What do Peter Waterman, Jools Holland, Carol Decker, Abba and Gang Of Four all have in common? They are each amongst the signatories to a new site, Fair Play For Creators, launched by royalty collector PRS For Music as it starts to play hard ball in its YouTube negotiations.
PRS was shocked when YouTube went public with its opposition to proposed new online music rates earlier this month, before pulling down thousands of videos with containing songs. But the society opened the new site Tuesday night to counteract YouTube’s press statements with pro-artist, anti-Google (NSDQ: GOOG) testimonies from a range of musicians and music biz figures. And PRS is also inviting other readers’ comments to use in the public relations battle against the video site. PRS pointed to a Facebook campaign group with 40,000 members.