Apr 29, 2016
Digital music is in its prime. Nearly everyone is honed into a streaming service or site, and although it serves in favor of the consumer, businesses within the industry have raised a pressing question in this new era of music consumption: Are artists being ripped off?
The debate of digital music services mistreating musicians and music labels has been an on-going debacle, and the latest subject under scrutiny is YouTube. The longstanding video site has been under recent backlash, with claims that their royalties distributed per stream is only a fraction compared to other leading music platforms. And with having to settle for a reported $0.006 to $0.0084 per stream on Spotify, it's clear that the music community of YouTube are less than thrilled with the company at the moment.
This is exactly what prompted Mötley Crüe bassist Nikki Sixx's request to Google, YouTube’s owner, to reevaluate the unjust payments. In conversation with The Guardian, Sixx argued: “YouTube is paying out about a sixth of what Spotify and Apple pay artists. We are not telling them how to run their business. We're saying treat artists fairly the way other streaming services are. And by the way, we are a big part of what built your business: music is the No 1 most-searched thing on YouTube.”
Similar to how Spotify CEO Daniel Ek defensively brought reason to their payment plan, YouTube representative and Head of International Music Partnerships Christophe Muller stood firm on their compensation percentage. The leading point Muller brought up was the difficulty in paying artists as a website that is mainly reliant on advertisements, compared to a subscription fee of typically $10.00 a month. “YouTube generates the vast majority of its revenue from advertising...However, we pay the majority of the ad revenue that music earns to the industry...We pay a rate at least twice as high,” he told The Guardian.
Furthermore, YouTube is a major tool for musicians in releasing and publicizing music videos. The argument is a no brainer: how can Spotify, Tidal or Apple Music compete with a company in which videos - free ones at that - are its entire market? By teaming up with labels and rightsholders, the site has generated hundreds of millions, if not billions of hits from a single source. With streams totaling into 9 digit numbers, YouTube is fulfilling its ultimate purpose of exposing music to more than a billion users across the globe. Considering that some of the world's biggest artists like Justin Bieber, Tori Kelly and Macklemore have their roots in YouTube, it's clearly proven to be hugely successful.
While YouTube's inimitable user interactivity is an advantage for fans who want to upload concert footage, covers and so on, a safe harbor law is also in place which protects against copyright infringement prosecutions so long as any copyright material is removed from the site altogether. That said, a recent petition has been sent to the US Government, requesting reform provisions on this law, which has apparently been signed by hundreds of artists and industry representatives such as Katy Perry, Billy Joel, Deadmau5, and Christina Aguilera.
This brings us to the common belief that artists are "motivated by greed" and are squeezing out any and every possible avenue to get money. Take for instance Taylor Swift, who threatened to pull her album from Apple Music for not paying artists during its 3-month free trial. But why would a billion dollar artist bat an eyelash over three months worth of music streams on just one app? Because the stance against music streaming is not about established artist. It's about protecting the "new artist", the "young songwriter", the "tired producer", as Swift puts it.
Nikki Sixx's actions came from the same motivation: "This is about the little guy – the up and comers that we were at one point. We were afforded the opportunities, but those opportunities will go away if we don’t get some balance. This is about the future of music.”
The debate on digital music's impact on artists is endless and YouTube is just one of countless topics. Yet even after debriefing both sides of the main arguments, one mutual agreement remains: music matters and sharing services are important factors that fuel it. We've shifted into a new and important time period where listeners have nearly the entire musical library at their literal fingertips. That is a major accomplishment.
As best put by Chris Muller, "These investments and strong ties demonstrate our love of music and our commitment to strengthening the industry. And while there may occasionally be dischord, history shows that when we work together, we can create beautiful harmonies."
Image: YouTube