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Nelly Furtado writes open letter criticising YouTube royalties

By | Published on Wednesday 4 May 2016

YouTube

Nelly Furtado has become the latest artist to call out YouTube on its approach to rights management and royalty payments, publishing an open letter to the Google-owned platform. “I love YouTube, but they are under-paying and exploiting creators and getting away with it”, she writes. “I know the truth hurts, but someone’s got to tell it”.

A number of high profile artists have recently gone public about their opposition to YouTube, in no small part because the US industry has followed the lead of its European counterpart in ramping up its lobbying efforts against the safe harbours in copyright law, which allow the video site to run an opt-out rather than opt-in streaming service, putting the onus on copyright owners to remove their content from the platform.

Getting into all that, and the efficiencies of YouTube’s rights management system Content ID, Furtado says: “YouTube needs to decide to use their Content ID system in a more productive way. It is interesting to note that they are ultra-efficient at removing anything pornographic or beyond certain limits of taste. They simply CHOOSE NOT TO for the artists’ music, publishers and labels. Let’s hope that the new ID system doesn’t create profits for YouTube while we figure out who owns what. Let’s not forget that Google/YouTube are a TECHNOLOGY COMPANY and unquestionably have the ability and resources to solve the problem right now!”

“With nearly double the plays of on-demand subscription services, Google/YouTube pays one third the revenue to artists and labels”, she continues. “On a payment per user basis, it’s even worse. The average music subscription generates $62 dollars per year for artists and labels, while at YouTube it generates less than $3.50 per user. That is eighteen times lower than the average revenue per user to artists and labels than subscription music services”.

However, after dishing out all those stats, she then adds: “Let’s dispense the details and numbers, which can be confusing. The independent community is asking for a minimum per-view guarantee at least as great as existing services that have a free tier, if not greater, because video has a higher value than just audio”.

Furtado also adds that there should be no difference between the royalties paid to major labels and those that go to independent labels and artists, though that’s another debate entirely.

Read Furtado’s letter in full here.



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