You might have thought that YouTube would breathe life into a struggling industry and that music stars would be grateful for the reach that the video streaming service brings them. If you did, you thought wrong. Instead, musicians are united in their anger at YouTube and claim it’s really hurting them.
Artists are generally happy about streaming services. Spotify, for example, has a generous deal with artists, labels and other license holders which ensures that everyone gets paid fairly.
Unfortunately, there is one service that isn’t paying its way and that service is YouTube.
Zoe Keating, who plays the cello, was streamed 230,000 times on Spotify and earned $940. In contrast, she was streamed 1.42 million times on YouTube but only picked up $261!
That means YouTube is paying roughly 1/20th of what Spotify pays per listen.
Artists feel that YouTube is ripping them off. YouTube says this isn’t true. They claim to be paying what they can.
Record labels said they felt that they were forced to license to YouTube “on the cheap” because they were getting nothing at all for a long period of time.
There is a light at the end of the tunnel, however. YouTube has recently announced that a subscription service will be forthcoming and that rates may go up when this launches. So, maybe YouTube won’t kill the industry after all.
