Vis Slashdot…  Google has been busy lately taking down all music related content from YouTube’s UK viewers.  This is in response to the content organization, PRS For Music’s royalty demands.  Google won’t pay the rates they’ve set for online music, and is simply taking down any music contant that PRS has rights to.  So PRS is happy, right?

Wrong …

pregnantfridge writes "In the ongoing conflict between PRS for Music and YouTube over the takedown of all music related content in the UK, PRS for Music have created a new site, fairplayforcreators.com, exposing the views of the music writers impacted by the YouTube decision. I am not certain if these views have been editorially compromised, but by reading a few pages, it’s clear to me that Music writers represented by PRS for Music are largely clueless about what the Internet and YouTube means to the music industry. Kind of explains why the music industry is in such a decline — and also why so much litigation takes place on the music writers’ behalf."

Here’s what PRS has to say about the tiff between it and Google, from it’s website…

Fair Play for Creators is an online forum set up by PRS for Music so that creators everywhere can publicly demonstrate their concern over the way their work is treated by online businesses.

Fair Play for Creators was established after Internet-giant, Google, made the decision to remove some music content from YouTube.

Google’s decision was made because it didn’t want to pay the going rate for music, to the creators of that music, when it’s used on YouTube.

Music creators rely on receiving royalties whenever and wherever their work is used. Royalties are vital in nurturing creative music talent. They make sure music creators are rewarded for their creativity in the same way any other person would be in their work.

Fair Play for Creators believes that fans should have access to the music they love, and that the work of music creators should be paid for by the online businesses who benefit from its use.

So…I guess they see some value in their music being played on YouTube after all.  That wouldn’t happen to be because sites like YouTube bring more new music to the attention of listeners these days…particularly Young listeners…then all the radio stations in the world combined would it…?

Never mind that some musicians actively despise PRS…I’ll get to that in a minute.  There was a nugget of insight in the Slashdot comments that illuminated something I’d been puzzled by, ever since the music industrial complex went on the warpath against the Internet.  Why the hell are they so bent on killing Internet Radio…???

I put it down to their fear of piracy.  I put it down to greed.  But there’s another aspect to this here that proves Heinlein was right when he said never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by stupidity.  See it here, in Pete Waterman’s pathetic whining that he isn’t being paid every time one of his magnificent works is played on YouTube…

YouTube is not alone in the online hall of shame where the worthy notion of greater consumer choice is used as a cloak to disguise the fact that copyright infringement happens on a grand scale.

I co-wrote ‘Never Gonna Give You Up’, which Rick Astley performed in the eighties, and which must have been played more than 100 million times on YouTube – owner Google. My PRS for Music income in the year ended September 2008 was £11.

Music videos and music generally is at the very heart of User Generated Content sites. It is the hard work and creative endeavour of songwriters and musicians everywhere that has been the bedrock upon which many of these websites have been built, creating along the way huge value for their owners. As well as arguing with them over royalty rates, we should be fighting them to get proper recognition for the part we’ve played in building their businesses.

Pete Waterman, songwriter – 24 March 2009

Now, never mind that a lot of people think they’re owed compensation for having to listen to this song every time they’re Rick-Rolled.  Look at it.  Just look at it.  Waterman really thinks that a single play on YouTube is the same as a single play on radio, for which he gets a PRS royalty.  One Slashdot commenter put’s it in perspective…

Just to put this in perspective, if the song had been played 100m times on UK National Radio, he’d have been paid GBP2-5bn instead of GBP11. *That’s* how much Google are underpaying compared to market rate.

If he doesn’t want Google playing his music without paying him, then that’s fine: he’s got what he wants. Google are not playing his music. What’s his beef?

The going rate is whatever rate can be negotiated between the producer and the consumer. Google, as the consumer, has said ‘if that’s the rate, fine, we don’t need the product.’ Astley (and people like him) have to decide whether they want their music to reach an internet audience or not. If they don’t, that’s fine – Google not playing it works for them. But what they can’t reasonably do is complain that Google refuse to buy their product. If the supermarket in your high street tries to sell you chocolates at more than what you think they’re worth, you don’t buy them – no-one needs chocolate. If the PRS tries to sell Google music at more than Google thinks it’s worth, Google doesn’t buy it. So – where’s the beef?

Furthermore, your computation is wrong. When a tune is played in BBC Radio 1 or Radio 2, it’s heard by about 6 million people. When a tune is played on YouTube, it’s typically heard by one person. So 100 million plays on YouTube is not equivalent to 100 million plays on Radio 2, it’s equivalent to seventeen plays on Radio 2. Not seventeen million, seventeen.

So the equivalent payment is not £2-5Bn, it’s £340. Which is a lot more than £11, I’d agree – but is that because Google are offering too little, or because radio is paying too much?

Emphasis mine.  Here is why the corporate music industry is trying to squeeze the life out of Internet radio…they really believe that YouTube serving a song to a single user is the same as a radio station playing it once and they want the same kind of compensation the radio station gives them, Every Time an Internet site sends a song down a connection.  No…wait…Even More money then the radio station would have to pay .

(Best Syndication News) One of the coolest ideas in the radio business may die soon, not because of lack of listeners, but because fees charged by the music industry. The problem is that Internet Radio stations may soon charged more per song than their satellite or conventional radio counterparts.

A decision back in March 2007 by the by the U.S. Copyright Royalty Board and SoundExchange (the money collector for the RIAA) that doubled the rates for music played on the Internet could kill the industry. Pardora.com, one of the market leaders, may shut down soon if the payment structure is not changed. Their royalty fees are expected to hit $17 million this year alone, and as we all know, internet advertising is in its infancy.

The decision to charge Internet radio more could backfire on the music industry. To battle music pirates, some have advised the same price structure or rates less than their traditional media counterparts.

In a recent interview with the Washington Post, Pandora founder Tim Westergren, laid out his case. The is a potential "last stand for webcasting" before royalty fee increases begin to take hold, Westergren said.

The prices are expected to go from 8/100 of a cent per song per listener to 19/100 of a cent per song per listener by 2010, according to the Post report. Like the early days of Amazon, Pandora is losing money right now hoping to hold on to a market spot when the industry matures.

Emphasis mine. Thankfully they came to a deal before Pandora had to pull the plug.  But this made a lot of listeners absolutely livid when this story broke, and their ire wasn’t at Pandora for not paying the musicians enough.  Everyone could see this for the absolutely mind bogglingly self destructive greed that it was.  I have personally bought more new music off Pandora (which makes it really easy to buy the tunes you are listening to via Amazon or iTunes) in one month then I bought in the previous five years.  And that’s largely because the music industrial complex has utterly destroyed broadcast radio.  I just don’t listen to it anymore.  And if I’m not listening, I’m not buying.

Let me tell you about YouTube.  I watched a charming little video someone had put together…a train cab ride through the English countryside, time sped and slowed, set to the perfect background music.  Whatever music this user had set their video to, it was lovely and when I was finished watching I fired off a message asking them what it was.  It was a piece from Moby called "Inside".  I looked it up on Amazon and there it was.  It’s on my iPod and I’m listening to it as I type this.  Are you reading this PRS…I bought a fucking copy of something I heard on YouTube the other day.  And that’s not the first time either.  I have maybe a dozen or so songs on my iPod now that I first heard on YouTube.

Morons.

The short sighted greed here is staggering, but the complete ignorance of how the Internet works isn’t.  These are mostly folks of my own generation, and older, running these corporate junk music operations now, and we are a generation that grew up listening to music on static-y car radios, pocket transistor radios, and scratchy vinyl records.  Most of my generational peers, according to a recent Pew Institute study, have very little to do with personal computers in their private lives. Individuals like me…technology nerds (I built my first radio when I was 9), are the exception not the rule.  To most of my generational peers, the Internet is a bunch of tubes.  They don’t get it.  They never will. 

They really think that one play over the radio has the same value as one play on YouTube.  Well…and they’re greedy bastards.  One thing you need to know is that for all their posturing, they don’t really give a rat’s ass about musicians.  This from another Slashdot commenter…

As a musician myself, I was compelled to comment there. They won’t put it up though.

I take the opposite view. I have one album up for sale on iTunes and Amazon and another being uploaded right now – http://tinyurl.com/cdx44l [tinyurl.com] I don’t actually want to be represented by the PRS, but I have no choice. There is no opt out. You will collect royalties on my behalf whether or not I want you to. If I wish my music to be available free for streaming on Internet radio, you will not let me. So who’s worse, Google for throwing the baby out with the bathwater, or the PRS for extortion?

This was followed up by…

You can opt out of collecting your royalties from the PRS. You can’t stop the PRS collecting from the broadcaster.

Say I want to perform a set of my music in a pub, no covers, just stuff I wrote. The pub has to have a PRS performance license and has to pay the PRS for my performance even if I’m not registered with them.

It’s extortion, and as usual it’s the artists who get screwed – the number of places to play is dropping for the small local artist as landlords stop paying the PRS tax.

So if one of these days you find yourself wondering what happened to all the live music you used to hear…thank the record industry.