In its ongoing effort to keep down the cost of showing thousands of music videos, YouTube appears satisfied with having renewed its deal with Dutch royalty collector Buma/Stemra.
The deal lets YouTube go on showing professionally-produced music videos and homemade videos with music included, as well as videos embedded off-site, MusicWeek reports.
After falling out very publicly back in March – when YouTube claimed UK rates were excessive and royalty collector PRS For Music said artists deserve fair compensation – the pair eventually agreed a revised rate, which YouTube is paying for up front to June 2012. PRS subsequently dropped its industry on-demand streaming music rate from £0.0022 to £0.00085.
In Holland, Buma/Stemra attracted suspicion this October over a supposed plan to charge a royalty to web publishers who embed a music video. At the time, the agency’s top digital guy denied that to paidContent:UK, though did say: “We have withdrawn the plans to license the use by individuals that make no profit by making the embedded files available.”
As well as the UK problem, YouTube had also stopped showing much music in Germany, protesting royalties that were 50 times higher than the original UK rate. We haven’t heard of a resolution to that.http://www.bumastemra.nl/en-US/