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Business News Digital Labels & Publishers
Move to per-stream system behind PRS/YouTube squabble
By CMU Editorial | Published on Monday 23 March 2009
According to Music Ally, it’s thought that the much previously reported dispute between royalty collecting society PRS For Music and YouTube has come about because the former wants to move from a lump sum system to a per-stream system, which seems fair enough, but which would probably cost the video website much more.
Music Ally says that the existing PRS/YouTube deal, which was done in the early days of the video service, saw the royalty society take a lump sum from the Google owned video site. Given the subsequent success of YouTube as a music video destination, PRS reckon Google got a very good deal. They now want a per-stream fee so to share in that success. That changes the nature of the deal for Google quite a bit, though it’s not clear whether Google are resisting the move to a per-stream deal completely, or just the per-stream rates PRS are proposing.
The change in system would explain why songwriter data was raised as an issue in the PRS/YouTube fallout. As previously reported, it’s rumoured YouTube want PRS to hand over its membership database so they can pay songwriters direct, while PRS want YouTube to hand over their viewing stats and a cheque so they can distribute the money.
Premium music videos are still inaccessible on YouTube in the UK as the PRS/Google stand off continues.
