iTunes Music Store Threatened By YouTube?

Recently, many have been commenting on YouTube's intention of expanding into music videos and how this poses a serious threat to Apple's iTunes.

While YouTube co-founder Steve Chen's intention of having 'every music video ever created' on YouTube.com within the next 18 months is indeed great news for YouTube fans, for many music fans it may not be the answer they have been waiting for. While an extensive free video catalogue sounds great, there are certain implications that many are not considering at this stage.

Firstly, YouTube already has astronomical bandwidth costs, which will go up dramatically considering the average length of a music video. This problem can get even bigger depending on the quality of the videos; after all, watching tiny videos on a tiny screen is one thing, but watching tiny videos on your 20-inch widescreen monitor is quite pointless. So if the quality is too small, then the videos will loose most of their appeal, while if it is too high it will add a massive amount of bandwidth usage.

Another factor is portability. If people argued that watching movies on your computer is limited, imagine having to watch videos embedded in a webpage. You can't take them with you, you can't burn them, and currently there is no official way to get them to play on your iPod. Of course, this can be changed, and there is nothing to indicate that music videos on YouTube will be a great experience, but how does this factor in with Apple's iTunes? The short answer is � it doesn't.

Just like iTunes sales of TV shows had no negative impact on the ratings of those TV shows - in fact actually boosting them - and the free, commercial sponsored downloads of the shows from the various networks did not cannibalize iTunes sales, YouTube's entrance into the music scene will not have any effect on Apple's Music Store. Sure, Apple may see a small dip in sales of music videos, and may even drop the price a little, but the overall impact on the iTunes Music Store's bottom line will be insignificant at best. Much for the same reason that people will continue to prefer buying their music over renting it, those who currently patron the iTunes Music Store will continue to do so.