Rich’s Music Notes

YouTube is in the process of blocking views of music videos in the UK.  Negotiations have broken down with the licensing group PRS for Music.

“Our previous license from PRS for Music has expired, and we’ve been unable so far to come to an agreement to renew it on terms that are economically sustainable for us,” YouTube stated.  “We value the creativity of musicians and songwriters and have worked hard with rights-holders to generate significant online revenue for them and to respect copyright.  But PRS is now asking us to pay many, many times more for our license than before.”

Apparently, PRS feels that since views on YouTube have increased, so should their fees.

It seems strange that music videos were created to promote performers and increase record sales.  Now licensing groups want that to be a source of income?

I wonder how many groups have music videos on their site that can be viewed for free.  So why charge YouTube?

– Rich Pulham

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 10th, 2009 at 9:43 am and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.