Music Ally

PRS for Music is stepping up its pressure on Google over YouTube licensing payments at an event in London, where the cream of UK songwriting talent has gathered to support PRS’ Fair Play For Creators campaign.

Music Ally is here, laptop in hand (well, on lap) to liveblog the event. We’ve had a photocall with the assembled songwriters and composers, and shortly PRS chairman Ellis Rich will take the stage, along with pop mogul Pete Waterman, to give an update on the campaign – which was sparked by Google’s decision to pull all premium music videos from YouTube UK due to fraught licensing negotiations with PRS.

Read on for full details as it happens. We’ll be updating the post as we go along, so keep refreshing for the latest news and views from the event.

We hope the event isn’t just playground namecalling though (sample snatch of conversation behind us just now “AND they say their corporate motto is Do No Evil, I mean…”). There are big and gnarly questions to be answered by both sides in this row.

A Credit Suisse report this week claims YouTube will only make $240 million from advertising this year, yet will pay $256 million for content licensing, and more than $355 million in bandwidth costs.

So, while it’s absolutely relevant for songwriters to complain about being paid peanuts for streams of their songs on YouTube, the debate should be less about ‘Google is huge, it should pay us more!’, and more about ‘If Google can’t sell enough ads to pay us more, how does the licensing model need to change?’.

Sorry, they haven’t even started yet, and we’re already editorialising. I’ll try to rein that in.

The event is a mixture of songwriters and press – besides Waterman, Billy Bragg and Feargal Sharkey are here, and PRS is expecting Spandau Ballet’s Tony Hadley, Alison Clarkson (aka Betty Boo), Dan Le Sac and/or Scroobius Pip (they are two people, aren’t they?) and a host of others.

(I’m quite excited about Betty Boo, to be honest, but I forgot to bring my Wigwam single for her to sign).

Anyway, professional detachment from now on – no jokes about Alison saying ‘Where Are You Baby?’ about her royalties, Tony looking for his YouTube ‘Gold’, or Pete feeling, ahem, Unlucky Unlucky Unlucky when he gets his PRS cheque. That would be beneath us.

The presentation, then.

Ellis Rich kicks off, and thanks everyone for coming, and kicks straight into Google’s takedown, saying the web giant’s takedown was “highly discourteous”, and talks about them “riding roughshod and arrogantly” over songwriters. “Maybe we should call them MeTube,” he says.

“We will not allow Google, or any other faceless monolithic corporation to disrespect us,” he continues. “YouTube do not have the right to trample over the soundtrack to our lives. It’s time for them to face the music and pay a fair price for it.”

This is fighting talk, indeed.

Now Waterman. “Less than 3% of PRS members make a living from songwriting,” says Waterman, who gets straight into his Never Gonna Give You Up, and his £11 royalty cheque. “Do me a favour, take it off… If 154 million plays means £11, I get more from Radio Stoke playing Never Gonna Give You Up than I do from YouTube. I’ll stick with Radio Stoke.”

Oh, and he refers to the Panorama documentary on Monday about workers being exploited in Dubai. “Well, I feel like one of those workers,” he says. I can’t help thinking this comparison will do more harm than good – Pete is hardly living in faeces-infested overcrowded squalor in fear of losing his livelihood if he complains.

Billy Bragg up next, and he makes exactly that point. “It’s probably best if we compare ourselves to something else,” he says. “Workers in those places don’t have any alternative income. We do.”

But he says artists and songwriters do need to find an independent voice to campaign for their rights in the digital era. And then he plays a song.

Which gives me time to reflect a bit more about Pete Waterman’s comments, which clanged awfully with his opening statements about how PRS for Music isn’t just about the rich established songwriters. He feels like an exploited Dubai worker? Really? I mean, really?

This campaign probably needs other voices to go up against Google – and in fairness, the Fair Play For Creators site has plenty of those.

(now Shelley Poole – of Alisha’s Attic and more recently songwriting fame – is doing a song).

And another photocall to finish off, before press interviews. Stay tuned for more posts later on, depending who I poke my dictaphone at.

Tags: betty boo, feargal sharkey, Google, music ally, pete waterman, prs for music, spandau ballet, UK Music, youtube

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 8th, 2009 at 2:30 pm and is filed under Digital Music News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.