Tag Archives: fees

No more premium music videos as YouTube and Performing Rights Society fall out over licence fees

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Within the last year YouTube struck a new and courageous deal with the UK Performing Rights Society (PRS). This saw it agree to pay an unspecified flat rate fee to PRS to cover the rights to all copyright music featured on videos posted on its website.

Apart from making straight music videos available to users, the YouTube agreement allowed home video makers to use copyright music in their sound tracks without a liability to pay the music rights which were covered by YouTube.

This has now fallen apart with YouTube walking away from negotiations and making thousands of videos unavailable to UK users from today.

Steve Porter, CEO of PRS, described himself as ‘outraged… shocked and disappointed’ by YouTube’s decision, saying that the action ‘punishes British consumers and the songwriters whose interests we protect and represent’. He has asked YouTube to reconsider its decision as a matter of urgency.

The disagreement appears to be about the level of the charge.

PRS say: ‘Google has told us they are taking this step because they wish to pay significantly less than at present to the writers of the music on which their service relies, despite the massive increase in YouTube viewing’.

YouTube’s Director of Video Partnerships,Patrick Walker,  has told the BBC that he had not wanted to take this action but that PRS was seeking a rise in fees many times higher than the previous agreement.

With negotiating positions so far apart he feels that YouTube has no choice but to take music content off the site while negotiations with PRS continue.

The dispute looks like becoming a mutual blame-fest, possibly with chauvinist overtones. Our own first hand experience would suggest that any Brits fired up to rush the barricades in defence of PRS would be advised to stay their feet.

Patrick Walker told the BBC that the rise PRS had demanded was ‘prohibitive’. He said: ‘The rate they are applying would mean we (YouTube) would lose significant amounts of money on every stream of a music video. It is not a reasonable rate to ask’.

From a very much more humble position in the online media food chain, this is a scenario we recognise. ForArgyll.com evolved from an early notion of being a largely speech-based online radio station. In putting our business plan together, we calculated that, with the number of streams we would need to attract, we would pay music fees of over £10,000 per annum for playing no more than 15 tracks every 24 hours.

At that stage we decided to avoid copyright music altogether because we could not afford it; and instead make a feature of unsigned Argyll musicians. That remains our policy against the time that we develop this side of our service. It means that we can use our audience strength to support new bands while avoiding the significant losses that we would otherwise certainly have incurred.

It really is a case of killing the goose. Ths current stand-off with YouTube has all the hallmarks of a sort of PRS heist – an early agreement to seal them in, followed by a swift hike from which YouTube have simply walked.

We’re with YouTube in this dispute. Their initial move was a bold one, liberalising access to copyright music and freeing up the creative conjunction of music with other expressive forms for ordinary people to develop and share – at YouTube’s expense. PRS is behaving like a Rachmanist landlord for the music industry which, in its own interests, needs to change its culture.

Crown Estate has 20:20 vision and is in survival mode

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The Crown Estate owns the seabed around the British Isles, including Scotland, out to the 12 mile limit. It has been selling valuable leases on parts of this marine estate in areas of obviously rich potential for marine energy development.

The Crown Estate’s main focus has been, as is that of the Scottish Government, on the powerful Pentland Firth which First Minister Alex Salmond famously described as ‘the Saudi Arabia of renewable energy’. However the Crown Estate is also selling leases for sites with potential as offshore wind farms.

This week it was announced that it was offering exclusivity agreements for the exploration of ten sites in Scotland as potential offshore wind farms. As For Argyll reported, three of these sites are in Argyll: off the west coast of Kintyre close to Machrihanish; to the southwest of Islay; and to the southwest of Tiree. The Tiree site, the biggest of the three, is capable of producing 1.5MW, enough power for up to a million homes.

The  Crown Estate has just announced that it will match-fund the option fees it charges to developers. These option fees cover the period while developers scope the scale of the potential commercial energy development of a site, prepare environmental impact assessments, apply for planning consent and get their financing in place.

The fees charged – which are being set on a sliding scale proportionate to the investment required on each site and with payment spread over two years – and the money from their matching by the Crown Estate, will be invested to accelerate development.

These option fees, while not trivial, are nothing like the scale of fees that will be charged for leasing sites that prove commercially viable. There is no mention of any match funding on this future Crown Estate revenue or even of sharing it with, in this case, Scotland.

So before you think ‘altruism’, think 20:20 vision and strategic survivalism. The Crown Estate is buying time and buying it with a seemingly grand gesture that will cost it relatively little.

It will not be long before the general public becomes aware of what could be effectively presented  as a second stealing of revenue from Scotland’s energy wealth. When that happens, the Crown Estate’s blanket historical ownership, born of feudal times, will come under serious scrutiny. So will its management of that estate. A plethora of small matters such as its dispute with the Rothesay Bay Moorings group will cast its stance as grasping in small as well as in large.

The game is a good spectator sport but let’s be clear about what the game is about. It’s not about a generous and forward-looking contribution to developing Scotland’s power. It’s about hanging on to ancient, unearned and profitable rights.