YouTube to block UK music videos

Dave89

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YouTube is blocking all premium music videos to UK users after failing to reach a new licensing agreement with the Performing Right Society (PRS).

Thousands of videos will be unavailable to YouTube users from later on Monday.

Patrick Walker, YouTube's director of video partnerships, told BBC News that the move was "regrettable".

Steve Porter, head of the PRS, said he was "outraged... shocked and disappointed" by YouTube's decision.

In a statement, Mr Porter said the move "punishes British consumers and the songwriters whose interests we protect and represent".

The PRS has asked YouTube to reconsider its decision as a "matter of urgency".


This action has been taken without any consultation with PRS for Music and in the middle of negotiations between the two parties
PRS statement

The body, which represents music publishers, added: "Google has told us they are taking this step because they wish to pay significantly less than at present to the writers of the music on which their service relies, despite the massive increase in YouTube viewing.

"This action has been taken without any consultation with PRS for Music and in the middle of negotiations between the two parties."

Mr Walker told BBC News the PRS was seeking a rise in fees "many, many factors" higher than the previous agreement.

He said: "We feel we are so far apart that we have to remove content while we continue to negotiate with the PRS."

"We are making the message public because it will be noticeable to users on the site."

Consumers must be scratching their heads in amazement at such obstacles to delivering legal content in a timely and straightforward fashion.
Darren Waters, Technology editor, BBC News website

Videos will begin to be blocked from 1800 GMT with the majority of them made inaccessible over the next two days.

YouTube pays a licence to the PRS which covers the streaming of music videos from three of the four major music labels and many independent labels.

Stream online

While deals with individual record labels cover the use of the visual element and sound recording in a music video, firms that want to stream online also have to have a separate deal with music publishers which covers the music and lyrics.

In the UK, the PRS acts as a collecting society on behalf of member publishers for licensing fees relating to use of music.

YouTube stressed that it continued to have "strong partnerships" with three of the four largest record labels in the world.

Mr Walker said the PRS was asking for a "prohibitive" rise in the cost of a new license.

While not specifying the rate the PRS was seeking, he said: "It has to be a rate than can drive a business model. We are in the business for the long run and we want to drive the use of online video.

"The rate they are applying would mean we would lose significant amounts of money on every stream of a music video. It is not a reasonable rate to ask."

New deal

YouTube has also complained of a lack of transparency by the PRS, saying the organisation would not specify exactly which artists would be covered by any new deal.

"That's like asking a consumer to buy a blank CD without knowing what musicians are on it," a statement from YouTube UK says on its official blog.

YouTube is the world's most popular online video site but has been under increased pressure to generate more revenue since its purchase by Google for $1.65 billion in 2006.

"We are not willing to do this [new licensing deal] at any cost," said Mr Walker.

He said the issue was an industry-wide one and not just related to YouTube.

"By setting rates that don't allow new business models to flourish, nobody wins."

Services such as Pandora.com, MySpace UK and Imeem have also had issues securing licence deals in the UK in the last 12 months.
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http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7933565.stm
 
I know they think they are being clever, but it will really affect their own views.
 
I can't be arsed to read all that but I have a question- is it just official videos? If not what about stuff like football compilations that have songs as their background music?
 
background music has already started to disapear from loads of videos, i noticed that the other week
 
well its going to go then now.

The internet is boundless
The internet is lawless
The internet is legion.

Power to the free.
 
Rumours are that PRS was basically asking Youtube to use music content as a loss leader to attract users for other forms of content. So that may be slightly unreasonable on their part, but hey, if you don't ask you don't get. That's what license negotiations are about.

What the PRS really wants to go after is equity in Youtube in exchange for the license...never going to happen though.
 
WeasteDevil said:
Why don't they simply ask for a fee per second played? The radio model?
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Tracks from Youtube have been accounted in the past on a per-play basis, but as a percentage of the blanket fee.

The PRS most likely want to avoid a pure pay-per-play license for several reasons:

1. Transparency - Radio stations are easily monitored...internet traffic not so much. Auditing something so huge is a massive expense.

2. The whole is worth more than the sum of the parts.

3. Unpredictability of income - You can know almost exactly what a radio station will pay...there's only so many hours in a day. Who knows what Youtube traffic will be in the future.
 
Videos were meant to be teasers back in the day. Now it's a business of it's own. How the mighty have fallen.

Anyway, having videos at disposal on a website isn't different than downloading music, since my computer is always online. It doesn't matter if I have a copy on my hard-drive or Youtube has it... does it?
 
I don't really feel Google/YouTube can be blamed here. It's a pretty costly service for Google to keep up and running due to its popularity and resource intensive nature, and the return on investment has got to be pretty low as it is. Google make the vast majority of their money from running advertising on their (mostly) otherwise free services, but YouTube doesn't lend itself to this business model as much as their other products do. If you were to take YouTube as a standalone service, my guess is that Google are probably running it at a loss at the moment as it is.

Obviously the people who create the content that makes YouTube so popular deserve to be reimbursed for the use of their work, but realistically there's only so much Google can pay for that content before YouTube becomes a big liability to the company.

Unfortunately, as the article mentions, other services such as Pandora have been forced to withdraw their service from this region for similar reasons - so it looks as though bodies such as the PRS aren't ones likely to back down too easily on their demands.
 
MrK said:
my guess is that Google are probably running it at a loss at the moment as it is.
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I'd be surprised if the advertising revenue covers its bandwidth costs!

I'm sure Google is running YouTube at a loss and is trying to obviously make it profitable - but what can they do? Sponsored videos? Sponsored ads? Start each video with a Sky advertisement? Hm...

YouTube will probably end up turning into a big mistake for Google, but it will probably remain one of the biggest catalysts for the phenomenon that is user-driven content.
 
x42bn6 said:
I'd be surprised if the advertising revenue covers its bandwidth costs!

I'm sure Google is running YouTube at a loss and is trying to obviously make it profitable - but what can they do? Sponsored videos? Sponsored ads? Start each video with a Sky advertisement? Hm...

YouTube will probably end up turning into a big mistake for Google, but it will probably remain one of the biggest catalysts for the phenomenon that is user-driven content.
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YouTube could end up being a big mistake, but it also has massive earning potential if it can be monetized effectively. Obviously this is no easy task, as the current situation indicates, but I wouldn't be so sure that they're all out of ideas just yet. As an example, recent new Google services such as GOOG411 in the states, and Voice Search on iPhone and Android show that they're putting resources into speech recognition technology, which could potentially open new avenues for making YouTube more profitable.


x42bn6 said:
According to The Guardian, the PRS is asking Google to pay them the equivalent of the ad costs on the video and then some.

Some of the comments seem to put the PRS as the bullies holding onto business models which simply don't make sense in today's world.
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I tend to agree with you on that, I feel this is just another example of the music and film industries refusing to let go of the much easier market they operated in for so long. Something's got to give at some point, these industries just don't hold all the cards any more and most likely sooner rather than later they're going to have to go through some fairly radical reform to adapt to todays influences. Whatever opinions people have on Pirate Bay and the like, I think sites like YouTube are exactly who the industries should strive to work with rather than against.
 
chewingkebabs said:
It won't be long until these major labels go under.
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You're probably right...although this situation has nothing to do with record labels, it's struggling negotiations between the PRS and Youtube. i.e. it's to do with music publishing, not the record industry which is what the labels do.
 
On a separate note, youtube can feck right off now. I just logged in, and leona lewis's bleeding ears was top of the "recommended for you" list.
 
People will upload the videos to personal accounts and Youtube will conveniently be slightly slack in taking them down, and make sure when they do they pass the blame onto the PRS.

Youtube wins
 
MikeUpNorth said:
1. Transparency - Radio stations are easily monitored...internet traffic not so much. Auditing something so huge is a massive expense.
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Well, in network terms, I can think of similar things that work. A very good friend of mine sells mobile phone games from a particular developer/publisher and I asked him "If you do a deal with Vodafone (or whoever) how do you know what they are actually selling? How do you know that they are not going to pull a swift one on you?". The question is valid, because the company is not GameLoft or EA, and as such lets the operators host the games. His reply was that these are such large and reputable companies, that if they did try to falsify the downloads, thus effecting his commissions and his company's revenues (Vodafone for example send them a list of what is sold per month), then at some point they would get found out and be in serious trouble.

Now, that is simply taken as a given - that a company of the size of Vodafone is not going to go on the fiddle. Why would Google do it?
 
Thought this may be of interest to some of you who want the PRS's side of the story... the email they sent round today.

Dear Member

You may have read the news stories this week about Google blocking access to 'premium' video content on YouTube in the UK as a result of their not agreeing a new licence with PRS for Music. Premium content appears to refer to music videos that are traditionally uploaded by record companies.

You may also have read that Google took this decision unilaterally, without any request from us to do so. Their licence with us had expired at the end of December 2008 and we were negotiating their new one. We do not usually ask anyone to remove content as long as good faith negotiations are taking place.

Immediately we heard news of Google's decision to pull content from YouTube, and that they were talking to the press about it, we issued our own press statement. We expressed our outrage, shock and disappointment on behalf of UK consumers and on behalf of you, our members that Google should tak e this action.

Google's decision must be seen as an attempt to influence commercial negotiation and the focus on 'premium' content as an attempt to cause disruption within the music industry again. This content may account for about 1% of YouTube music streams.

At the heart of Google's precipitous action is the going rate for music. This is the rate set by the UK Copyright Tribunal in 2007. The Tribunal is the ultimate and independent arbiter of copyright dispute. Digital service providers pay a fraction of a penny per stream to the creator of the music.

Most of the major digital service providers are licensed by PRS for Music. And just recently we have signed deals with Amazon, Beatport, Nokia Comes With Music and Qtrax.

YouTube has signed-up to licences in very few countries around the world - we were one of the few. They have never before taken down content unless they have been forced to do so by copyright holders. Meanwhile, in the UK , consumer streams of YouTube 'premium' content have risen by almost 300% in the last year alone (up from 75m streams a quarter to nearly 300m streams a quarter). In total, Google want to pay 50% less than they paid before for that usage. Google think they paid too much last time. But their music usage, charged at the going rate, suggests they were significantly underpaying.

A further delay to our negotiation has been that Google is, at present, not giving us the data we need to calculate correct royalty payments to you. We ask them to make returns on their music use in the same way that every other major licensee does in order that we can properly analyse it, charge the right fee and then pay the copyright owners we represent. If there's a stream of a track we don't control, Google won't pay us for that stream. Google would like to see our database in order to match it against theirs so they can calculate how much they owe us.

We look forward to continuing our negotiations with Google where we will be looking for them to pay an appropriate amount for the volume of music they use and the contribution that songwriters make to the success of their service.

In the meantime, please help us to help you. There are numerous Internet blogs hosting discussions on songwriter royalties. All too often, the voice of the composer and songwriter is lost in the midst of issues relating to the freedom of the Internet. Many blog posters misunderstand how royalties work and how you get paid. We should not forget that more than 90% of PRS for Music members receive less than £5,000 per year in royalties.

With best wishes

Steve Porter, Chief Executive, PRS for Music
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