UK set to test age ratings for online music videos: could it ever work?

UK set to test age ratings for online music videos: could it ever work?


The UK Prime Minister David Cameron announced on Monday that online music videos are set to carry age ratings in a pilot scheme that will start this autumn.

The ratings will force videos that contain “graphic content” to showcase a sticker that clearly displays their classification.

Labels will have to submit videos to the British Board of Film Classification and they will be categorised in a 12, 15 or 18 age rating.

The question obviously is, how will this avoid them being seen by younger kids? The technical implementation of the rating means that videos that are classed 15+ for example will automatically be blocked by sites like Vevo and YouTube if parents have instituted child protection measures on their devices.

In principle, this makes sense: why submit children to Robin Thicke’s “Blurred Lines” when the content is clearly not child-friendly?

In practice, the government is going to find this policy very hard to implement. First of all video streaming services like Vevo often only have one version of a video that streams internationally: does that mean that every country would have to see the sticker? How could the platform implement this policy in a localised fashion whilst keeping a unique "play count" for a given video? The second problem is that there are hundreds of new music videos made available every week internationally: would they all need to be screened by the BBFC? If not, which videos would have to be screened and which wouldn't? 

It may well be that the government is trying to get at least major labels and larger independents to ensure that their artist’s output is not having a negative effect on children, but this would penalise those players while leaving others free to operate as before. On the other hand should this policy overreach, the volume of videos to be screened could lead to a paralysis of music video releases, which could damage artists since videos often have very short turn-around times especially in today's digital ecosystem.

It's clear that the government could never exercise the same amount of control on online videos as it has over movie releases, where the output to be reviewed is only of a few hundred per year, so it's going to be interesteing to see how this trial will be implemented since autumn is just around the corner.


(Andrea Leonelli)