Google needs to step up

by: williamsburroughs

Ever since the social-media platform YouTube was founded in 2005, it has been a unique place for all of humanity to express themselves. Whether it’s through teaching, comedy, random nonsense or music. Especially after the website was bought by Google in 2006 for $ 1.65 billion, the website has been one of the top platforms for people to view and listen to music and music videos. Even after the booming of streaming platforms, YouTube are still one of the top platforms for artists to upload their creations. Given the easy possibility for their viewers to like and comment on their videos and subscribe to the artists channels to easily follow their new content.

The problem with the YouTube platform is the lack of financial stability, specifically for Norwegian musicians and artists. According to NRK’s article on the income from streaming platforms, YouTube comes out quite low compared to its competitors. Around half of the youth in Norway uses YouTube as their go-to platform for music. With this in mind only 4% of the income to Norwegian artist came from YouTube. This is extremely low given how many views the music has on YouTube. The streaming revenue of the Norwegian music industry was 619 million NOK, from this only 26 million NOK came from YouTube.

The biggest services for music-streaming are without doubt Spotify and YouTube. Given that YouTube, compared to Spotify, is an all-around creative space and not just for music, it’s understandable that there’s a different between the two. They live in two completely different markets, where Spotify must pay for every second of playtime while YouTube doesn’t. The key to platforms like YouTube and Soundcloud is that the content is ruled by the users. Users can upload everything (within certain boundaries) without the need for approval. This gives them regal rights to go around exclusive rights clearance through the so-called “safe harbour” principle. With this principle in the EU, YouTube and Soundcloud are allowed to not give exclusive rights to its original artist or label.

The managing director of IFPI, Marte Thorsby is critical to YouTube’s way of “hiding” behind the “safe harbour” principle so her and many other organizations are working against EU to stop unlicensed services like YouTube to offer content like music videos completely free. With this make YouTube follow the same rules as Spotify, so the income can go to its rightful owners.

Dagsavisen. (2015) Artister taper store penger. From:

https://www.dagsavisen.no/kultur/artister-taper-store-penger-1.375183

Wikipedia. (2019) Youtube. From:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YouTube

NRK. (2018) Mener Youtube må punge ut for musikk. From:

https://www.nrk.no/kultur/mener-youtube-ma-punge-ut-for-musikk-1.14019274