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Musicians Union & Featured Artists’ Coalition Support PRS for Music

On the day that Google has announced it will begin pulling videos from the German version of YouTube following its refusal to pay German copyright society GEMA, the Musicians Union (MU) and Featured Artists’ Coalition (FAC) have published statements in support of PRS for Music. The MU and FAC join other industry bodies including UK Music, BASCA, MPA and PCAM in publicly declaring their support for the collection society in its negotiations with Google.

The Musicians Union on its website says “royalties are vital in nurturing creative music talent. They make sure music creators are rewarded for their creativity in the same way any other person would be in their work.” 

The Featured Artist Coalition which includes the likes of Billy Bragg, Kate Nash, Dave Rowntree and Robbie Williams says in its statement “We condemn Google’s use of its near-monopoly to dictate terms to PRS for Music. We ask them to get their tanks off our lawn and to either accept the decision of the Copyright Tribunal or else negotiate a reasonable offer based on a transparent analysis of YouTube’s advertising revenue income."

Following the announcement that negotiations had broken down with the German collection society on Tuesday evening, Google has begun pulling content from the ‘.de’ version of YouTube.

The action follows the launch of fairplayforcreators.com, the online forum that allows creators everywhere to publicly demonstrate their concern over the way their work is treated by online businesses such as Google.