YouTube is entering the battle for music streaming exclusives

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MBW alerted you on Friday that Youtube . com is investing tens of huge amount of money
in the new project designed in order to boost artists' careers.
We speculated that the biggest route for such a venture would be several kind of digital resource creation - especially as Apple Music has opened its chequebook in latest months to fund blockbuster videos/productions for the likes associated with Drake, The 1975 plus Coldplay.
Now we have the better idea exactly where Google's money is heading.
Initially, YouTube is starting small: creating a play in order to create exclusive video through emerging artists via a good existing training initiative known as Foundry.
According to Bloomberg
, recent Foundry workshops possess taken place with up-and-coming music talent in LA and London - with videos of the live sessions set to display on YouTube this week.
Another Foundry music session is due in New York later this month with 5 artists including hip-hop act BJ The Chicago Child and R&B act Gemaine.
But this really is just a taster of YouTube's ambition.
Apparently, the online large has mapped out speaks with senior music company figures over the arriving weeks to discuss a 'deeper collaboration'.
What could that mean?
Come on. Wish sure you can risk a guess.
Bloomberg shows that, in these meetings, YouTube will 'outline ways to better promote artists plus bring more exclusive video clips to the service'.
Within return for a commitment to YouTube's cause, say its sources, artists may be offered benefits which includes the potential opportunity to front Web TV series on the platform.
Within addition, YouTube will most likely make available its video creation and post-production resources (aka 'YouTube Spaces') for performers to shoot videos.
Since we ruminated on Friday, this could result in Youtube . com opening up its Original channels to music talent. Existing YouTube Original shows combine hi-spec, TV-style creation values with popular 'amateur' broadcasting personalities such asPewDiePie and Lilly Singh.
Getty Images/Christopher Polk


The big question now: which type of senior music biz figures is YouTube concentrating on for these meetings, precisely?
If it's the major labels, then a brand new era of peace plus harmony between two oft-warring factions might be upon all of us; YouTube making available its gigantic resources would shove some rocket fuel below the promotional firepower associated with the global record business.
Yet YouTube's general music philosophy, as shown by its $8m BandPage acquisition earlier this year,
tends to be a little more 'direct-to-fan' than that will.
A more likely situation: YouTube will target the particular managers of top performers, offering to pay everything they need to create their own YouTube-exclusive videos - perhaps even their own YouTube-exclusive shows - complete with a tasty marketing/promotion commitment.
That will kind of strategy might not only help Youtube . com neuter the growing unique video threat from Apple Music, TIDAL, Spotify plus others, but could also become helpful ammunition amidst the current haggling with major music rights-holders.
YouTube is usually currently locked in discussions with Universal Music Team over a new long-term licensing deal after the prior one expired without revival.

YT's ongoing deals with the other two main labels, Sony and Warner, are believed to terminate in the coming months.
In the mean time, the majors are tossing everything at challenging YouTube's safe harbor protections within the US and Europe - protections which essentially mean the platform can not be held legally responsible regarding copyright infringement taking location on its service.
From the end of last month, a string of top music managers added their signatures to the petition asking the ALL OF US Copyright Office to take apart safe harbor laws peddled by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) in the us.
You have to wonder if certain artist supervisors could be swayed in order to side with YouTube if their artists were given paid-for music videos and special treatment on the world's biggest bokep perawan streaming mass media platform.
YouTube, meanwhile, has other problems that just getting cozy with artists ain't gonna solve.
Upon Friday, Andrus Ansip, VP for the Digital Single Market at the Western Commission, delivered some stinging news for Google -- publicly siding with the record industry over the particular amount of money Youtube . com pays to artists and labels.
According to the FT
, Ansip estimated that YouTube now contributes about ?600m annually to music rights-holders, despite its billion-plus monthly audience, while Spotify alone delivers ?1. 6bn.
"This is not only about legal rights owners and creators plus their remuneration - this is also about the level playing field among different service providers, " said Ansip.
"Platforms based on subscriptions are remunerating those authors; other support providers [are] not. How can these people compete? "
Right now, they're just words -- but they could show hugely significant over time: Ansip is the individual overseeing the modern reconstruction associated with EU digital copyright laws.
Are big technology companies about to get their wings clipped in Europe over the so-called 'value gap'?
Is 'safe harbor' going to take a beating in Brussels?
Stay tuned.