Recording industry earns more from fan videos than from official music videos

http://www.thestar.com/entertainment/music/2014/03/18/recording_industry_earns_more_from_fan_videos_than_from_official_music_videos.html

By:Joel EastwoodStaff Reporter, Published on Tue Mar 18 2014

The recording industry is making more money from fan-made mashups, lip-syncs and tributes on YouTube than from official music videos.

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With one billion users worldwide, YouTube is the most used music service in the world, according to the annual Digital Music Report released Tuesday by IFPI, an organization that represents 1,300 record companies around the world.

“All record companies make their repertoire available to YouTube,” Keeling explained.

The video website, owned by Google, tracks uploaded videos and alerts record companies when a YouTube user uploads content that uses a copyrighted song.

Rather than order the video removed for copyright infringement, the record company can instead choose to run ads before and during the video, making money off the video’s views.

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User-generated content, which includes mashups and fan-made music videos, are actually generating more money for record labels than the official music videos posted by record labels, Keeling said.

“A lot of that is due to consumers putting more and more repertoire and new versions up there, but also it’s YouTube getting better at advertising,” he said

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