Patrick Carney Criticizes YouTube Over Artist Payouts

Patrick Carney Criticizes YouTube Over Artist Payouts

YouTube has come under some fire from the music community of late. Yesterday, Trent Reznor blasted the streaming service for being “built on the backs of free, stolen content,” but as an Apple Music man, it wasn’t at all surprising for him to throw some shade at the competition. A YouTube spokesperson responded to Reznor via Pitchfork with this statement:

The overwhelming majority of labels and publishers have licensing agreements in place with YouTube to leave fan videos up on the platform and earn revenue from them. Today the revenue from fan uploaded content accounts for roughly 50 percent of the music industry’s YouTube revenue. Any assertion that this content is largely unlicensed is false. To date, we have paid out over $3 billion to the music industry–and that number is growing year on year.

Today, the Black Keys’ Patrick Carney lit into YouTube in a series of tweets chiding the streaming service and artists who hold stakes in streaming but don’t argue for fair pay. See Carney’s tweets below:

The streaming war pigs are starting to oink a little louder again.

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