Warner Music Group pulls videos from YouTube
After YouTube pulled UK music videos from their site, Warner Music Group has also taken down their music. Financially, YouTube is not profitable. But because Google is flush with money, rights owners seem to think that money should be shared with them.
The fallout has hit the artists. Roadrunner Records is a good example. Warner owns a majority stake in the company.
“It was a bit of a professional blow to me when videos began coming down,” Roadrunner director of New Media Jeremy Rosen told Digital Music News. “I spent the better part of two years carefully building the Roadrunner Records YouTube channel into one of the top ten music channels by subscribers and views on the site; one of the top channels period.”
Rosen built a YouTube channel that brought in 3.5 million views for their bands and a subscriber base of 133,000. How many of those subscribers can be diverted to Roadrunner’s website remains in question.
Perhaps record labels need to decide whether they are selling records or videos. They built their business on free airplay on radio to promote their songs. Now they want to charge for it on the internet? I don’t see any different between radio and the internet. They are both ad-based. So how can they charge for one and not the other?
– Rich Pulham