Mötley Crüe's Nikki Sixx Lobbies For Better Pay For Artists On YouTube
By Hayden Wright
(RADIO.COM) – Mötley Crüe bassist Nikki Sixx has launched a campaign urging Google to better compensate artists for music that appears on YouTube. Appealing to the company's "don't be evil" ethos, Sixx claims that artists are currently shut out of profits. With three major record labels renegotiating their contracts with YouTube over the summer, Sixx decided to advocate for better pay.
"The idea behind that was to always compensate everybody," he said. "That motto has since changed to 'Do the right thing.' It's time to live up to your corporate mottos, Google… and invest in the future of music."
The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) highlighted an "alarming disparity" between consumption and revenue, largely due to free streaming services like San Bruno-based YouTube. Streaming has been a contentious subject among artists, who earn the greatest margins of profit from touring and physical music sales.
Sixx told the BBC that YouTube pays the music industry roughly one-sixth of the revenue Spotify provides labels and artists. In response, Google said it is "engaged in productive conversations with the labels and publishers around increasing transparency on payouts," reported the BBC.
©2016 CBS Local Media, a division of CBS Radio Inc. All rights reserved.
