Artists Highlight YouTube Piracy and Poor Payments in New Ad Campaign

YouTube is the world’s leading video and music service and has partnerships with thousands of artists and other publishers around the globe.

While many are happy with the revenue they’re generating from the Google-owned platform, there has been a lot of negative commentary as well.

Several major record labels are complaining about the so-called ‘value gap‘ and the low payouts per streaming view, for example. This view is shared by the Content Creators Coalition (c3), an artist-run advocacy organization for musicians.

The group has just released two new ads calling on the streaming service to give artists more options to prevent piracy while calling on Congress to update the DMCA.

Rehashing the old Apple vs. Microsoft ad theme, the first video depicts an artist who is trying to get pirated content removed from the site. In the ad, YouTube is not particularly helpful, suggesting that pirated content is quickly re-uploaded after it’s removed.

Interestingly, there is no mention of the Content-ID program which many creators successfully use to prevent pirated content from reappearing. The vast majority (98%) of all copyright complaints are currently handled automatically through the Content-ID system.

Takedown Whack-a-Mole?

The second ad complains about poor payments. In this video, the artist gets paid more from all smaller streaming services, even though these generated only a fraction of the views compared to YouTube.

This complaint is not new either. Over the past several years, YouTube has been called out repeatedly for not paying enough. Not only that, the streaming service has also been accused of running a DMCA protection racket, profiting from pirated streams while hiding behind the DMCA’s safe harbor protections.

Pennies?

The Content Creators Coalition says that the advertisements will run on YouTube and other digital platforms as part of a significant new ad buy.

“Google’s YouTube has shortchanged artists while earning billions of dollars of our music. Artists know YouTube can do better,” c3 President and award-winning bassist Melvin Gibbs says.

“So, rather than hiding behind outdated laws, YouTube and Google should work to give artists more control over our music and pay music creators fairly when our songs are played on their platform.”

While these complaints are nothing new for YouTube, they are also intended to rally support from the public and lawmakers.

“Our ads send a message to the executives in Mountain View that artists are fighting back and mobilizing fans to push Congress to update the DMCA and end the legal neglect that has given Big Tech too much power over our work and society,” Gibbs adds.

YouTube itself paints an entirely different picture. The company previously stated that it goes above and beyond what it’s required to do by law, while paying billions to copyright holders.

“Content ID goes beyond a simple ‘notice-and-takedown’ system to provide a set of automated tools that empowers rightsholders to automatically claim their content and choose whether to track, block or monetize it on YouTube,” senior policy counsel Katherine Oyama noted.

“YouTube has paid out over $2 billion to rightsholders who have monetized their content through Content ID since it first launched. In fact, today well over 90% of all Content ID claims across the platform result in monetization.”

This music industry vs YouTube battle is far from over.

Source: TF, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing, torrent sites and ANONYMOUS VPN services.

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