Member Since: 1/1/2014
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"YouTube Is Stealing From Musicians" - Dead Kennedys member
Quote:
YouTube (owned by Google Inc.) is a remarkable platform for the sharing of videos and music by both fans and creators. Many artists have used it to start careers and achieve a form of stardom, which is wonderful. But what’s behind the curtain? How is the “monetization” income shared with content creators, filmmakers and musicians, by the businessmen who operate YouTube?
I am the guitarist, co-founder and one of the two main songwriters for the band Dead Kennedys. We’ve been called “one of the most popular and important American hardcore punk bands” by the Rough Guide to Rock and “the undoubted kings of U.S. punk” by the Encyclopedia of Popular Music. We are proud of our Do It Yourself independent ethic and have negotiated our own recording, song publishing and other licensing deals. As an independent artist, we attained the extraordinary achievement of Give Me Convenience or Give Me Death earning a Gold Record in both the United States and the United Kingdom.
Back in the day, Dead Kennedys did a publishing deal in the U.K. with Virgin Publishing where they received 30 percent of gross songwriting income, with the DKs receiving 70 percent. Virgin also paid the band an advance which we used to finance the recording of our second LP. They also spent a significant sum out of their own anticipated 30 percent to promote our LP when it was released.
With YouTube’s standard deal, they take 45 percent of what they call “recognized” income (presumably their term for net) of both the recording and composition income. No advance and no investment in promotion. According to Google’s financial reports, YouTube’s expenses can be estimated as about 37 percent of revenues, so 45 percent of net is the equivalent of them taking 65 percent of gross, so that means about only 35 percent goes to artists and labels. YouTube is taking almost twice the “bad old” music companies’ cut, for basically doing no more than hosting on a server.
For comparison, Apple’s iTunes takes 30 percent of gross (they pay all their costs out of that share)—less than half of Google’s 65 percent cut. Apple then gives 70 percent of income to the artists & labels vs. Google’s roughly 35 percent.
Google’s corporate slogan is “Don’t be evil.” The joke is on all of us.
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Taylor Swift recently brought these “robber baron” business tactics into the mainstream. When she removed her catalog from Spotify, they were trying to force a bad deal on her. Dead Kennedys had Spotify figured out early on, we pulled most but not all of our tracks off of Spotify back at the start of 2013. Musicians are not against streaming, but we are against “plantation/sharecropping” business practices. It doesn’t have to be this way.
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