The Global Music Rights is still after YouTube demanding they remove nearly 20,000 videos from their video streaming service. Irving Azoff, founder of Global Music Rights, represents 40 artists including Pharrell Williams and the Eagles, and claims YouTube does not have the performance rights to thousands of songs created by his clients. This means YouTube could face a $1 billion lawsuit.
According to Azoff, YouTube has been, “Least cooperative and the company and our clients feel are the worst offenders” in regards to not working with the artists. YouTube has already claimed it has the performance rights due to prior deals that were made.
Global Music Rights’ lawyer Howard King wrote in a letter earlier, “Without providing a shred of documentation, you blithely proffer that YouTube can ignore the Notices because it operates under blanket licenses from performing rights organizations other than Global. However, you refuse to provide the details of any such license agreements, presumably because no such agreements exist for YouTube’s present uses of the songs in any service, but certainly with respect to its recently added Music Key service.”
This just seems to be another brick in the long road of the streaming music debate. Let us know your thoughts in the comments below, and what you think about streaming services. Are they a great service if the artists aren’t properly compensated?
