The biggest news in the digital music front thus far this week has been the announcement of YouTube's Music Key, a subscription service designed to compete with streaming platforms such as Spotify. Caitlin Carter reported yesterday on how the service head reached a deal with indie labels, having already completed negotiations with the majors. It seemed that everything was ready to go...but yet again streamers forgot about songwriters. Now Irving Azoff, the head of the Global Music Rights group, is threatening to remove some of the biggest names under his representation from YouTube because they as songwriters won't receive proper compensation from the service (via The Hollywood Reporter).
GMR argues that as streaming and similar services become more and more popular, companies such as Spotify should be paying more to songwriters and composers for publishing rights, whereas the deals in place come out much more strongly for recording rights, which are owned by performers and labels. While many musicians perform music they've written, often enough those who write huge hits for stars don't get the reciprocation they deserve. The most telling example that came out last week was when Aloe Blacc revealed he had only made around $4,000 for "Wake Me Up!," the single he wrote and lent to Avicii. It's the most streamed song in history-more than 168 million times-but as the songwriter and not the primary performer, Blacc's been left out in the cold. If he's only made that much, imagine what he might make for a song that doesn't become an international smash.
Azoff is in as good a position as any to demand a deal. His organization represents some of the biggest songwriters in history—John Lennon, Smokey Robinson and the Gershwin brothers, among others—and if he gets his clients' works removed from YouTube, it'll amount to more than 20,000 songs. Big ones too. This year's most downloaded song, "Happy," would come down as Pharrell Williams is under GMR as well.
Let's hope they can figure something out.
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