Monday, March 30, 2009 6:00PM - By Morelli
Today, Google launched a free, licensed music download service exclusively in China. The plan is to share advertising revenue with major music labels, instead of banking on CD sales, while providing a music download feature for Google in the Chinese mainland.
Google has been behind Baidu.com in the Chinese online search market for years. Lee Kai-Fu, president of Google in greater China, said the reason was that Google didn’t offer music downloads, he told reporters that:
“We are offering free, high quality and legal downloads. We were missing one piece … we didn’t have music.”
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Wednesday, March 25, 2009 6:00PM - By Morelli
The music industry’s songwriters and artists have voiced their support of PRS for Music (previously The Performing Rights Society), accusing Google of underpaying royalty fees. The response is because Google, owner of YouTube, removed millions of premium music videos from the site after a failed deal over royalty rates with PRS for Music. The artist’s opinions are posted at fairplayforcreators.com, in which Andy Gill, from 70′s English post-punk band Gang Of Four, argues that:
“Google and YouTube pretend they are providing a public service. They are not; they are huge money making machines who make incredible fortunes for their owners at the expense of songwriters who get paid no royalty. The vast majority of PRS for Music members earn less than a few thousand pounds a year. It is a totally unfair situation.”
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Thursday, March 5, 2009 12:00PM - By Morelli
Universal Music Group and YouTube/Google are a few weeks away from an agreement over the label’s video rights. YouTube will be responsible for creating a new site, Vevo.com, which would distribute Universal’s video content, and step up advertising revenue with new strategies.
Sony renewed their contract in February, and now Universal, home of U2 and the Killers, will also end their war with YouTube. The soon to be launched Vevo is supposed to generate enough cash to pay for the licensing bill.
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Tuesday, March 3, 2009 4:30PM - By Morelli
Neil Young has voiced his support for Warner Music Group’s policy of muting and deleting music videos on Youtube, after negotiations between the two media giants failed. We’ve covered Warner’s draconian tactics in the past, and now Neil Young defends that Warner needs to be better compensated by posting the following on his site:
“You Tube was in its fledgling stages when Warner made an early deal to work with them. Today, other labels have made more lucrative deals for their artists at You Tube.”
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