By fitsnews – December 22, 2008
Two years after making sweet music together, Warner Music Group has pulled the plug on YouTube.
Or was it YouTube that pulled the plug on Warner Music Group?
Nobody’s really sure, except to say that negotiations between the major recording label and the video-sharing behemoth (owned by Google) broke down abruptly this weekend.
And here’s the unfortunate byproduct of this corporate friction: Videos from Warner acts like Madonna, Metallica, Nickelback and Tom Petty (to name a few) are going to start “gradually disappearing” from YouTube.
Or quickly disappearing, in the case of Madonna’s “Like A Prayer,” which is now nowhere to be found on YouTube.
Which sucks for us as end-users.
And while the discord is not likely to inconvenience “name” acts like the Material Girl, what about newer acts on Warner’s label?
From the LA TImes’ Pop and Hiss music blog:
For a budding act, not appearing on YouTube would be a major, perhaps detrimental gap, in any online promotion plan. The argument that YouTube is failing to “fairly compensate recording artists, songwriters, labels and publishers,” as Warner said in the statement, may not mean as much when you’re struggling simply to find an audience.
Warner, of course, is the same company that “bought” the song Happy Birthday and now charges upwards of $10,000 for its use in movies and TV shows … which let’s be honest, is a crock of sh*t.
It’s friggin’ “Happy Birthday” people.
Look, we don’t know (and don’t care) who’s right or wrong in this conglomerate v. conglomerate battle, all we know is if we don’t get our weekly dose of “Like A Prayer” somewhere, there’s gonna be trouble.
