YouTube is entering the battle for music streaming exclusives

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MBW told you on Friday that YouTube is investing tens of millions of dollars
in the new project designed to boost artists' careers.
All of us speculated that the most obvious route for such the venture would be a few kind of digital resource creation - especially because Apple Music has opened up its chequebook in current months to fund blockbuster videos/productions for the likes associated with Drake, The 1975 and Coldplay.
Now we have a better idea exactly exactly where Google's money is heading.
Initially, YouTube https://t.co/ is beginning small: making a play in order to create exclusive video through emerging artists via an existing training initiative known as Foundry.
According to Bloomberg
, recent Foundry workshops possess taken place with up-and-coming music talent in UNA and London - with videos of the live sessions set to appear on Youtube . com this week.
Another Foundry music session is due in New York later on this month with 5 artists including hip-hop work BJ The Chicago Kid and R&B act Gemaine.
But this is just the taster of YouTube's ambition.
Apparently, the online huge has mapped out speaks with senior music company figures over the arriving weeks to discuss the 'deeper collaboration'.
What could that mean?
Come on. We are going to sure you can hazard a guess.
Bloomberg shows that, in these meetings, Youtube . com will 'outline ways in order to better promote artists and bring more exclusive video clips to the service'.
In return for a commitment to YouTube's cause, state its sources, artists may be offered benefits which includes the potential opportunity to front Web TV series on the platform.
In addition, YouTube will most likely make available its video creation and post-production resources (aka 'YouTube Spaces') for artists to shoot videos.
Since we ruminated on Fri, this could result in Youtube . com opening up its Authentic channels to music skill. Existing YouTube Original displays 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 kind of senior music biz figures is YouTube concentrating on for these meetings, exactly?
If it's the major labels, then a new era of peace and harmony between two oft-warring factions may 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 songs philosophy, as shown simply by its $8m BandPage buy earlier this year,
seems to be a small more 'direct-to-fan' than that.
A more likely scenario: YouTube will target the particular managers of top artists, offering to pay almost everything they need to create their own YouTube-exclusive movies - perhaps even their own YouTube-exclusive shows - including a tasty marketing/promotion commitment.
That kind of strategy would not only help YouTube neuter the growing unique video threat from Apple Music, TIDAL, Spotify and others, but could also turn out to be helpful ammunition amidst the current haggling with major music rights-holders.
YouTube is currently locked in negotiations with Universal Music Group over a new long-term certification deal after the earlier one expired without renewal.

YT's ongoing deals along with the other two major labels, Sony and Warner, are believed to terminate in the coming months.
At the same 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 with regard to copyright infringement taking place on its service.
In the end of last month, a string associated with top music managers additional their signatures to a petition calling on the US Copyright Office to dismantle 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 when their artists were provided paid-for music videos plus special treatment on the world's biggest streaming media platform.
YouTube, meanwhile, provides other problems that simply getting cozy with artists ain't gonna solve.
Upon Friday, Andrus Ansip, VP for the Digital Single Market at the European Commission, delivered some stinging news for Google - publicly siding with the record industry over the amount of money Youtube . com pays to artists and labels.
According to the particular FT
, Ansip estimated that YouTube now contributes around ?600m a year to songs rights-holders, despite its billion-plus monthly audience, while Spotify alone delivers ?1. 6bn.
"This is not only about rights owners and creators and their remuneration - this is also about the level playing field in between different service providers, " said Ansip.
"Platforms dependent on subscriptions are remunerating those authors; other support providers [are] not. How can they will compete? "
Right today, they're just words -- but they could demonstrate hugely significant in time: Ansip is the individual supervising the modern reconstruction of EU digital copyright laws and regulations.
Are big technology businesses about to get their wings clipped in Europe more than the so-called 'value gap'?
Is 'safe harbor' going to take a beating in Brussels?
Stay tuned.