If this rumor is true, it is unprecedented.

We are hearing rumors that Youtube is now paying Prince to have his music on their site.

Prince, a long standing opponent of youtube, may have finally reached an agreement with the popular video web site. Lately, Prince’s latest videos and songs have been getting posted on youtube (but wanting the videos not to be posted elsewhere and has disabled the embed code to post on various web sites.) So he may be easing off on them.


http://www.drfunkenberry....umor-mill/

Graycap23 said:

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A few orgers have said that YOUTUBE is paying artist some sort of fee so it could be true. Good for him and all the artist if they are now getting paid.
Especially since he was the only artist to say he wanted to be paid to say "I want to be paid"
[Edited 5/12/10 12:39pm]

hmm....good! I hope they are!

Graycap23 said:

Isn't that an old post on the drfunkenberry site though?

Anyways it seems fair for an artist to get paid for their work on youtube.. The way the industry is going these days, a lot of artists are losing out on getting paid for their work, with people downloading their music for free. If youtube could offer to pay other people for their videos, who aren't musicians, then why can't musicians get paid for theirs?
[Edited 5/12/10 9:34am]

By allowing his videos to be watched on youtube, what Prince is getting paid by youtube will be nothing compared to the advertising such videos will do for him. For all his douchbaggery, he's a stellar performer and electrifying presence on screen (when he's singing and dancing).

It'd be ridiculous and ass-backwards for them to pay Prince or any artist to allow their videos on the site.

Shorty said:

They should pay these artist for their work-it's just that simple.

ernestsewell said:

why would it be ridiculous? the amount of hits their website gets solely on people going there to watch music video's is through the roof,then you have to think about the internet shares that's made off of that

TheVoid said:

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Plenty of people are aware of P's ablity as a performer with or without YOUTUBE. No one has been able to show any increase in sales/concert tickets because their videos were on YOUTUBE.

At least not any artist at P's level.

Zinzi said:

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Cosign. Artist are not selling CDs like they use to and revenue from YOUTUBE may make up for the lost. Only someone who is not losing money would think the artist should not be paid for their work just like they are paid for movies and t.v. broadcast.

ernestsewell said:

Why? They pay me. Just like every other radio station and TV channel that plays my songs and videos. That's how it works.

YouTube (like all of Google's products) make money through advertising. People pay for that advertising based upon how much exposure they will get from it. So popular content generates a lot of revenue, a chunk of which goes to the creator of that content. It's not like they're using some magical new method of making money that nobody has thought of before.

The issue before was that it wasn't clear what artists were making. That's why Prince didn't want his content on there. Since then, YouTube have struck and are constantly renegotiating deals with the royalty collections agencies - folks like ASCAP in the US, PRS in the UK, etc.

ernestsewell said:

It was ridiculous and ass-backwards for him to get some fan videos out of that site because it was "copyright infringement", least with this, he's making a step in the right direction. He'll probably just show current stuff but still...

ernestsewell said:

agreed.

and i dont see why ppl are even saying he should be paid when everyone here visits youtube everyday for some free videos. lol

Christopher said:

Can I direct you to the post that appeared two above yours, please?

Zinzi said:

Kaching!

Militant said:

i read it,homie.

Christopher said:

Free videos that get deleted every other day. You might haven't noticed but labels often block videos from certain countries after an uploader puts it on the YouTube data. I remember when that D'Angelo song was released and D'Angelo took it out of the site for copyright infringement. Least if Prince is doing this, he could give fans free videos while getting paid through the uploads. YouTube isn't a site you can get rich off of, but if done right, you won't have to go through the hassle of uploading something only to have UMG, WMG or even artists take it off the site because of infringement, then before you know, you're suspended from the site because you "didn't follow the rules".

Christopher said:

So can you tell me what's wrong with YouTube paying Prince, then? Or any other artist, for that matter?

Is it wrong that artists should be paid for their content?

We watch "free videos" on YouTube in the same way that we watch "free shows" on TV. Should MTV not pay artists either?
[Edited 5/12/10 13:15pm]

Militant said:

point is he's too controlling with such things as evident with all his previous woe's with fan's and fan sites.so its a tad ridic it has to be this long and drawn out.the offical videos arent even on there but other stuff is? what gives

Right now with the struggle of artists trying to get radio to pay them the same amount of royalties as they do the songwriters and publishers and producers, I think it'll be easy for the artists who DON'T write or produce, to make their own YouTube channels and add that to the money they make while on the road. So in case radio tries to "rebel" and not play them, we can at least see the videos, performances or even artists uploading their own classic songs on YouTube so we won't have to do the dirty work.

Do you know HOW HARD IT IS to upload ONE stinking video on there?!

laurarichardson said:

oh please.

Militant said:

So YouTube already has a system in place for paying, and it pays you and other artists? Then I don't get what Prince's war with them has been this entire time.

Seems like he just doesn't want to admit how wrong he was, so he's spinning it like YouTube has come to him and brokered some new deal, when in reality he's just getting the same deal he could have gotten before.

Efan said:

Either that or he realizes that some folks actually don't know who he is so he's gotta reintroduce himself to folks who may not know who he is.
[Edited 5/12/10 13:32pm]

Timmy84 said:

People might remember who he was if he had been on YouTube.

Or if he didn't shit on his fans on his own website.

Efan said:

And asking us to pay him all that money. Like I'm gonna spend $200 to hear a new song that I may or may not like.
[Edited 5/12/10 13:36pm]

A more logical solution would be for the people that go to Youtube and want to see a Prince video to have to pay per play. You go there to sample a small clip of what they have. Then if you see something you want to watch in full, then the viewer, not the hosting web site, should pay to view it. That way all the people that feel that Prince should be paid every single time anyone sees his videos, can rest assured that each person has compensated him fairly. Youtube could have a free content section and an "Artists wanting payment" section.

Timmy84 said:

I stick with Vimeo. I like that site.

7souls said:

This is sort of happening. Or will be, soon. YouTube recently announced they'll be starting a "rentals" program. My thought was that it'd mostly be for full-length movies, TV shows, things like that, but I guess it's possible some artists might want to use that system for music videos too. Although I believe the majority of artists will continue with the current method - the same we we have done for videos being shown on TV channels for years. As long as we get the appropriate royalty cut, it's all good.

Christopher said:

That "other stuff" you speak of isn't officially sanctioned. If Prince was still utilizing the services of Web Sheriff, that stuff would have been removed long ago.

At the moment, there's no official Prince stuff on YouTube, but he's not aggressively hiring companies like Web Sheriff to pull anything and everything either. There could be any number of reasons why he's not. Maybe he'll never do an official YouTube channel of his own with official stuff on it. We just don't know at this stage.

The closest thing to officially sanctioned Prince stuff on YouTube were those videos shelbey posted recently. Evidently, she was asked by someone working for Prince to put those particular Montreaux clips up.

The most likely scenario, is that Prince just has no interest in doing anything official with that archive material at this stage. Same reason that there aren't any re-releases or digital remasters of the WB material.
[Edited 5/12/10 19:12pm]

Efan said:

This is old news.When Prince was having his music & videos taken off You Tube this deal wasn't even intact yet by You Tube. Prince was one of the first artist that got this deal.Now all artist are getting paid for there videos & music on You Tube. So he wasn't wrong. Because the deal just started late last year.This was way after his war (as U say)against You Tube.

Stop trying to create unnecessary drama about Prince of something that he didn't do that already been solved. Which he had a right to protect his rights as an artist anyway.

Very interesting. Perhaps, yet another Prince "first?"
[Edited 5/12/10 20:41pm]