{"id":3633,"date":"2025-09-30T20:01:13","date_gmt":"2025-09-30T23:01:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.clasicosnoticias.com.ar\/?p=3633"},"modified":"2025-09-30T20:01:13","modified_gmt":"2025-09-30T23:01:13","slug":"irving-azoff-slams-youtube-over-low-artist-royalties-by-far-the-worst-offender","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.clasicosnoticias.com.ar\/?p=3633","title":{"rendered":"Irving Azoff Slams YouTube Over Low Artist Royalties: \u2018By Far the Worst\u00a0Offender\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\n\tIrving Azoff<\/strong> still has a bone to pick with YouTube over the streaming giant\u2019s royalties to artists.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cYouTube is by far the worst offender,\u201d the famed artist manager and entrepreneur said on Friday (Sept. 26) at The Wrap<\/em>\u2019s TheGrill 2025. \u201cI\u2019m really not fond of when companies take advantage of creators.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

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\n\tCiting numbers available through Global Music Rights (GMR), the performance rights organization he founded in 2013, Azoff said YouTube\u2019s royalty rates are a fifth of its nearest competitor despite having five times that competitor\u2019s annual revenue. That gives YouTube \u201cunchecked\u201d power when it comes to negotiating with rights holders such as GMR, SESAC, Paramount, Fox Television, Univision and NBC Universal, he added.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWhen you get down to the end of a negotiation with them, they call your artists, they call your record companies,\u201d Azoff continued. \u201cThey go out and [say], \u2018We\u2019re going to take your music down.\u2019\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tAzoff has been voicing his opinions about YouTube for at least a decade. In a February 2016 interview <\/a>with The New York Times,<\/em> he lambasted the video streaming platform for paying too little to creators and hiding behind the Digital Millennium Copyright Act\u2019s (DMCA) \u201csafe harbor\u201d provision that allowed it to host music videos uploaded by its users. \u201cWhen you\u2019re dealing with these tech companies,\u201d he said, \u201cthey are worth zillions of dollars, more than the net worth of the entire music industry.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tAt Clive Davis<\/strong>\u2019 pre-Grammy Awards gala a few days later, Azoff warned the music industry not to \u201cbe pacified by lip service about efforts to create paid subscription services.\u201d At the time, music consumption was skyrocketing, industry revenues were at an all-time low, and YouTube\u2019s poorly monetized free streams were competing against burgeoning subscription services. \u201cIt\u2019s a system that is rigged against the \u00adartists,\u201d Azoff told Billboard <\/em><\/a>in May 2016. \u201cIn my years as a manager, I haven\u2019t seen such a serious threat to artists.\u201d \u00a0<\/p>\n

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\n\tAzoff also lambasted YouTube at the same The Wrap <\/em>event in October 2016, calling the company \u201cvery evil\u201d and citing its use of the Clinton-era DMCA. \u201cWe\u2019re at a time, especially in music, when there\u2019s such a lack of respect for intellectual property, and they\u2019re the worst offender of it,\u201d he said. \u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tSince 2016, YouTube has launched various subscription services to complement its core ad-supported free platform, including YouTube Music, which currently has a 10% share of the global music subscription market, according to MIDiA Research<\/a>. But ad-supported royalties have faltered in recent years, and numerous music industry sources have told Billboard <\/em>that YouTube Shorts, YouTube\u2019s short-form video format, is likely a factor behind a decrease in music royalties<\/a> from the video platform. \u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tMusic companies aren\u2019t alone in opposing the tech giant. NBCUniversal is currently mired in a licensing dispute with YouTube TV and warned<\/a> on Monday (Sept. 29) that its programming could be pulled from the platform. \u201cYouTube TV has refused the best rates and terms in the market, demanding preferential treatment and seeking an unfair advantage over competitors to dominate the video marketplace \u2014 all under the false pretense of fighting for the consumer,\u201d NBCUniversal said in a statement.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tNBCUniversal\u2019s confrontation with YouTube could end up being helpful for music, said Azoff at the event on Friday. \u201cYou got to hope at some point something goes on that forces them to come to the party,\u201d he said. \u201cBut when you got people like [chairman and CEO of NBCUniversal owner Comcast] Brian Roberts<\/strong> making public statements about it, it\u2019s better. So, I\u2019m more hopeful that something gets done, because it\u2019s not just the music industry that they\u2019re bullying. It\u2019s everybody.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n


\n \"Billboard
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Irving Azoff still has a bone to pick with YouTube over the streaming giant\u2019s royalties to artists.\u00a0\u00a0 \u201cYouTube<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":3634,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[381],"tags":[385],"class_list":["post-3633","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-musica-internacional","tag-internacional"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clasicosnoticias.com.ar\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3633","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clasicosnoticias.com.ar\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clasicosnoticias.com.ar\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clasicosnoticias.com.ar\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clasicosnoticias.com.ar\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3633"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.clasicosnoticias.com.ar\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3633\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clasicosnoticias.com.ar\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3634"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clasicosnoticias.com.ar\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3633"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clasicosnoticias.com.ar\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3633"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clasicosnoticias.com.ar\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3633"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}