Warner Music Pulls Videos Off YouTube

iammani writes with this excerpt from Reuters: "Warner Music Group ordered YouTube on Saturday to remove all music videos by its artists from the popular online video-sharing site after contract negotiations broke down. ... The talks fell apart early on Saturday because Warner wants a bigger share of the huge revenue potential of YouTube's massive visitor traffic. There were no reports on what Warner was seeking. 'We simply cannot accept terms that fail to appropriately and fairly compensate recording artists, songwriters, labels and publishers for the value they provide,' Warner said in a statement." Warner's deal with YouTube to make those videos available came just prior to YouTube's acquisition by Google.

Comments

What? Did you get that gem?

[Opportunist]

"We simply cannot accept terms that fail to appropriately and fairly compensate recording artists"

So Warner thinks all the contracts they have with the signed artists are unfair and should be void?

fairly compensate recording artists, songwriters,

[similar_name]

We all know how much they care about fairly compensating the people who actually made the music.

Does Youtube get a cut of the sales?

[Anonymous Coward]

I've bought literally dozens of albums after my friends and/or girlfriend have shared youtube video links. Does Youtube get a cut of those sales?

TimeWarner is shooting themselves in the foot here. Youtube gives them free exposure. The labels don't mind paying MTV to play their videos, but they want Youtube to pay them?

Once again, the record industry just doesn't get it.

Re:Does Youtube get a cut of the sales?

[Waffle Iron]

The labels don't mind paying MTV to play their videos

It looks like the labels are doubly incompetent: MTV takes their money, but then it doesn't bother to play any music videos at all.

Remember the good ol' days?

[Mononoke]

I remember when music videos were essential promotional tools. That's one of the reasons artists spend their own money making them.

Now get off my lawn.

In the Geocities Days

[Enderandrew]

In the early dark days of the internet, big companies sued small fan sites because they infringed on logos and copyrights. How dare you run a Star Wars fan site, or an X-Files fan site with racy pictures of Scully?

Then SLOWLY over the years, companies seemed to realize that fans on the internet increased buzz, visibility and mindshare for their products. Now they cater directly to the fan base by pandering at Comic-Con and such.

Warner wants a bigger piece of revenue for the videos being shown, but they're not thinking long term. It isn't just direct revenue of showing the videos, but the hype that comes along with it. If someone forwards a video to another person (or rather a link to the video) they are advertising that artist to their friends.

Monty Python has it right. They are posting clips on YouTube for people to watch for free (fans would post them anyways, only to have them taken offline) but Monty Python now has direct control over the portal, and can include links to purchase Monty Python material on Amazon.

Warner needs to wake up and pay attention.

Re: fairly compensate recording artists, songwrite

[dontmakemethink]

We all know how much they care about fairly compensating the people who actually made the music.

What's worse is that videos were never intended to generate revenue on their own, they are advertising for the artist. No record label ever had a problem with MTV making money from commercials in between videos. No doubt there are absolutely no provisions in the artists' contracts for revenues generated by videos either, and no doubt we'll start to see YouTube clips of signed artists protesting this, which the RIAA can't yank.

Massive fail.

I record all my music off Youtube

[Joce640k]

I just hold a microphone up to the speakers and record the song using Windows Sound Recorder.

It's very easy to do and the sound quality is perfectly acceptable because I only listen on the bus.

Aren't videos just promotional tools?

[crustymonkey]

Please, correct me if I'm wrong here, but aren't music videos basically just promotional tools used to sell albums? Maybe things have changed since the early MTV days, which also probably the last time I watched a music video, but I've always been under the impression that the reason these were made in the first place was simply a way to sell an album (or song, nowadays). I mean, really, do people actually *buy* music videos (and I'm not talking about extended length live performance videos, just the old school MTV stuff).

Maybe things have changed in this arena in recent years, but I can't really see this as anything except another stark example of a music industry dinosaur that just wants to stay locked in it's old anti-digital model. That and, of course, the fact that they want to squeeze anyone they can to try and extort as much money as they can before they finally die off because they refuse to accept change.