Thursday, March 28, 2024

Metallica, Muse manager decries YouTube as ‘the devil’

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Once again, a member of the music industry has come out against YouTube, accusing the video site of harming the music industry. Peter Mensch, who manages musical acts such as Metallica, Muse, and Red Hot Chili Peppers, said that the site’s current, ad-based business model, is not sustainable, noting that it’s difficult to get people to pay for content they already get for free on YouTube.

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From the BBC:

“YouTube, they’re the devil,” he told a BBC Radio 4 documentary on the music business. “We don’t get paid at all.”

He said the site’s business model, in which artists make money by placing ads around their music, was unsustainable.

Robert Kyncl, YouTube’s Chief Business Officer responded to Mensch’s comments, noting that artists who make agreements with YouTube see better returns. Instead, Kyncl says, maybe detractors should look at contracts between artists and labels.

Responding to Mensch’s comments, YouTube Chief Business Officer Robert Kyncl suggested artists were not seeing YouTube payments because of the agreements they had with their record labels.

“It really depends on what is the flow of the money from us to you,” he said.

All of this comes as part of a new documentary on the music industry, created by BBC 4 in the UK. The rhetoric against services like YouTube and SoundCloud has intensified recently, and it’s thought that YouTube’s licensing agreements with major record labels is up for renegotiation at some point this year.

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