Music stars attack Google in royalties row
Thursday April 02 2009
record producer Pete Waterman and musicians Robin Gibb and Billy Bragg have led an attack on Google, accusing it of devaluing songwriters amid a row over royalties.
The dispute has seen music videos removed from YouTube UK, because its owner, Google, says that it cannot afford to pay a fee every time a song is streamed from the website.
Refusal
The three men say that Google "ascribes little value to music -- in spite of a huge increase in music usage" -- and called on YouTube to reinstate music videos "and pay a fair price for it".
Bragg accused Google of "using its monopoly in the marketplace to dictate terms" to songwriters. The letter has the support of more than 500 songwriters and musicians, many of whom have added their names to a website called Fair Play for Creators. Mark Kelly, a songwriter for the band Marillion, said that he had received 0.6p in royalties in the past three months from YouTube, although band videos had been played 10 million times.
Google said it could not reach a deal on the terms in which it would pay 0.22p every time a song was played. A spokesman said that YouTube "cannot be expected to engage in a business in which it loses money every time a music video is played".
Britons streamed 300 million professionally produced videos in the last three months of last year. Amateur videos take the total to three billion -- taking YouTube's potential bill up to £6.6m (f7.2m) for one quarter in Britain alone.
Google's critics say that YouTube could pay a proportion of its advertising revenues to musicians. However, Google refuses to reveal how much advertising revenue YouTube generates to the Performing Rights Society.
hnews@herald.ie
- Dan Sabbagh
