After several creators complained that Vimeo was forcing them to pay exorbitant fees just to keep their videos on the platform, the company has announced significant modifications to its bandwidth policy. Creators will have more time to prepare for future changes thanks to the revised regulations, which replace vague language with more precise definitions.
Vimeo has announced a new monthly bandwidth cap of 2 terabytes in a blog post describing the changes. Prior to this change, the regulation was only enforced to those who were consistently “in the top 1% of bandwidth usage,” which Vimeo admitted may have been more obvious. Users will be notified if they go over the 2TB limit, so they can figure out how to reduce their data consumption, or at the very least, prepare for an increase in their monthly fee.
For those creators who go over the 30-day limit, Vimeo’s new standards state that their content will not be affected and that they have “a minimum of 30 days” within which to respond and work out a settlement. One video creator told Techizall he had nine days to upgrade his account, reduce his consumption, or have access to his videos disrupted under the old regulations. Vimeo predicted that his expenditures would rise from $900 a year to $3,000 a year in just over a week.
At one point in the past, a number of content creators were receiving alerts from the platform warning them that they were consuming too much bandwidth and risking having to quit the service. To host videos for Patreon, several creators paid hundreds of dollars a year for Vimeo and were surprised by how few views their videos garnered. The amount of data that needs to be transported if 10 people watch an hour-long concert in 4K consumes a lot of bandwidth, even if the number of viewers is tiny.
The fact that Vimeo intended to charge them thousands of dollars more annually to continue using the site the way they had been was also a surprise to them. When a creator submitted videos to Patreon, they didn’t realize they were actually posting to Vimeo until all of those videos vanished.
One of the first things you’ll see when you view Vimeo’s post is an image of flowers, which is a global message that says: “I messed up, please forgive me.” In any case, these adjustments won’t necessarily make Vimeo a better alternative for the producers who were slapped with exorbitant charges due to the legacy policy – Vimeo told TechIzAll in a prior statement that the “top 1 percent” barrier was already around 2 or 3TB per month. When it comes to paying extra for content under the old standards, it’s extremely conceivable that the new criteria will require the same.
The new policy should at least ensure that video creators don’t have to scurry in a matter of days for a new means to host their videos or to reduce their bandwidth consumption. Also, Vimeo says it would offer users time to take their movies off of its platform if they discover that it no longer works for them.
On top of that policy, the company is working on one that will allow some users to bypass the 2TB limit “if their videos do not generate revenue for them outside of Vimeo.” According to that statement, more information about the change will be made available in a month.
