POLL: Does The Music Business Really Need YouTube?

While there’s no denying that YouTube had tremendous impact on countless music careers in the past decade, the world’s largest video-sharing website might has just hit the red button. The platform has announced plans to soon launch its new streaming music service, which is is set in competition with the likes such as Spotify, iTunes Radio and Beats Music which was recently acquired by Apple. For a monthly fee the service will offer both music and video streaming minus the annoying advertising, offline viewing of videos, and give subscribers access to complete albums. However, it has not been well received by independent labels who think that the conditions are rather unfair, stating that they are not being offered the same royalty rate as the major record labels, and what is being offered is reportedly lower than that of Spotify. As a result, YouTube is threatening to block all current YouTube content from indie labels that don’t sign the agreement and prevent them from uploading anything new as well. While some might think independents don’t hold too much importance here they do include big stars such as Radiohead, Arctic Monkeys and Adele. As Forbes points out, YouTube is on the verge of becoming a major source of income for all record labels. With the new subscription the position of the record labels further weakens as they now find themselves in a position where they supply music content but can’t control the price for it. It might have been safer for everyone on the label side to avoid such a deal but YouTube possesses a strength in numbers offering a high level of exposure. Therefore, we leave it up to you, does the music industry really need YouTube? Submit your vote in today’s poll below and feel free to elaborate in the comment section.

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