A European video service

31 October 2025

If you like me want to try out a digital life that doesn't rely on US big tech, the hardest part is to find a decent replacement for YouTube. And the truth is that there isn't one.

But imagine a scenario where YouTube is no longer available for whatever reason. We would still need a European public sphere for sharing content in video format wouldn't we?

When you scratch the surface of what is available hosted under European jurisdiction there are lots of services. They are however scattered across many sites and domains. Maybe that's a good thing for resilience? I don't know, but it would be nice to be able to browse and explore videos through one interface. Maybe an interface not completely dissimilar to YouTube? Enter https://videum.eu.

The idea behind Videum is to aggregate content from European video services and make it easy to find and watch that content. In theory it should be able to replace YouTube for those of us who are mindful of #DigitalSovereignty and want to #GoEuropean. Of course it doesn't, let's be frank... But it's a start, it's something. And by increasing traffic and viewership to these services, they can grow and develop, that's the hope.

What videos are shared on Videum.eu?

I've identified these major European video services

DailyMotion

This service is actually of very high quality when it comes to its' technical capabilities of allowing users, to create accounts, upload and share videos. It has integrated advertising and a monetisation model. It could in theory be a full blown European YouTube alternative if it was governed properly.

It has a bit of a confusing user interface which makes it difficult to find the nuggets of content you may want to view. And that was the spark to creating Videum.eu – simply to have a better user interface for DailyMotion, more similar to a classic YouTube UI.

Does Videum mirror all content that's on DailyMotion? No way. We mirror the content of a few select channels. The hope is that by increasing traffic and viewing of the this content, maybe that will give DailyMotion more traffic and a reason to improve their service and improve their user interface?

Spotify

Spotify is controversial to some people. But it is a European Service headquartered in Stockholm and the criteria for Videum is whether a service is European or not. And Spotify has some high quality video creators, such as Silicon Curtain, Jake Broe, Garys Economics and The rest is Politics, that post on Spotify in addition to YouTube. (On a side note, our dream is to get Anders Puck Nielsen and Phil Moorhouse cross-posting to European services.)

PeerTube

PeerTube is not European. It's open source and can be hosted anywhere in the world. But it's a "free" non big tech service whith a lot of interesting content that can sometimes be hard to find through PeerTube itself even though it's constantly improving. When we include PeerTube content we always try to make sure to also include the channel info about how to support them on Patreon, Ko-fi etc. We don't want to cannibalise content creators efforts on PeerTube. We hope to help these creators and PeerTube itself to find a wider audience.

Alugha

Alugha is an interesting service with a focus on multilingual support for their videos. We have not yet had the time to hook up to their API and include content from Alugha, but it's on the list for future development.

What do I do as a content creator?

If you're a content creator thinking about the issues with Digital Sovereignty who would like to find European options for your content our advice is to set up a PeerTube server or join an existing PeerTube server. There are also hosting companies and co-ops who offer turn-key solutions, where you won't have to be a "tech person" to set up a PeerTube instance. (If you are one of those turn-key solution providers, please get in touch with us through @videum@mastodon.social and we can list you here.)

Once you have a PeerTube channel of your own you can reach out to us @videum@mastodon.social and ask to be included in the content aggregation here on videum.eu.

But what if Patreon and Ko-Fi is not enough for me as a content creator?

If you have a "good business" on YouTube and don't like the prospect of no longer generating an income from that, I would urge you to register an account on DailyMotion or Spotify (or both) where you as a creator also can earn an income, similar to how it works on YouTube. You should probably start by cross-posting on both YouTube and DailyMotion or Spotify and see how that works out. Once you have a channel and content on a European service you're welcome to reach out to us via @videum@mastodon.social and we'll be happy to include you in the "stream" on Videum.

What should I do as a European media company

Imagine if ARTE, France24, DW, NRK, DR, SVT, YLE, RAI, ARD and ZDF and all the others had APIs so that we (and others) could include their content and create a European public square for publicly financed media? Your organisations are publicly funded and already create tons of high quality content. European media consumers should have that content available through a unified portal instead of having to visit countless individual web sites. At least when it comes to "news and society" related content.

FAQ?

So what's the tech?

Videum includes video clips via iFrames provided by the APIs of the original services themselves. We always include a link to the original host with the video, so that you can choose to view it there, or if you want to, you can explore more content on that host.

So what's the algorithm?

There is no algorithm on videum.eu. But it would have been cool in the future to allow users to create accounts and build up a profile of what content you prefer. But that's currently way out of scope. Currently we track visits through Pirsch Analytics (https://pirsch.io) just out of curiosity to to get an idea of if anyone even bothers to use the service.

So what's the content?

We want to avoid bloat on videum.eu so we only include a tiny amount of all the content that's out there. We're happy to get tips from you if you find a channel on DailyMotion, PeerTube, Alugha or Spotify that you feel should be included. There's no mail to get in touch with videum, only the Mastodon account @videum@mastodon.social.

So what's the money?

So far this is a something I pay for out of my own pocket: hosting (UpCloud in Finland), developer tools (JetBrains from CZ), Pirsch Analytics (Germany) and most of all time (from Sweden)...

Maybe I'll try out some discreet form of advertising in the future to cover hosting costs? But it's a delicate balance. For now it's donations based. So feel free to hit that "Buy me a coffee button" on Videum. Or why not sponsor Videum and get a banner (Tuta, Proton, Vivaldi, JetBrains, UpCloud, Pirsch, Mistral & al)?

https://videum.eu