
Does YouTube Underpay Artists 13B a Year? - Jerry2
https://thetrichordist.com/2018/10/23/does-youtube-underpay-artists-13-billion-a-year-understanding-youtubes-article-13-freakout/
======
consto
What a load of hyperbolic rubish. To suggest that Youtube is cheating the
music industry out of at least 60% of its potential revenue, a figure a couple
of billion less than Googles net revenue in 2015 is crazy talk. It is this
type of logic that results in the billion dollar ipod:
[https://www.ted.com/talks/rob_reid_the_8_billion_ipod/up-
nex...](https://www.ted.com/talks/rob_reid_the_8_billion_ipod/up-next)

I am not saying that Google shouldn't pay more, I am not saying that Google
says less. But do a quick sanity check before posting silly numbers in a blog
post. Or better yet, provide solid evidence to back up your assertions.

------
ucaetano
_Spotify with 160 million users in 2017 paid out at least 2.225 billion in
royalties to rights holders (It’s probably a little higher). That’s around
$13.90 user. YouTube provides the same service (except with video) and CEO
Susan Wojcicki says YouTube has 1 Billion MUSIC users a month._

The article is completely wrong. The blog post referenced (1) says only that
"more than one billion fans come to YouTube to be part of music culture and
discover new songs and artists". This doesn't translate into YouTube Music
having 1B MAUs, nor it translates in any way to Spotify users.

The article is just a piece of low quality rubbish:

 _This is Google: Second largest corporation on earth, manipulating children
to protect one of the biggest corporate rip-offs in history. Disgusting_

(1) [https://youtube-creators.googleblog.com/2018/10/a-final-
upda...](https://youtube-creators.googleblog.com/2018/10/a-final-update-on-
our-priorities-for.html)

------
mtgx
What do Spotify rates have to do with anything? Most YouTube users are not
paid subscribers, or anywhere close.

~~~
simlevesque
On both Spotify and YouTube, every user brings revenue.

~~~
jermaustin1
I'd amend that to "brings value."

At least on YouTube users with ad blockers, are still able to help understand
"trends" and that helps keep engagement high by users who don't have ad
blockers. Its still a valuable user even if they don't produce revenue
directly.

------
paulie_a
Why doesn't Google just start buying the music companies. It would cause them
less pain. At one point Google had enough cash laying around they basically
could have bought the entire industry. The music industry has way too much
clout for what they actually financially produce, and a chip on it's shoulder
of how important it really is.

------
gmiller123456
The article contains pretty much no evidence other than confusing a Spotify
user with a Youtube "Music User" (which is never defined).

Betteridge's law of headlines is an adage that states: "Any headline that ends
in a question mark can be answered by the word no."

