YouTube does not pay musicians enough, says report
YouTube was criticized recently for preventing content-makers from monetizing videos that covered certain topics. But this is far from being the only complaint levelled at the video site. British music industry body UK Music says that artists are not receiving enough in the way of royalty payment from YouTube.
UK Music's 2016 report, Measuring Music shows that YouTube remains the most popular way for people to consume music in the UK. Despite this, the report says that the effective 'per-stream' payment rate fell from $0.0020 to $0.0010.
UK Music says that YouTube benefits financially from artists who publish their work on the platform, but this is not properly reflected in the payments that are made to them. Speaking specifically about British music, UK Music's chief executive Jo Dipple said: "I don't think YouTube pays enough for our brilliant music that they have on their platform".
The report says:
The YouTube model, despite its reach, is yet to deliver fair financial returns for rights owners and creators, artists, composers, songwriters and publishers. In terms of audience penetration, YouTube is the most widely used global streaming platform, with music representing 30% of its total views. In 2015 it paid out $740m in music rights payments, up only a modest 11% from 2014 despite total views growing 132% to 751 billion streams. Per-stream rates fell from $0.0020 to $0.0010.
What is clear is that whilst YouTube and other similar ad-funded services remain a vital way for the music industry to reach music fans, the value gap between creators, rights owners and parts of the tech industry that rely on ad-revenues over subscription and licensed income is too wide and needs to be addressed immediately.
YouTube says that the way it pays artists is fair, suggesting that it is not reasonable to compare its financial model with the likes of Apple Music.
The way that we pay to all creators is the same. You get over half of the advertising revenues from the advertising against your video. That's the way that we pay and we're seeing that business grow hugely and dynamically. Of course we're totally committed to working with the music business so that more advertising dollars flow to artists.
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