IFPI disputes Google’s YouTube payments saying that its figures show that they are less than half those claimed by Google. In a response to Google’s Anti-Piracy Paper released earlier this month, IFPI Chief Executive, Frances Moore, said:
“We welcome Google’s recognition that it and Google’s YouTube need to operate responsibly and properly value creators and their work. However, the figures in Google’s anti-piracy paper don’t match our own.
“It is difficult to get any clarity on Google’s claims as it doesn’t explain its methodology, but IFPI data shows that revenue returning to the record industry through video streaming services (including but not limited to YouTube) with 1.3 billion users amounted to US $856 million in 2017 – less than half of Google’s claim and less than US $1 per user per year.
“By contrast, a much smaller user base of 272 million users of audio subscription services (both paid and ad-supported), which don’t misapply the ‘safe harbour’, compensated creators some US $5.6 billion – a little more than US$20 per user per year.
“This is the reality of the ‘value gap’ – in which user-upload platforms, such as YouTube, exploit music for profit without returning fair compensation to music creators.”
The recently passed EU legislation on copyright rules, and in particular Article 13, which holds internet companies directly responsible for any copyright infringement in the content shared on their platform has the potential to affect user submitted content to YouTube.
Susan Wojcicki, CEO of YouTube, mounted a robust defence of YouTube’s position in a recent Creator Blog suggesting that ‘EU residents are at risk of being cut off from videos that, in just the last month, they viewed more than 90bn times including more than 35m EU channels.’
Record companies and industry organisations such as IFPI take a rather different view to YouTube regarding copyright and point to the Value Gap between what revenue they receive from YouTube music videos by comparison to other digital and physical music distribution channels – see the IFPI Audio and Video Streaming graphic above.
