The ongoing row between YouTube and some independent labels has led to an inevitable leak of the company’s draft contract – Billboard obtained one last week and published its report on Friday, but we can confirm that the contract has also been sent to other media outlets. It lays out some of the figures behind YouTube’s upcoming music service, which includes the promise to pay either a percentage of revenues or a minimum per-subscriber fee to labels and publishers for the new subscription offering. Specifically, 65.5% of revenues for audio-only streams and 55% of revenues for music videos – including 10% for publishers in both cases – or a minimum per-subscriber fee of $5.50 a month for labels and $0.50-$0.80 to publishers. Billboard also highlights the contract’s controversial most-favoured-nation clause, where if any major label or publisher agrees lower rates for the service, YouTube can reduce the rate for indie labels accordingly – a matter of some debate given talk of advance payments for the major companies, which in the future could be seen as an incentive to accept lower per-stream payments (which could then be enforced on the advance-less indies).
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