Rambles Well Written

Youtube Alternatives, and sites in used in addition as a monetary support wether it be donate or subscription sites is something that has always been an interest for me. While I don’t currently have any interest in taking my content seriously much less monetize it, the fact that individuals can make a career out of their work easier than ever with so many different methods, tools and approaches takes up more of my idle scrolling time. Plus, I think if you’re reading this blog you' probably have come to the conclusion that for all of YouTube’s pluses, you still know that hosting all your videos on one platform may not end well. Especially given the recent changes to YouTube’s policy.

So for this blog post I want to talk about some of the alternatives or additional streaming services to YouTube that personally taken an interest in. If but, from a far.

PeerTube – The Obligatory Fediverse Mention

You had to see this coming. On a Write As blog? Someone who uses a Mastodon? Of course!

PeerTube is the Fediverse’s answer to YouTube. By using technologies of ActivityPub and WebTorrent (A peer to peer technology) that form a decentralized and federated video streaming service. Much like Mastodon, Peertube instances federate with each other instances to build a network of video. Given the nature of video’s size and what not, federation with other instances have to be opt in. To aid in this federation, WebTorrent/HLS with P2P streaming to help with bandwidth costs, and instances can even cache video from other instances to ensure a smoother experience. This federation can also be asymmetrical (So instance A can sync with instance B but instance B does not have to return in kind).

The sized of an instance can range form one person self hosting to multi account instances either with open registration, or invite only.

From a creator’s perspective I appreciate how far the project has come. Provided the instance have its settings configured, a creator can import YouTube videos, trans code to different resolutions to having a global search across the fediverse. One of my personal favourite features is that a creator can have a overarching profile and then have their content split up among other channels if they have more than one channel of different content. This means you can follow everything or just select content from the creator you want kept up to date with either on Peertube, other Fediverse services or even RSS.

I think this pretty cool, and if / when Mstdn.ca has their PeerTube Instance Open up I’ll likely be looking into uploading there as well. However, it’s not all sunshine and rainbows. The hosting costs for many maybe high to those looking to self host, and because of this, many open instances have limits on how much you can upload. I have also seen valid concerns for copyright content being used on instances, and the legal implications as the instances will be more directly responsible with content on their site. Considering the P2P services would be similar to that of a Nabster or other torrent site*, it could get messy.

*Credit where credit is due, this was pointed out by fantranslation.org ‘s administrator during their endeavours to self-host a mastodon instance.

Also worth pointing out that creators will have to rely on outside monitzation methods to to accrue revenue, but is still an alternative place to host content.

Even with the barriers and concerns, I hope peertube continues to grow into a niche alternative that will be watching the development on.

Nebula – The Streaming Service By Creators For Creators

If you’ve been round YouTube for a while you’ve heard of Nebula. Formerly known as “Standard.TV”, Nebula is like a fusion of Multi Channel Network, and a paid for streaming service. The service works similar to YouTube Premium where the revenue for Nebula is split 50/50 between Nebula and the creators which the pool is then split out from the watch time on the site.

For 5 dollars a month or 50 dollars a year, that gives you access to exclusive content depending on the creators whims. Some video have extended cuts, early access, and exclusive videos be they behind the scenes, or a regular video exclusive to the site. Recently they’ve also expanded into a SkillShare-like Nebula Classes.

You might have heard in a lot of sponsor spots that refers to [insert your favourite nebula creator] as service owned by them and some of their creator friend. This turns out to not just be a marketing strategy. Turns out that 50% also refers to tangible ownership of the company and in the event of a liquidation, 50% of the payout goes to creators.

Nebula however is not open to just any Content Creator to join up and do not actively seek creators out. They are very focused on quality over quantity, and content that they would be okay with standing behind. Honestly, I can respect that. Association with a brand/site does colour a potential user’s perception of the site.

It’s clear that Nebula brands it self less of platform and more of an exclusive club of independent creators. This has given the benefit of actually having original content exclusive series to the site. And I mean full on original series, like what YouTube Originals were before YouTube canned the project.

All around I like the idea of Nebula, but I’m also suspicious of its longevity even with Curiosity’s backing. While the 5 dollars for the full access of the site is good for my wallet while still supporting some of my favourite content creators, It also seems low for the amount the service is trying to do. However, for now it seems to be one of the easier ways for me to support some of my favourite creators including EposVox and The Amaazing, so I might as well use it.

Floatplane – Like Patreon but Video Focused

Floatplane is the Linus Media Group’s in house subscription service gone Video Streaming Platform. Their main pitch is to paywall high quality video and audio along with behind the scenes content, and exclusive livestreams. Individual Creators do not have to follow this, they are free to set their prices and give whatever rewards they feel like to their subscribers. Of course, the higher quality uploads do seem to be a plus for those who’s focus is one video production.

Similar to Nebula, Floatplane does not have open sign ups for the creator’s side. However, Floatplane does take applications from creators who want to partner them. It’s not a guarantee as it does appear that they want creators draw users in of mutual benefit to themselves and the creator, but from the outside it does seem to have less of barrier to entry.

Aside from being a LTT fan and Canadian, do have a lot of hope for Floatplane given its video focus. Personally if I was starting to look into monetizing content and I thought it could provide value, I’d look into signing up to floatplane. That being said the current amount of creators on the site is small, and Floatplane seems content with growing slowly (as leader of the the project would say, Data’s expensive so fair.) If I was an analyst, I’d take a guess even as they were to gain traction, they would probably focus selective partnerships even after Beta considering they do not see themselves as a YouTube or Twitch competitor.

I could be wrong on that considering I only know what I can gleam from promotional videos, and The podcast The WAN Show. Regardless I hope if this site doesn’t swore it will float.

(Yes I stole that from quote from Luke (I think), It’s a good analogy.)

Utreon – A Technically Impressive Platform Alternative

Utreon is actually the inspiration as to why I wrote up this blog post. Why? Well remember that blog post I made about the lack of adequate tools YouTube gives Creators to be responsible on their platform? Yeah Utreon came to a similar conclusion that I did. That giving more incremental metadata would benefit creators, viewers, and advertisers.

Instead of doing what many other Alt-platforms do where they indulge in so called “Free Speech Absolutism”, Utreon tries to make the case that a real solution lies in making informed decisions though clearly defined data that create creditability, and rules that are evenly applied. This gives me a little more faith in the platform as it’s not trying to put ideology over practicality, which then either forces said platform to end up conforming similar to YouTube to keep advertisers, or doubling down and being an overall nasty place.

One way they want to implement this is by having creator label content for things like violence, swearing, the use of weapons and drugs, and general NSFW stuff. This for a more glandular system than YouTube’s heavy handed, and seemingly binary one. This was personally my main draw to the site in interest, and then all the technical aspects were a nice addition.

While the platform is currently in beta, it’s pretty feature rich. On the user side, the site has support for both live streaming and VOD content, search functionality, An expansive topic list, the ability to follow creators via an account, a button for rss for off site updates.

From a creator’s side, you have a creator page, Posts, Youtube import/sync, video groups, integration with your storefront, and even A early release system that automates early access content. That many features, and growing might be enough to raise some eyebrows.

Currently they have quite a few Monetization options as well. Allowing for 5 tiers of Creator subscription, 3 tiers of their YouTube Premium equivalent “Utreon Plus” that split 55% of the revenue to the creators via watch time, Ultra Chat donations, and appear to be even flirting with renting/buying independent films on their site. These are boasted to have utreon take smaller cuts than the current tech leaders, of 5% plus fees (2.9% + $0.30 processing) with subscriptions, and 15% with “Ultra Chats”

A Unique feature Utreon has for their livestreams where if you’re collaborating with other creators, you can split the revenue from Ultra Chats how ever the creators choose to up to 10. I think this could be a benefit for some streamers show regularly collab with other creators or part of a streaming group.

From an outside view all seems very promising, especially from the technical side. The roadmap for this years focus on Utreon is on, site Integrations, a moderation system, and a recommendation system that appears to be separate form the current come screen options. It will be very interesting to see where this platform goes in 2023.

But, of course, we’ve all heard this before does anyone remember vidme? It’s always good to proceed with caution when ever looking alternative platforms and revenue streams. For now all we can do is wait and see how adherent the site will be to their credibility focus, and if priorities change in the future.

That being said, I also quickly want to go over what I would like to see form the platform personally.

Things I’d Like To See:

What I would really like to see form utreon is expand on the collaboration features to videos as well for vod focused creators. Perhaps one expansion can be like “Group Channels” where multiple creators form a channel fans can subscribe to support said creators and maybe even exclusive content at a discounted rate. Likely wouldn’t be the norm but it’s a thought.

I’d also like to see “UltraThanks” be a thing (similar to Super Thanks) as not everyone has a focus on live-streaming content, but I feel like there’s a reason that’s yet be implemented or they are simply focusing on other features. I’d even like to see something similar to Bits in which a user can pay up front to then forward money to creators of their choosing. My argument for a bits like system is for user budgeting as you can make a payment there for say, the month, and then spread to different content creators later. I’ll admit that is more of a pie in the sky hope than anything else.

When the Ad program becomes a bit more robust, one personal big hope is that the ad association can go both ways. Much in a similar way that ad companies don’t want to appear before certain or even controversial content, I think creators don’t want take money from certain types of organizations. I hope that while overall the ad system is to be a more fairer system in matching advertisers to suitable content, I also hope that the creator can have a “don’t show ads from X Organization” so its not just this double like on YouTube.

Current growing pains

For all my praises currently there are some things that currently makes it less than perfect.

Understandably, the ads are not yet revenue shared with creators at the moment, they’re still trying to build that network for advertisers. My issue currently is that the current ads on the site are mostly retro ads from the 90s and 2000s. I feel like they’ve been testing out the ad features in the meantime, but it’s doesn’t put a whole lot of confidence at the moment.

There is also the current creators on the site that I actually am interested in watching are low. With my current account I am currently following Mr.Beat, Brodie Robertson, and eBuzz Central. Not a whole lot at the moment, and only eBuzz of those 3 promote utreon, so I’m unsure if the other two are the verified creators. At the moment, the main viewership appears to be Firearms related after C&Rsenal and Forgotten Weapons joined the platform which is understandable given Utreon’s current stances, aka “So long as its legal.” There is of course more on the site, the topics are very well categorized, but aside from those that I’ve mentioned, there’s not a lot of content for me personally on the site.

Hopefully that changes going forward for some of the smaller creators that I’ve watched such as a Wendigoon type or even RT Game that have had issues with YouTube’s systems in the past. Only time will tell.

Conclusion

I think there’s a lot of cool things happening in Creator spaces and platforms. Do I think YouTube is going disappear because of any of these? Probably not? do I think they’re neat? Yes. I hope that each one of these continue for the next, 5 years if not 10. I’ll likely look at these again if anything interesting happens.

For now… I’m going to write about something else when next we meet.

#Peertube #Utreon #Floatplane #Nebula #Youtube

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A Nemes Content Blog 2022.