It has become clear over the last couple of years that the most popular place on the web to listen to music (in those countries that don’t actually block it) has become Youtube. We are aware that there are lots of statistics and opinions out there but it’s the weekend, so we’re going to let you find those yourselves.
And so it was that last night, we were picking out some of our favorite artist videos for our Black Rabbit Festival Youtube and Youku channels. We are lucky to have a pretty decent VPN which means that surfing Youtube in China is not that difficult. It was while surfing videos on both simultaneously when it became clear that under current conditions, Youku will never develop into a serious video jukebox the same way the Youtube has.
VS 
Reason being: the intensely irritating adverts and their frequency on Youku. On Youtube, the ads only seem to pre-roll one video every three or four. You get to watch several things that YOU want to watch and only then you are forced to watch something someone else has decreed. Generally, the adverts are reasonably gentle on the senses and the ratio of what is given vs. what is taken seems reasonable, a little like watching TV.
Youku on the other hand has loooong pre-rolls and the same looong post-rolls on EVERY video. They are intrusive, and mostly look and sound horrible, completely at odds with what we are watching. Worse, you can’t skip and it is hard to pause, so if you are watching a lot of videos at once, the amount of suffering is intense. It ruined our mood so badly last night, that we just switched to Youtube only browsing, which is slower and clunkier through VPN, but oh so worth it.
Youtube seems to be making a LOT of money as the new de facto place for the mainstream to watch music, the new MTV if you will. The Youku experience has a long way to go before it can become that…..