YouTube faces paying billions to music stars after copyright vote

2018/06/21

YouTube stars from Taylor Swift to Ed Sheeran, Beyonce and Jay-Z could be in line for big paydays after the video giant lost a crucial vote in Brussels over new copyright laws that will force it to pay billions of dollars in fees for users watching music videos.
On Wednesday, a crucial vote by the European parliament's legal affairs committee went the way of the music industry with an agreement to adopt copyright laws that will force platforms such as YouTube to seek licences for music videos.YouTube has an estimated 1.3 billion users who regularly watch music videos and it paid $856m (?650m) in royalties to music companies last year. In the UK, record labels and artists earn more than double the royalties from the sale of 4.1m vinyl records than they did from the 25bn music videos watched on YouTube last year. By contrast, income from the 272 million music fans who paid for ad-supported services such as Spotify, generated $5.6bn in royalties, or about $20 per user annually.
While the legal affairs committee vote marks a landmark moment,it will face a further challenge before becoming law. The committee voted 15 to 10 to adopt the controversial article 13. A final vote on the adoption of the overall legislation will be made later in the year.
Source: The Guardian