YouTube dispute highlights music industry's new battleground: online videos

The removal of Warner Music Group's videos from YouTube over the weekend highlights the growing tension between music labels and websites over what is becoming an important source of revenue for the beleaguered recorded-music industry: advertising and licensing fees from music videos, the foundation that built MTV but which has now largely migrated to the Internet.

The impasse comes at a time when all four major labels -- Warner, Universal Music Group, Sony BMG Music Entertainment and EMI Music -- are renegotiating their licensing deals with YouTube, the largest video site.

YouTube and social networks such as Last.fm pay for the rights to stream music videos. Typical licensing agreements pay either a minimum fee based on the number of times a video is viewed or, if the sum is greater, a share of the ad revenue, helping to make music videos a small but fast-growing source of revenue for the labels. One label executive estimates that music videos will generate about $300 million for the industry this year.

Record labels are eager to explore ancillary revenue to help offset free-falling CD sales. This year's album sales are down 45% from 2000, according to Nielsen SoundScan. A recent Forrester Research report projects that disc sales will continue to decline by an annual rate of about 9% over the next five years, as retailers reduce the shelf space allotted to CDs and music fans shift their purchases online.

As a result, music executives are increasingly pressing for what the industry calls 360 deals, in which the labels grab a share of revenue once reserved for the artist, such as concert ticket sales and proceeds from the sale of T-shirts and other merchandise.

Read the full story here.

-- Dawn C. Chmielewski

Photo: Akon, during the making of the "I'm So Paid" music video. Credit: Universal Music Group

Comments

[Shrew]

The record companies can go "F" themselves. For years they have been overcharging for their media and controlling what we listen to (and how, and where). For me the last straw was the lawsuit they pursued (and won) to prohibit businesses from playing the radio over their loudspeaker system without paying a fee.

Now that the free market has taken over (via the Web) and usurped their control, they are scrambling to keep their kingdoms afloat--through raiding ancillary artist revenues. Myopic, short-sighted, greedy jerks.

Guess what record labels? We don't care if you only make a billion dollars instead of five billion dollars. Go hang. Stay out of our pockets and quit trying to control us.

[yeah!]

I totally agree with the 1st poster. I think these guys and gals make way too much money that isn't justified for the small services they provide. Musicians now have the ability to create and market their own music b/c of the breakthroughs in technology. Record companies only serve as barriers to entry now, and the bubble they created in the music industry will soon burst, just like all the others in our economy.