All the executives at WB are probably 19 years old and don't remember when MTV was, well, MTV: non-stop commercials for new music.

YouTube should just laugh at them.

Since radio is now limited to playing the same 50 or so songs in rotation, it's hard for me to learn about new artists (or artists that are new to me.) Over the past few months I have gone to YouTube to check out videos by Amy Speace, Dishwalla, Puddle of Mudd, the Black Rebel Motorcycle Club and Lucina Williams and enjoyed them enough to puchase their music from I-Tunes.

Where does Warner think we're going to hear stuff to buy from them? I already own everything I want to out of what's played on the radio.

I wonder if their CEO used to work for GM.

An afterthought:
It seems that an awful lot of businesses look at their customers either as morons or as enemies to be cheated first, before the customers cheat the business.

It's no wonder that so many businesses are losing money.

My guess is they see the writing on the wall. Nobody is going to pay WB for their content. The only way to make money in the music biz is going to be performances. They want people to think of videos as performances.

Radio play is also pure promotion, but stations still pay tens of thousands a year for the right to play the music they're promoting.

I think the same thing can be said for iPod-classic-sized videos.

Watching a movie on an iPod classic (smaller screen than an iPod touch), my first reaction is not "wow, now I can throw away all those DVDs" -- instead, I think "boy, this was better on a bigger screen". In only one case, watching a good movie on the iPod instead of a bad movie on an airplane (with head cocked at a funny angle, etc) was the iPod the superior choice. They should be giving away the classic-resolution (looks a hair inferior on an iPod touch) versions of the videos.

Instead, you discover that such classics as "Wild Hogs" (saw THAT on the airplane) are expected to be worth $14.99.

MikeJ makes a good point-- Youtube certainly makes money from ad revenues generated by people who log on to view music videos, so Warner's expectation to be compensated for providing that content is just as reasonable as its expectation that radio stations and MTV pay for the same privilege. Whether Warner really was asking for more money than is appropriate I have no idea, but its basic point that Youtube should be paying for airing copyrighted material seems pretty reasonable.

It is a desperation move. The business model of the big record company doesn't work anymore. Of course they should just consider youtube as promotion to increase the sales of their CDs and digital music. The problem is that they can't survive on the sales of their CDs and digital music, so they have to pretend that everything will be hunky dory once they get increased revenue streams from places like youtube--places where any rationale business plan would not be looking for big revenue.

Hmmm....I'm either too un-cool or too much a GenXer to take the black/white position that videos are simply marketing. I can think of many cases where the video was far more interesting to watch than the song was to listen to. But then, I watched a lot of MTV growing up.

Content will be removed from the site along with recordings owned by Warner Music's record publishing business, Warner/Chappell Music, which controls the copyright to songs including Happy Birthday to You and Winter Wonderland. -- Guardian

Out of curiosity... If I were to film my granddaughter's b-day party, complete with the whole family yowling "Happy Birthday to you", along with a Warner record of the same song... And if I were to upload it to YouTube... I could be nailed for not paying Warner for the "privilege"?

Warner should be more worried about the mountain of debt they piled up in their orgy of M&A. They gotta pay it down somehow.

In the immediate New Year, we might see the Sumner Redstone Empire implode if he doesn't get more money to pay off $1.6Bill in bonds he owes.

Yet, I have no pity whatsoever for most of the suits and Media moguls.

JRD, you're kinda missing the point. Music videos exist, in theory, to promote and sell the CD, or now the music download. It's, as was said, a promotional tool. If someone took a movie trailer or a commercial for a new TV show and posted it on Youtube, you'd giggle if you heard the producers of that movie or show wanted to be paid for that trailer or commercial. It's advertising for their product! Well, same deal with music videos.

My feeling is, like with failing credit card companies trying to hit even their best customers with increased interest rates and stricter fees, WMG is having a sh*tty year and saw Youtube as a way to recoup some money they're losing by people either illegally downloading their music or just not giving enough of a sh*t to buy it or listen to it in any form. And it will only serve to irritate their base and bite 'em on the ass.

I think Warner has a point in this particular situation. A lot of people think Google and YouTube are the internet. They are not, and that is a good thing, because Google is really cheap when it comes to paying its content providers. That is why even really successful blogs like Political Animal are often tied to magazines and non-Google associated advertisers.

I suspect Warner will cut a deal with one of YouTube's competitors. It might even start its own service. When the dust settles I think we will still be able to find Warner content on line.

An attorney friend of mind once told me of the Warner/Chappell Music version of "Happy Birthday to You" - "Happy birthday to you,/ If you sing it we'll sue,/ For we own all the rights to/ 'Happy Birthday to You.'"

The issue is now that everything is digital, separating the video from the audio is a snap. If you are broke and have time, you can basically fill your iPod full of music from you tube.

I think the real problem for this industry is the technology on the front end is outpacing technology on the back end. The movie industry sank many million to develop a technology to make recoding DVD's to VHS impossible, but by the time it was developed and people bought the compatible DVD players, we were downloading movies and VHS was dead. DVI cables were developed to make sure copyrighted data could not be viewed on high definition sets, then just when it was on the market, he comes HDMI which doesn't have the same protection.

They are playing catchup and with music, movies, and technology, is a losing game and they are left with expensive dead technology or music and movies that are so protected, no one is able to see them and they move on.

As some point they will just have to deal with the fact that the people with less money, but great technical capacity are going to figure out how to get it free. They need to focus on making sure the people who can pay for it, who want to pay for it, are exposed to it. It's a pretty fine line to walk.

Out of curiosity... If I were to film my granddaughter's b-day party, complete with the whole family yowling "Happy Birthday to you", along with a Warner record of the same song... And if I were to upload it to YouTube... I could be nailed for not paying Warner for the "privilege"?

The center of the music industry can not hold...

Dave Isenberg on Music and Market Failure:

I don't have enough adjectives in my bag to describe Sportiello's playing. Words like, "awesome," don't do it justice. "Impossible," hints at the kinds of things his hands were doing. And when, after an enthusiastic round of applause, I muttered, "Wow, too much," from my front-row seat, he replied, "Yes, probably," and all four of us in the audience laughed. Yes, that's right, this world-class piano player, playing in a noted jazz club in one of the music capitals of the world, had drawn FOUR listeners. Four. Me and three others....

Sportiello isn't alone. Have you heard of John Miller? Joe Weed? Ginny Snowe? Joe Sutton? Savely Schuster? Beverly Smith and Carl Jones? These are skilled masters of their craft, just as worthy of kudos as the musicians we know as household words, or more so. I've seen them all in small rooms with maybe a dozen other listeners. If they showed up in your town, I'd bet they'd draw in the low-dozens at best, even with good publicity.

I know, I know, long tail, blah, blah, blah . . . I think there's something different going on. I think there are great musicians everywhere. I am not underestimating the skills of the great ones, but I think musical greatness is way more accessible than the Star Maker Machinery admits.

Isenberg is right.

The best teachers no longer need a classroom.
The best musicians no longer need a music agent.
The best writers no longer need a magazine.

The internet changes everything.
Ultimately, intimately, irrevocably...

WHEN does a copyright end ?
17 years, I thought
Do they get Congress to extend these copyrights ?

How can 'Happy Birthday' not be out of copyright ?

I hope this wasn't an 'additional feature' of Clinton's Millineum Communications Act' that legalized monopoly ownership of TV and Radio stations

If I read the story correctly, this story is about the contract between Google and Warner. Warner wants more money than Google is willing to pay. All the copyright posts are interesting, but not really on point to this thread.

As to the notion that music videos are merely promotion, that might have been the case in the day of MTV. That isn't the case today. For a lot of artists video is the medium of choice. Warner owns its videos. Google is making money playing them. Warner wants to be paid a royalty it deems reasonable. Google isn't arguing that it shouldn't pay something, Google just doesn't want to pay Warner's price. This is a simple contract case.

Remember the medium is the message?

Yeah, a YouTube video is promoting the song. But, a YouTube video, also, literally "is" the song. Once a consumer has the video, there's no other product to "buy".

There have always been various legs to the music industry's business models, and one leg is the music publishing arm. Music publishing, which originated in Tin Pan Alley and publishing sheet music, is quite distinct in its business model from the recording business, where artists and albums are promoted and physical CD's distributed.

The recording and distribution business was huge, supported by a large bureaucracies, stores, etc. That part of the business has been done in, by downloading. Promotion and distribution on-line, apparently, does not require that huge bureaucracy and its executives.

The music publishing business, however, soldiers on. The trivialization of the distribution of sheet music happened several generations ago, and music publishing fell back on collecting royalties, mandated by a legal structure of intellectual property rights. Promotion has not been part of their business model for at least 60 years or so.

WHEN does a copyright end ?
17 years, I thought

Uh, no.

The traditional measure of how long a copyright lasts is "How long ago was the first Mickey Mouse cartoon?"

The music industry's decline can be traced to when MTV stopped showing music videos as its main content. Warner pulling their videos from one of the last places people go to watch them means Warner will have even greater declining sales, which is good for new artists. New artists can produce, copyright, sell and promote their own works now. They no longer need a record label. There will be a billion new web radio sites dedicated to their own band, so they can escape the clutches of SoundExchange, where they can show their videos and sell directly to their customers. Copyright protection and royalty fees will one day be understood as what killed the music industry of the Twentieth Century because it prevented appreciation of their artists in the Twenty-first Century.

WHEN does a copyright end ?
17 years, I thought

The first US law was seven years. Now it's the life of the creator plus seventy five more. As rea points out, when Steamboat Willie hits that mark it will be extended to life+100.

Slappy,

I don't think I'm missing the point at all, and I don't think the "music videos are purely promotional" argument is much of a justification. First of all, it's not at all clear to me that "[m]usic videos exist, in theory, to promote and sell the CD," or are comparable to a movie trailer; the most obvious difference, of course, is that the video typically includes a full CD track as opposed to brief outtakes, and making a video to accompany an audio track involves substantially more effort and expense than does stinging together clips from a film and adding a voiceover. But the aptness of the analogy is irrelevant-- as I noted previously, Youtube makes money from advertising revenue drawn in by people who use its service to watch music videos, exactly like MTV makes money from ad revenue generated by people tuning in to watch music videos on television. In both cases, yes, the videos themselves drive sales for recordings of the music, but the video producer was still entitled to demand compensation for the use of its copyrighted work. You can argue, I suppose, that it's bad business judgment for a music producer to demand payment for the video, but ask yourself: how many people are unlikely to buy a DVD because they can get the trailer for free, and how many are unlikely to buy a CD (or download a single track) because they can watch the video which includes the full track for free? I would submit that the latter category is self-evidently much larger.

Let me give Warner a little example of how they are shooting themselves in the a..s.

A friend recently gave me a CD comprised of cuts from an array of artists....world beat stuff and one of the cuts I absolutely fell in love with. Dubbed it to my IPod.

Then I went in ITunes and began looking for other works by the same artist.....and found several CD's they had done. I wound up buying about a half dozen tracks by the same group and while looking, I came across several other groups, and wound up buy cuts from about a half dozen of them.

I'd never have known of this group and their music unless I first heard the CD and the end result was they "sold" me.....they have videos of some of their tunes on YouTube too.

YouTube postings like Warner's are promotional, but the music industry has treated its customers not as potential buyers, but as a vast band of thieves. The world is changing, but the music companies, which used to promote through under-the-table payment to DJs and Program Managers to get air time, and which routinely skimmed royalties off the top for thousands of artists who saw far too little from the fruits of their labors, are now getting their just desserts.

They continually seem bent on surviving through suing downloaders and pulling their own publicity from places like YouTube. Tis a formula which shall continue their decline.

Surprise, surprise, the only people in Hollywood who are bigger and more ignorant mouth-breathing retards than movie studio executives and television network executives are music industry executives.

I hate to break this to you, but this is not new news. Anyone who's been in the business longer than an hour already knows this.

You mean I won't be able to find Madonna, Metallica or Bloc Party on the internets any more? OMG, whatever shall I do?

And the "music" executives wonder why their business is imploding... . At least [some] newspapers still have content to offer their customers.

I would suspect that Youtube's plan to provide an HD version has something to do with Warner's decision. Why worry about pirating when people are downloading broadcast ready audio/video content for free?