Ah, I see - that's an interesting perspective. Thus far most of the content up on Lbrynet is free to watch; I actually feel this is not ideal as content providers should be receiving some payment. Also, I wasn't aware of any sort of 'user award' available in Lbry - perhaps I'm misunderstanding that.

You're right, most people aren't going to pay for 2min content, so I wouldn't expect those videos to be very popular. I'd expect to begin seeing more in-video advertisement, which is somewhat normal on YouTube already.

I'm also seeing major problems with using Steemit to host video content. How would it be possible for their blockchain to host all that content? Witness nodes will end up needing to be full datacenters to support that, reducing the decentralization (the fact is, Steemit.com is the defacto centralized source for content right now). Perhaps IPFS can solve this, but at that point, you're at technical parity with Lbry.

I'm totally for competition in the market, and optimistic the best technology will win - in the end it'll be better for consumers :)