YouTube Pays Out Over a Billion in Music Royalties. The Music Industry Isn’t Impressed.
YouTube is the biggest go-to site in the world when it comes to music. And yes, they’ve found a way to monetize all that video and audio. The problem is that that the recording industry thinks that what YouTube is doing isn’t good enough. From Billboard:
Let’s face it: When the worldwide market is $16 billion annually a billion isn’t that much, not when you consider the size and scope of YouTube’s mighty reach and insatiable thirst for more and more fresh content. While there have been some holdouts on paid streaming services, no working artist would dare skip YouTube — one of the world’s largest promotional channels — and limit his or her reach. According to comScore, YouTube’s 159 million active monthly U.S. users watched 13 billion videos in December 2013. And YouTube says nearly 40 percent of all videos were music-related.