Opinion: This YouTube / PRS dispute is madness

So, thousands of music videos are to be blocked for UK users of YouTube, following the latter's decision to remove them due to fraught licensing negotiations with PRS for Music. We'll stop short of assigning outright blame, but what's clear is that this is a baffling and hugely damaging turn of events where everyone loses out.Naturally, music fans are the immediate losers, since they'll be unable to watch music videos from some of their favourite artists on what's quite possibly their favourite online video site.The blow may be softened by the fact that most of these videos are available elsewhere, of course. Muzu.tv has already issued a rapid-response press release pointing out that it has a PRS licence and deals with Sony and EMI, plus indies, for example. Meanwhile, we'll be interested to see if UK users can still watch YouTube's catalogue if using other sites like Songza that leverage the YouTube API.Labels and artists lose out too, especially the digital teams who use YouTube as a key plank in their marketing strategies. The majors may have their own strategies when it comes to working with Google – WMG has already whipped its videos off the site, while UMG is [...]