“Taylor Swift and many in the music industry are officially taking their bad blood with YouTube to Congress,” Dee Lockett reports for Vulture. “Swift, along with 160 artists and labels, including U2, Paul McCartney, and the Big Three (Universal, Sony, and Warner), has joined a growing petition urging Washington to make serious updates to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).”
“‘[DMCA] has allowed major tech companies to grow and generate huge profits by creating ease of use for consumers to carry almost every recorded song in history in their pocket via a smartphone, while songwriters’ and artists’ earnings continue to diminish,’ the petition reads,” Lockett reports. “And it specifically takes aim at YouTube, which the petition’s organizer, music manager Irving Azoff, says ‘threaten[s] the continued viability of songwriters and recording artists to survive.'”
“Trent Reznor, who works for Apple Music, recently called YouTube ‘very disingenuous,’ arguing that it’s “built on the backs of free, stolen content and that’s how they got that big. I think any free-tiered service is not fair,'” Lockett reports. “The Black Keys’ Patrick Carney then tweeted, ‘Give me five minutes on YouTube and I probably can find 250 songs that are available which the artist isn’t getting paid for. At least.'”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Carney’s estimate is extremely conservative.
SEE ALSO:
Apple Music’s Iovine, Reznor, Cue and Kondrk on streaming’s new world order and why ‘we all should be’ worried – June 14, 2016
Apple Music adds another million subscribers in 1 month, surpasses 11 million paying members – February 12, 2016
Apple Music subscribers could hit 100 million users in 6 years – January 11, 2016
Apple Music nabs 10 million subscribers in 6 months, which took Spotify 6 years – January 10, 2016
Uh-oh, Spotify: People are paying up for Apple Music – November 5, 2015
Why Apple Music will win in streaming music – October 27, 2015
Apple Music takes a huge bite out of Pandora – October 23, 2015
Taylor Swift calls Spotify a ‘start-up with no cash flow’ – August 4, 2015
Oh ok, Spotify listeners are upgrading to Apple Music – July 19, 2015
Apple Music could kill more than just Spotify, it could kill music labels, too – June 25, 2015
Why Apple Music will gut and publicly execute Spotify – June 10, 2015
Spotify CEO claims to be ‘ok’ with Apple Music – June 9, 2015
Jimmy Iovine and Eddy Cue: Apple Music gunning for Spotify, YouTube, and terrestrial radio – June 9, 2015
Apple Music’s huge advantage over Spotify – June 9, 2015
Apple’s revolutionary Apple Music just might prove its skeptics wrong – June 8, 2015
Apple unveils revolutionary Apple Music service – June 8, 2015
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Dan K.” for the heads up.]
All aboard the Swift boat!!!
….wait-
You dirty, dirty boy
What???
I’m just offering to paddle…. 😉
Get in line here in the real world where we all are making less that we use to.
YouTube, yea, they have a point there.
No you and I are making less. Concert tickets have doubled, Ms. Swift’s included, she is making huge $$. She also criticized Apple for not paying artists during the time they themselves were not being paid. Then she went on tour posting videos of her introducing he unpaid guest artists. Not sure how it works but I know I posted a wedding video to Youtube and you could here about 10 seconds of a song in the back ground of it , it was immediately blocked and I had to agree to give any money made off the video to the artist who’s song you could here before it would be available.
ABSOLUTELY. Couldn’t agree more. Greed. They already make too much money for what they do.
We need to protect real musicians and song writers. If they go out of business how is the entire Rap industry going to survive?
I rarely use YouTube for listening to my “rap industry” music. Hip/Hop – Rap music is not as easy to make as it seems. And more than half do use musicians along with the electronic aspect (keyboards etc) to make their sound.
“Yay! Calling rap or hip-hop non-music is guaranteed to get me 5 stars on MDN! Not sure why, but I love them 5 stars!”
Lol. Poor Google. Being in bed with the feds just isn’t enough to stop the rich.
I’ve made more money from You Tube than from Spotify and all the other streaming sites put together
I find it hard to believe anyone with a working brain (
that leaves out record company exec) give a turd what Taylor Swift thinks about anything.
Why I appreciate access to music on YouTube:
1) I learn new music that is otherwise inaccessible thanks to the sick, demented and antiquated music industry.
2) I can hear music that is entirely unavailable in the USA thanks to idiotic music industry marketing moron ‘zone system’ and the idiotic inability of the antiquated music industry to catch up with the new world order of universal media access.
Having said that, I have no sympathy for people who use YouTube as a method of ripping off music they do not pay for. That’s a slap and act of robbery against the livelihood of musicians. If only the stupid music industry was as concerned for the livelihood of musicians as I am.
IOW: It’s about personal ethics. Use them and YouTube’s provided access to music is incredibly helpful and useful.
“I”
I think the musicians have a point. However, there is no way in a free society that you are going to stop this train. In the digital world, things want to get out and things want to be free.
As others here have noted, some artists have used YouTube to make money and gain exposure. Some artists rise to fame through YouTube. So it is a double edged sword, with some good and some bad.
But either you adapt or perish, that is the way it is in business and nature.
You Tube gives people like me free exposure and a small amount of money based on ad click revenues. Spotify and many of the others, including Apple, require us to pay for inclusion. On top of that, You Tube viewers don’t seem to care so much about the production values, whereas the consumers at the other services expect the full expensive studio sound. What Taylor and the others are complaining about is not You Tube itself, I think, but the fans who put ripoffs up without the original artist’s approval or knowledge. If You Tube could guarantee proper payments to the artists, I think there would be no complaints. “Proper” is another sticking point, though.
That’s the problem with Google. They want to rake in lots of money, but they don’t want to pay out to people.