to play videos in the background. That latter item makes YouTube more competitive with rival streaming music services as users can listen to music via YouTube while using other apps.

The benefits of YouTube Red also extend anywhere you’ve signed into YouTube, including in the company’s standalone applications, YouTube Gaming and the newly launched YouTube Music. In addition, YouTube Red subscribers gain access to Google Play Music, which is Google’s other streaming music service and digital music locker.

YouTube splits its Red subscription revenue with creators, paying out 55 percent to those making videos for its service – the same percentage as the ad revenue it shares. However, the company practically forced creators to agree to participate in YouTube Red by requiring them to agree to the updated terms or have their videos pulled from YouTube. That has impacted some larger channels,like ESPN, which had streaming agreements in place with others which prevented its participation on YouTube Red. In response, it pulled the majority of its videos off of YouTube.

As early adopters’ free YouTube Red trials wrapped up toward the end of November, the YouTube app has been climbing the charts on the iOS App Store.

It first appeared on the Top Grossing charts for both iPhone and iPad on Saturday, November 28th, where it ranked #214 and #389, respectively. By Sunday, it had jumped to #34 and #123, and today it moved to #8 and #36, for iPhone and iPad. (After writing this article, the app jumped again, and is now #6 on iPhone and #25 on iPad.)

Youtube top 10 grossing. Wow.pic.twitter.com/Ep0BVjb4jy

— Ouriel Ohayon (@OurielOhayon) November 30, 2015

During this time frame, U.S. download estimates are at 3.4 million, notes app marketing firm Sensor Tower, but there’s no way to see how many of those users opted into the free YouTube Red trial, or how many current users were shown the option to sign up to try to YouTube Red in the app.

Though the subscription option is a bit buried in the settings on both iOS and Android, YouTube has been showing a splash screen encouraging users to try out YouTube Red for free. Some users report they were even offered the option to extend their free trial, indicating that not all of those who agreed to try YouTube Red have had yet to decide whether or not they want to pay.

On iOS, YouTube charges a little more than its standard price of $9.99 per month for YouTube Red to account for percentage of sales that Apple takes. Instead, iOS users pay $12.99 per month – a price point high enough (it’s more than Netflix!) that YouTube will have to show there’s significant value in its new premium service in order to keep users from canceling.

Sensor Tower estimates that YouTube is seeing an estimated $12,000 per day from in-app purchases – with the only in-app purchase being the option to subscribe to YouTube Red. That’s roughly 927 new subscribers daily.

However, YouTube’s app is not currently a Top Grossing app on Google Play, indicating that either fewer users are buying subscriptions to the service, or that most YouTube Red subscribers on Android came to join YouTube Red by already being paying subscribers to Google Play Music. (Google Play Music subscribers gained free access to Red, following its launch.) However, according to App Annie’s ranking data, the new YouTube Music app is ranked as #78 on the Top Free charts on Google Play.

It’s worth noting that, given the high download volume for YouTube, even a small number of conversions will get the app on the App Store’s charts. In fact, this aligns with the promise YouTube Red holds for creators – that, because of YouTube’s massive size, even if only a handful of users opt-in to pay for an ad-free YouTube, it could still see a sizable new revenue stream.

Source :TechCrunch 

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