BPI Chief Geoff Taylor calls on YouTube to commit to pay a fairer market rate for music

The barrage of comments against YouTube continues; this time it is the British Phonographic Industry’s Chief Executive Geoff Taylor, who during Canadian Music Week 2016 released new data highlighting the “Value Gap” issue created by YouTube, an issue that the subject of a two-page spread on the IFPI’s latest global report. 

Taylor revealed that whilst the growth of subscription streaming services in 2015 resulted in a 70% increase in payments to labels, comparable growth in the music video streaming space - dominated by YouTube - flatlined, growing by less then half of 1% over 2014. 

Although Taylor did have some kind words for YouTube and Google, recognising their innovative side, he called for the service to stop “using safe harbours like royalty havens, to avoid paying fairly for music when goodness knows they can afford to do so”. 

Taylor then asked Google to: "commit publicly that it will pay a fair market rate for music on its YouTube service, undistorted by safe harbour, as do competitors like Apple Music and Spotify, and even its own service Google Play; and to commit to take effective, responsible, voluntary action in a code of practice to prevent sites building illegal businesses using our music." 

If Google refuses to make these commitments, Taylor calls on legislators and regulators to “create a new duty of care that requires them to behave with conscience towards the art that is helping to make some of them richer than entire countries.”

These are tough worlds for the BPI’s Chief Executive, but they echo what many in the industry - labels and artists, both indie and major - feel. 

After a couple of years of holding back in the hope that YouTube would shift its focus on subscription, and in light of its poor results in that space, the industry has once again turned on the heat on the video streaming giant. 

 

(Andrea Leonelli)