Google preparing for Taylor Swift's Youtube onslaught

Google is the target in Taylor Swift's sights after the pop music artist forced Apple Music into an embarassing u-turn in which it paid royalties to artists during its 3 month trial period.

The parent company of Youtube is fretting as Swift launched another offensive against streaming sites' abilities to publish music without reimbursing the revenue of musicians.

A group of over 180 artists, including Swift, Paul McCartney, Lady Gaga and Elton John is publicly taking on Youtube, demanding better protection and pay as the video site gains at their expense.

The US copyright law, they argued, has “allowed major tech companies to grow and generate huge profits by creating ease of use for consumers to carry almost every recorded song in history in their pocket via a smartphone”, and thus decreasing the profits of those who create the music.

Youtube paid $740mn to rights-holders in 2015

Youtube paid $740mn to rights-holders in 2015, increasing 11% from the previous year, despite a 132% increase in total music video views.

Google, however, is unlikely to back down in the argument, due to its status as an advertising-backed site, which makes the market laws much more complex. It is extremely unlikely to emulate Spotify, which paid a massive 84% of its total revenues back to the music industry in 2015.

MIDiA Research published a report on Tuesday into the economics of Youtube, and managing director of the company Mark Mulligan said “YouTube streams have grown massively while revenues have grown very little.”

“What Taylor Swift and co are pushing for is to get YouTube to become a completely unsustainable business,” says Mulligan.