i sought a jam.

Creators are constantly removing their copyrighted content from YouTube. Some brand name content creators don’t see how they can go viral, or even how they’d benefit from it, so the relationship is contentious at best. It’s no Metallica vs. Napster, but big brands don’t see how they can justify sacrificing sales for the attention of the broader internet community.

For a major, there are no Pareto improvements with YouTube. But that’s not to say they won’t push their product without a price tag, and earlier this week I learned that’s precisely the master plan.

Through social media and mobile technology, to name a few, major artists are offering their content for free in order to reinforce their value in the eyes of the consumer. But the real gain comes from tracking these usage patterns and learning from them. So free content + analytics = actionable data.

But YouTube already has the content, thanks to pirates everywhere. It also already has a massive user base. If YouTube were to provide a web analytics API to creators of copyrighted material, studios and labels could have all the meta data they’re trying to cull on their own.

1) Creators continue to generate buzz with free/easy access content, while getting insight into their fan base– all on YouTube’s bandwidth.

2) YouTube continues to be THE place for the latest viral stuff, copyrighted or not, all the while managing to stay out of court.

It’s entirely possible that I’ve oversimplified things, but to me it sounds like a match made in heaven.