PRS v YouTube: No UK vids, but royalty row runs and runs The row between YouTube and the Performing Rights Society - which collects royalties for musicians - shows no sign of ending, although talks yesterday were described as positive. PRS said yesterday: "The meeting was positive. We are committed to ensuring our 60,000 songwriter and composers members receive a fair deal and that …
If the PRS think Google are playing "hardball" by removing content they have no license for (thanks to the PRS) then the PRS have already lost. I can't believe they said that bullshit out loud. Either PRS members want their stuff on YouTube, for a share of revenue, or they don't. They can't just name a price if the revenue isn't there.
Hahaha I love it when these societies' inflated view of their own importance suddenly meets the cold hard wall of reality!!
Google vs. PRS - hmm, let me think. Shocked and disappointed at Google's hardball negotiating tactics? What did they expect - that Big G would just roll over and play dead?
Reminds me of that line in Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels - "It's a dog eat dog world, and I've got bigger teeth than you".
"[T]he PRS is asking Google for viewing figures so that it can do the maths and work out how much its members are owed."
So when did the PRS license become a per view/listen one? Looks like I'll be seriously considering shutting up shop if I need to log customer numbers and track play counts on the jukebox.
AC, as I don't want a PRS auditor descending!
"It appears that Google is asking for a full list of PRS members so that it can work out how much it owes the society. But the PRS is asking Google for viewing figures so that it can do the maths and work out how much its members are owed."
Well, duh - you do Both. Otherwise, how would one be able to trust the other's final figure?
Paris, in honour of the title, and the vague suspicion that even She could work that out.
The PRS is a solution to the problem of paying rights holders, in the days when the ability to track every performance didn't exist.
There are still advanrages in not keeping track of exactly who listens to what. Do you want a politician to be able to get hold of records of who has listened to "Anarchy in the UK"?
At times. the PRS behaves more like an organisation with the object of employing the staff of the PRS,
Sometimes the PRS appears to want to become a part of a Big Brother panopticon.
Are the people who control it the artists and writers it claims to represent, or the accountants and lawyers of the media megacorporations? I'm willing to support artists and writers.
The PRS might survive. I don't want to live in the world it sometimes seems to promote.
@ Eddie Edwards
" Either PRS members want their stuff on YouTube, for a share of revenue, or they don't. They can't just name a price if the revenue isn't there. "
Either YouTube want PRS members' material on YouTube, or they don't.
YouTube started with a business model that assumed not paying anyone for their material, and their advertising rates was set for that.
To start bleating now that they don't have enough money to pay their dues... well that's just stupid -- it's their own fault.
It's like ITV4 turning round and demanding that they get the latest Hollywood blockbusters for tuppence a shot because "that's all they can afford". Tough titties, ITV4! You'll have repeats of Inspector Morse and the classics of the 80s, and you'll like it!
If YouTube can't afford popular music, they have to either revise their revenue model, or accept that they are a low-rent outfit and will have to put up with whatever cr@p they can afford!
There's a news item on the BBC about the new elite union for musicians, the Featured Artists Coalition, who are banding together to kick the MAFIAA squar in the noots. I suspect the PRS may get some collateral kickage.
Unfortunately for the PRS, Gootube has plenty of unlicensed copies of these "premium" music videos, so the great British consumer isn't really losing out.
(And what defines "premium", anyway - for me "premium" would mean some lesser known footage of the Sex Pistols)
Once again, the industry goes toe to toe with the Foe du jour. this won't bring about any real positive change, it'll just cause yet more hassle for people who already regard all the content on places like YouTube as free (even if the rightsholders want compensation).
I'd wager that the PRS won't win this one; why can't they just accept this? Getting less licence money than you were asking for is still better than getting nothing whatsoever.
You don't fully appreciate what the PRS have done; it's akin to an Anti-virus company charging you £x the first year, then next year the what £xxxx because your father hit the jackpot! What does your families (or indeed your own personal) wealth got to do with the SERVICE they offer? It's still THE SAME service they offer!
GooTube has done what the savvy consumer would have done; told the company (the AV co in my metaphor, the stoopid PRS in the Real World) to go and stick it where the sun don't shine.
Knowing someone who is involved in the deal between the 2 its really just a pissing match. There is really nothing to see. The PRS wants to extract every cent it can get from Youtube for the views. And Youtube is trying to get bottom feeder prices for content. Either way another week of this and we will probably forget about it till a deal is announced. So let the PR war rage on....
...going to get some popcorn to watch this show
It is not fair to equate the PRS with 'PRS Members'. The PRS-MCPS are a UK Government appointed monopoly (but run like a private company rather than a public service) on broadcast royalty collection. If you are a musician / composer, and often if you want to get paid at all for what you do, especially now music is widely seen as being a 'free' commodity, you have to be a member of the PRS (the PRS pays itself by taking a cut of collected royalties). You also have to watch as PRS executives award themselves fat bonuses, cosy up to the big fish in the music publishing industry who have a vested interest in screwing the living out of artists, as well as Govt Ministers , MPs and civil servants, some of whom sit on the boards of music libraries / publishers. Oh, and also pay for the glossy quarterly magazine they send you telling you how amazing they are.
In the meantime, PRS 'members' have no say in the decisions (usually massively against their interests for reasons explained above) that are made on their behalf, and no choice to join a competitor who will better represent them, as they can in the US.
That's not to say Google are right in this argument, it's just that as someone attempting to scratch out a living in the music industry, the PRS are the last people I trust to represent me in this scrap.
Google wants to see a list of PRS members?!!?? Once more demonstrating that they no idea whatsoever about privacy and data protection laws.
The prs are in the right here - the amount of viewers on youtube has gone up exponentially and youtube want to pay the same amount, without showing any viewing figures to prove that the views of music videos have stayed the same.
Youtube either needs serious funding from Google for this sort of thing, or it's going to go bust.
Like everything else Google does it's all about advertising revenue. Ask anybody working in commercial media these days and they will tell you that advertising revenue is down (they might be lying, but that's what they say).
Google have always wanted to take everything for nothing (or as little as possible), slap advertising all over it and charge for the advertising. Net result: massive revenue and low spending. If anybody complained they were told they had to allow their stuff to appear on Google or nobody would ever see it.
All in all a great business model for the way the world economy was working up to about 12 months ago. Now Google are realising that maybe Youtube wasn't such a great buy as advertising revenues aren't as high as projected so they want to pay less than the almost nothing they already pay for content.
I can see similar scenarios being played out around the world for the next few months as Google regret their purchase.
Google are an advertising company. I've never met anybody in advertising who isn't a twat. No sympathy from me.
These days no-one buys the Bert Weedon Play Guitar In A Week' book, they all watch clips on You Tube to see how thier heroes play.
PRS depend on these 'heroes' for a cut and also will want a slice of whatever the new musos make. If they stop eager learners from learing all of Saint Jimmy of the Hendrix's best licks then the next stadium rockers will be stillborn and the PRS gets nowt.
Is no-one going to make the spurious claim that all music videos are adverts? (See comments page to any previous incarnation of this ongoing saga.)
Go on, please, please do, because I really want to counter it with the fact that many people who have enough friends to justify having parties now use YouTube as the source of the night's soundtrack....
There was a report on the radio at lunch time that a number of Supermarket chains in Ireland are cutting the EUR 250k fee that they've been paying to PPI (Phonograpic Performance Ireland) for a license that allows them to play chart hits in their shops, and switching to royalty free "muzak" instead.
The other approach that Yotube could take would be to publish a list of how much each artist should have received, based on their calculations of how much they paid PRS, and watch the shit hit the fan when musicians get public confirmation of how badly they're being screwed by the PRS.
As manager of a local choir that uses material of our members, one is the local poet, set to music by our accompanist and typeset and printed by myself, I have no liking for the PRS. We are charged large fees for every concert we give, even in the old peoples homes, and have never seen anything back from them. The sooner the PRS is disbanded the better for us.
I'm sick to the back teeth hearing about how "the song wrote itself in ten minutes" and then being asked to pay these greedy swines for the next fifty years. It's about time these song writers were told it like it really is, WE write the songs and they pick it up from the aether. I don't know about you but I don't think people should pay their aerials just because they pick something up from the airwaves so why should we pay these people just because they are better at picking things up than you or me? Maybe Google should try that tack with these greed soaked morons who sell the songs that came to them looking for a decent father or mother and found themselves being sold to the highest bidder. Would Robbie Williams sell his kids into slavery? Probably.
PRS are crooked scum. I used to run a nightclub that played only alternative and underground music, yet got a letter demanding payment from them stating their operative had monitored a night in the club (playlist supplied had a random assortment of kylie/chart music that would never get played) with a headcount of 2x the real figure for the night in question. Basically they lazilly agregate as much royalties as possible to large artists (through other practices such as 'radio sampling days' and other such bullshit) while ignoring non commercial music unless they can use it as a means of extortion.
"Go on, please, please do, because I really want to counter it with the fact that many people who have enough friends to justify having parties now use YouTube as the source of the night's soundtrack...."
haha
Are you for real? If you're too much of a twat to see how wrong this is you need help, however I'll give you a little hand. People come round to mine, I stick on a CD, some people will go "oh, I like that, I'll buy it", some people will go, "oh i like that, i'll buy and download the track", and some won't care, they'll just come across to my house to listen to it. Now I already hear you saying "but YouTube isn't like that! It's free! WAH!" You see the great thing is, if I've bought a track that I like, I can find it on YouTube and point some mates at it, of which a few might buy it. Or if I've heard a track I like and I'm not sure what it's called, I can find it on YouTube and then buy it, or if I want to look for remixes, I can usually find the one I want on YouTube.
While it goes against your grain that something for free can actually have positive effects on sales, it's true, and if you opened your mind for a moment instead of reacting with utter revulsion at something you don't understand you might see that.
i dont see a reason why musicians should get a royalty for every time a song is played, no one pays Ford every time a car is driven. Musicians get paid by the record label, who make money from selling cds in shops and videos to cable channels, it seems to me that theyve had it good with this royalty scam for far too long
Could Google not create it's own PRS type service, whereby artists submit their own content to Youtube, and receive a % amount based on the views, thus cutting out the PRS altogether?
Less costing for Google/Youtube, more money into the hands of the artists.
Although I'm sure the PRS has artists restricted from entering into some agreement like this.
Ford may not get paid for each time a car is driven, but your analogy is more applicable to renting a car when the rental company would get paid every time. If a privately owned Ford car is driven Ford don't get any cash, but if a privately owned CD is played, the copright holder gets nothing. Also, if a Ford car is resold, Ford don't get any cash, but if you resell a CD the artist doesn't get any more money.
"Google pulled the plug on UK access to most YouTube videos on Monday. It said it was "shocked and disappointed" at Google's hardball negotiating stance...........For its part YouTube said its existing licence with the PRS had ended."
So PRS expectes loads-a-dosh for the privilege of playing its Intellectual Property...um... sorry songs for which they give you a licence. Then when the licence runs out they are shocked and disappointed that their songs no longer get played??????? Is that not what the licence says?
Am I right in thinking that PRS rely on UTube as very important tool in getting their songs out to the youf of today............just as long as they pay a stinking load of cash as well. Has PRS asked themselves who is providing whom a service? Obviously not.
PRS phones every business it can identify in UK and asks if they have a PRS license for listening to the radio at work. I've come across a couple of small businesses locally (a sandwhich shop that opens 2-3 hours a day for example) who've been done.
example: a charity in Astley, Wigan were told they needed a licence costing £230 p.a. to play music in their kitchen.
Is there an internet radio channel that plays exclusively non-PRS music, give those young struggling unsigned new musicians some air-time or old recordings out of copyright?
Small business has it hard enough already, especially just now - I wonder how much of the money PRS gets this way is gobbled up in "admin fees" and how much gets to musicians. PRS' highest-paid director received £425,000 in 2007. They reportedly spent about that much on a new logo recently.
If I listen to the radio at work I expect the broadcaster to have paid musician's royalties - fair enough but it seems like PRS wants to charge twice, once for broadcasting and then again for listening.
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