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Neil Young has gone on the record in support of music publishing powerhouse Warner Bros. Reprise’s policy deleting and muting its artists’ videos on YouTube, after negotiations between Google and Warner broke down.
The legendary singer, guitarist and songwriter says consistent standards need to be hammered out to compensate artists and other copyright holders fairly when their music appears on YouTube.
The problem, he says, is that Warner was open to a fault in its embrace of YouTube, so it signed an early deal worth less than the ones Google offered other music companies. “YouTube
was in its fledgling stages when Warner made an early deal to work with them,” wrote Young. “Today,
other labels have made more lucrative deals for their artists at YouTube.”
Much of Young’s music was removed
from the site along with that of countless other artists after the
negotiations broke down. According to Young, the underlying reason for this is
that no strong industry standard exists for paying artists and
copyright holders exists for online videos. Everything has to be
renegotiated each time,and when these negotiations fail, it hurts fans and artists in addition to the companies doing the negotiating.
The removal of audio tracks affects not only the official videos,
but mash-ups and user-generated videos that use the tracks, for
which YouTube compensates copyright holders. When the tracks disappear,
people stop creating these derivative works, which deprives artists and
copyright holders of the addition plays and blog embeds that make a video grow in popularity.
“YouTube has a
responsibility to respect the artists it facilitates and resist punishing them
to make a business point,” wrote Young. “It is time for industry-wide standards of artist
compensation on the web.”
See Also:
- Indies: The Fifth Major Label?
- Warner and Others Muted on YouTube
- YouTube Opens Up Shop with Downloads
- Warner Pulls Music from YouTube
Screenshot from prosepp’s deleted Neil Young upload
Source: Eliot Van Buskirk
