I met up with Soundcloud’s UK manager, Dave Haynes earlier today. He was celebrating a venture capital investment of 2.5 million euros, announced today.
I talked to him about how independent music can make the most of the service.
I don’t watch a lot of music videos on YouTube. But I know that a lot of people do. So the dispute between the UK Performing Rights Society and YouTube is an interesting one.
In short, YouTube are blocking premium music videos in the UK, because the PRS is demanding a hefty increase in royalty payments. In other words, PRS have scored what must be the ultimate music revenue own goal.
By taking an aggressive stance and trying to squeeze everything they can out of an online service in the interests of its rights-holding members, they’ve managed to trigger a response that means that songwriters will get nothing from this important source because nobody here can watch their clips.