Quoth the article: "Oh yeah, and they have this little feature called “Boost,” which gives celebs the ability to require fans to subscribe to their YouTube channel or follow them on Twitter or Instagram or like them on Facebook before accessing one of their videos."<p>Ugh. Attempting to force me to subscribe to a youtube channel or do anything "social" before I can view a video is repulsive, and will guarantee that I will not give that artist any of my attention or money.<p>Base your business model on that if you want, but recognize that you are offending some potential viewers / eyeballs (obviously, your customers are the celebrities paying you, not the fans). I hope you track the viewers who make it to the "you have to sign up/like/friend/follow/etc" page and go no further, AND make those numbers available to your customers so they can see how many (possible) fans their desire to use that "feature" is turning away.
I keep seeing this with entertainment-industry startups: begin out with an idea that works for small artists, morph in to an idea based on capitalizing on the fan base of large artists.<p>Some problems are just more solvable than others.