YouTube is entering the battle for music streaming exclusives

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MBW alerted you on Friday that YouTube is investing tens of millions of dollars
in the new project designed in order to boost artists' careers.
We all speculated that the biggest route for such the venture would be a few kind of digital resource creation - especially because Apple Music has opened up its chequebook in recent months to fund blockbuster videos/productions for the likes associated with Drake, The 1975 plus Coldplay.
Now we've got the better idea exactly where Google's money is going.
Initially, YouTube is beginning small: making 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 have taken place with up-and-coming music talent in UNA and London - with videos of their live periods set to display on Youtube . com this week.
Another Foundry music session is due in New York later on this month with five artists including hip-hop act BJ The Chicago Kid and R&B act Gemaine.
But this is just the taster of YouTube's aspirations.
Apparently, the online huge has mapped out speaks with senior music company figures over the arriving weeks to discuss a 'deeper collaboration'.
What can that mean?
Come on. Wish sure you can hazard a guess.
Bloomberg suggests that, in these meetings, Youtube . com will 'outline ways to better promote artists and bring more exclusive movies to the service'.
In return for a commitment to YouTube's cause, say its sources, artists will certainly be offered benefits including the potential opportunity in order to front Web TV collection on the platform.
In addition, YouTube will probably make available its video creation and post-production resources (aka 'YouTube Spaces') for artists to shoot videos.
As we ruminated on Friday, this could result in YouTube opening up its Initial channels to music talent. Existing YouTube Original displays combine hi-spec, TV-style production 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, specifically?
If it's the main labels, then a brand new era of peace and harmony between two oft-warring factions might be upon us; YouTube making available its gigantic resources would leave some rocket fuel below the promotional firepower of the global record industry.
Yet YouTube's general music philosophy, as shown by its $8m BandPage buy earlier this year,
is likely to be a small more 'direct-to-fan' than that.
A more likely scenario: YouTube will target the particular managers of top performers, offering to pay everything they need to produce their own YouTube-exclusive movies - perhaps even their very own YouTube-exclusive shows - including a tasty marketing/promotion commitment.
That will kind of strategy might not only Internet Page help YouTube neuter the growing unique video threat from Apple Music, TIDAL, Spotify plus others, but may also turn out to be helpful ammunition amidst its current haggling with major music rights-holders.
YouTube is currently locked in negotiations with Universal Music Team over a new long-term certification deal after the prior one expired without renewal.

YT's ongoing deals with the other two major labels, Sony and Warner, are believed to run out in the coming months.
At the same time, the majors are tossing everything at challenging YouTube's safe harbor protections within the US and European countries - protections which basically mean the platform can't be held legally responsible for 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 asking the US Copyright Office to take apart safe harbor laws peddled by the Digital Centuries Copyright Act (DMCA) in the States.
You have to question 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 particular world's biggest streaming press platform.
YouTube, meanwhile, has other problems that just getting cozy with musicians ain't gonna solve.
On Friday, Andrus Ansip, VP for the Digital Solitary Market at the Western Commission, delivered some stinging news for Google : publicly siding with the particular record industry over the particular amount of money Youtube . com pays to artists plus labels.
According to the FT
, Ansip estimated that YouTube now contributes about ?600m a year 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 and their remuneration - this is also about a level playing field among different service providers, inch said Ansip.
"Platforms centered on subscriptions are remunerating those authors; other services providers [are] not. How can they will compete? "
Right right now, they're just words -- but they could prove hugely significant in time: Ansip is the individual managing the modern reconstruction associated with 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' about to take a beating within Brussels?
Stay tuned.