Videographers using Vimeo have had the unpleasant surprise of being demanded several thousand dollars a year by the platform, at the risk of losing their content. This assumes a new strategy, designed for professionals.
Launched a few months before YouTube, in November 2004, Vimeo has long been the somewhat fashionable indie platform, where its competitor, quickly acquired by Google, became this big machine that is now ultra popular but widely criticized by creators. Yet, if you’ve followed its evolution, you might know that Vimeo’s model has changed significantly. A change that has not really been made in favor of videographers, who had turned to this platform for its independence or its better protection of content.
From $200 annually to $16,500 over two years
Thus, in recent weeks, many long-time subscribed creators have had the unpleasant surprise of receiving a message from Vimeo saying in essence: “If you don’t pay more, we will remove your content.” The Verge presents several examples of this unlikely situation. There’s this Dutch-based artist who, after 13 years of paid presence — up to $200 per year — on the service, was offered a new personalized plan for the whopping $3,500 a year.
Same story for Channel 5, a popular channel whose members split a ticket entitled “Vimeo is holding our catalog hostage“. The proposed plan was even more expensive than the previous example: $16,500 for two years. Worse, Vimeo suspended the account without notice, causing a disaster on the channel’s Patreon, which lost more than 500 subscribers from a hit, in addition to hundreds of messages from furious subscribers.
The use of Patreon is also the common denominator of the situations listed by our American colleagues. This platform where artists can ask donors to finance their work in the form of regular donations had indeed encouraged its videographer users to turn to Vimeo, the latter even offering a discount to creators using Patreon. Content published directly through this channel was thus hosted on Vimeo, which was not easy for all creators.
Vimeo is now a B2B solution
To justify the increases imposed on them, the platform told them that they were among the 1% of users whose content consumes the most bandwidth. It was therefore necessary to pay to upgrade, reduce this consumption or leave Vimeo for good, and thus lose tens or even hundreds of videos posted. According to the rules of the site, the use of the bandwidth is calculated according to several factors: video playback, resolution, loading of the thumbnail player, downloading, live streaming… The limit not to be exceeded would be set at 2 or 3 TB per month. Only users reaching “unusually high levels” would be affected.
These new requirements are therefore explained by the change of strategy made by the platform, which no longer hides having long since abandoned its original purpose. In a letter to shareholders in February, company CEO Anjali Sud was very clear: “Today, we are a technology platform, not a viewing site. We are a B2B solution (for companies), not the indie version of youtube.” According to the initial feedback received after soliciting videographers, more than 70% of them chose a personalized plan or the reduction of their bandwidth consumption. It must be said that it can be difficult to migrate all your content when you’ve built your career on a specific platform…