back to article Europe's digi-boss tells YouTube to cough up proper music royalties

The European Union's digital chief has told YouTube that it needs to start compensating copyright owners properly. Andrus Ansip is currently updating Europe's copyright rules and spoke publicly about how the Google-owned video site was providing far less to copyright owners than competing services such as Spotify. "This is …

  1. ratfox

    I don't know how much ad revenue Google redistributes to the copyright holders, but I think it's in the order of half? Sounds like if they paid as much as Spotify, they'd have to shut down the service.

    That would certainly make the competitors happy; not sure about the artists. Seems like we're headed towards a repeat of the Spanish Google News story.

    1. OviB

      In 2015 YT generated $0.7 per user from music. That's 20 times less than Spotify. And with YT basically free why would you pay? YT is the largest pirating platform ever and is operating in plain sight.

    2. OviB

      They don't pay half but between 1/18 and 1/20 :) Unhappy with that? Go fill a takedown request for each and every upload with your work. By the time they take them down, other are up already. Still unhappy? Sign up with Google and your work will be tagged and denied from uploading automatically. Sounds like blackmail? Maybe because it is? Sounds illegal? Well how can such a big company, every's President best friend conduct illegal business? No way.

    3. DavCrav

      "I don't know how much ad revenue Google redistributes to the copyright holders, but I think it's in the order of half? Sounds like if they paid as much as Spotify, they'd have to shut down the service.

      That would certainly make the competitors happy; not sure about the artists. Seems like we're headed towards a repeat of the Spanish Google News story."

      Think about how wrong you have to be in order for people to log in specifically to downvote you.

      YouTube = content+advertising. You say that Google gives half of the money away, which I don't know. But do you think a 50/50 split is reasonable when one side provides the content and one side does nothing? Even the Apple store only charges 30%.

  2. slv138

    Metallica still whining?

    It's like 2000 again with someone associated to Metallica (at least it's only a manager this time) acting like a drama queen because people are listening to their music without paying them (more). It's still more royalties than traditional radio and they don't have to find a station to play their crap.

    1. OviB

      Re: Metallica still whining?

      The good thing with music is that you can listen to whatever you like, not necessarily Mertallica. And that for free, just fire up YT :)

      1. g e

        Metallica screwed??

        Maybe they shouldn't have snorted all their milliions up their noses or whatever the hell they did with it if they're now in the poorhouse.

        Whining (still) and becoming a Country & Western act (or are they back on heavy rock now?) really doesn't help their case at all.

        Privileged Pussies.

  3. Pax681

    LOL

    Peter Mensch .. your time is NOW!

    The backlash is going to be fucking hilarious and hopefully along the lines of Naspter BAD!! and more.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Let me translate this for you...

    I'll bet some of you lucky folks don't speak "European" so yeah: $overpaid_politician discovers new ways to generate revenue and tries to go for it.

    Because that's the main issue with these kinda of deals: the royalties hardly ever find their way to the artists themselves. And in some ways its plain out hypocritical too. In Holland we have to pay extra taxes on "data carriers" (think CDR's, DVDR's, blank VHS tapes, etc.) to compensate all those poor artists. But in return we also have the right to make a reserve copy of every media carrier which we buy (CDs, DVDs, etc.). Just too bad that many copyright protection schemes prevent this from happening. And of course there's no way to demand such a copy either.

    Which leaves us with the question why we're paying all that extra tax for in the first place?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Let me translate this for you...

      I'll bet some of you lucky folks don't speak "European" so yeah: $overpaid_politician discovers new ways to generate revenue and tries to go for it.

      I guess we do understand "American", though: $ripoffUS company tries to get for free where others pay and is then annoyed that people get upset when they are blackmailed with their own livelihood.

      Personally, I hope the YouTube CEO chokes on something nasty for stating that artists get a higher return on YouTube - we have seen enough posts (and articles) to know just how artists are blackmailed into conditions that make even the record company's look benign.

      1. nijam Silver badge

        Re: Let me translate this for you...

        > ... artists get a higher return on YouTube ...

        Maybe they do, for all we know. What's for sure is that their traditional parasites (record companies, music publishers, collection agencies) don't.

    2. Mad Chaz

      Re: Let me translate this for you...

      Same reason we pay it in Canada. So when the RIAA tries to sue half the population, a judge can say "you got your tax, go back to the US, you're drunk"

  5. Jeffrey Nonken

    I didn't see any mention of making the legacy labels pay their artists fairly, nor practice transparency with their accounting. Everything wrong in the world is because of Google. Apparently.

    And oh, yeah, God, the melodrama. He did everything except rend his clothes and eat worms. What is he, twelve?

  6. MachDiamond Silver badge

    Googles argument may be valid.

    Google does pay licensing fees but those fees go into a black vortex never to be seen by any artist. While the fees may be low, if the middlemen are hoovering them up without leaving a trace, the fundamental problem lies outside of Google.

    The music business makes human trafficking look like a respectable profession.

    1. allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

      Re: Googles argument may be valid.

      As much as it gives me pain to do so - I must admit that G00gle has a point. Middle men always take their cut. The music industry's business model is outdated. It has been rendered obsolete by "new" technology - I'm using quotation marks because this has happened about 15 to 20 years ago. And they still haven't adapted yet, the lazy bastards. If your business model is no longer valid, you either adapt it or you'll go out of business. That's how it works. Hiring an army of lawyers will only delay the inevitable, but it won't stop it.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Googles argument may be valid.

        As much as it gives me pain to do so - I must admit that G00gle has a point.

        It only has a point insofar that money will at least has a chance of getting to an artist via middlemen, whereas with Google, almost all of it will fill Google's coffers, and good luck suing the f*ckers because they just blackmail you with an imposed "right to be forgotten" in their search results.

        This is just another example of a company amassing so much power it can pretty well ignore any decency and law.

      2. DavCrav

        Re: Googles argument may be valid.

        "As much as it gives me pain to do so - I must admit that G00gle has a point. Middle men always take their cut. The music industry's business model is outdated. It has been rendered obsolete by "new" technology - I'm using quotation marks because this has happened about 15 to 20 years ago. And they still haven't adapted yet, the lazy bastards. If your business model is no longer valid, you either adapt it or you'll go out of business. That's how it works. Hiring an army of lawyers will only delay the inevitable, but it won't stop it."

        While I used to agree, I came to the realization that more or less every single artist I listen to has a record deal, just as every single book I read has a publisher. So they must still be doing something.

  7. Bronek Kozicki

    last time I heard, Google Music was offering a direct relationship between YouTube and performers. The problem with that is not intermediaries, it is with meagre (as in, almost non-existing) returns, as the article points. Well, and also the fact that the contract appeared to be unfair and skewed towards Google, but it is not widely discussed (perhaps because Google wants these contracts to be secret)

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Well, and also the fact that the contract appeared to be unfair and skewed towards Google, but it is not widely discussed (perhaps because Google wants these contracts to be secret)

      1 - given the impact on the music industry, I don't think Google has any business insisting they remain secret, and I rather like the irony of something leaking that Google wants to keep secret.

      2 - it has already been reported by some artists (in public) what Google was trying to get into contract, I think some Indie labels as well as an independent artist have given chapter and verse about it.

      Personally, I think this ought to have sounded a very loud monopoly abuse alert à la Microsoft, but it appears Google manage to encourage the relevant regulators to look the other way.

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Play live if you want to get paid as recorded music is now the promo material, technology has changed the landscape forever and the bad old days of £20 for a CD are well and truly over. Just ask 100,000 UK coal miners how technology can change an industry.

    You hear that Mr. Anderson ? That is the sound of inevitability.

  9. ecofeco Silver badge

    "But think of the exposure you're getting!"

    In a former life, I was an artist. (commercial, not fine art) If I had a dollar/pound for every time I heard the phrase "but think of the exposure you're getting" I would be very well off middle class.

    I learned very quickly that phrase meant I was about to get fooked and fooked hard.

    It made IT look positively honest in comparison and so I switched and never looked back and I could finally pay the rent.

    1. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

      Re: "But think of the exposure you're getting!"

      Yep, "exposure" does not always equal sales.

      Across most of Europe and the UK in particular, radio broadcasting to the public was initially a state enterprise and they respected copyright and so paid whenever they used IP from outside their organisation. In the US, public radio was commercial more or less from the very beginning and somehow they managed to con the record companies into letting them use their stuff for free "because of all that extra exposure"

      Google seem to be trying to use that model in places where it's not legal to do so.

  10. energystar
    Go

    Both sides are right on problem definition.

    But FaceBook is more advanced in terms of financial exploration. They're considering a progressive exposure of the Monetization Surface to to those Users|Clients willing to participate.

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    When the 'little people' don't pay their tax and steal from shops its a crime.

    When multinationals don't pay tax and don't pay decent royalties its ok.

    If you want to change this you are unelectable. Welcome to the new free world.

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