The news was briefly mentioned during an onstage conversation about 360-degree video taking place between Robert Kyncl, YouTube’s Chief Business Officer, GoPro CEO Nick Woodman, and VRSE CEO Chris Milk.
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“Digital video will overtake television to become the single largest way people spend their free time before the end of this decade”, he said, citing mobile viewing, virtual reality and music programming as the drivers of the shift. It makes VR “a better exerience on mobile than on desktop or TV”. Just as channels like MTV and HBO grew with zeitgeist-tapping shows like “The Real World” and “The Sopranos”, respectively, YouTube is hoping that its new ad-free Red subscription service will provide a platform for popular video creators to shine. “Now we see that engagement multiple times a year”. “And since we know mobile video is exploding, formats that lend themselves to mobile storytelling will grow along with them”. After the tie-up, users will be able to watch videos in HDR, which is more advanced than present HD quality. Michelle Phan has 7 million subscribers and a growing cosmetics empire, while Swedish gamer PewDiePie is the most-followed person on the entire platform. It’s a democratic platform where anyone can create something everyone can watch.
“It’s a lot more attainable to be the next PewDiePie than to be the next Tom Cruise”, he added.
Braun, who is still Bieber’s manager and one of Time’s 100 influential people in the world, said the most important thing is not to try and be everything to everyone. The biggest news Kyncl delivered was that YouTube’s parent company Google is partnering with action camera company GoPro on what they’re billing as be the first commercially available 3D-360 camera. Right now, according to Sandvine, “real-time entertainment” makes up more than 70% of all downstream North American Internet traffic during peak hours, with YouTube and Netflix claiming 55% of all traffic on their own.
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The second major focus in Knycl’s speech was virtual reality, a technology that seems poised on the cusp of a major breakthrough to the mainstream in 2016.
