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 millions of dollars
in a new project designed to boost artists' careers.
All of us speculated that the biggest route for such a venture would be some 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 of Drake, The 1975 and Coldplay.
Now we have a better idea exactly exactly where Google's money is going.
Initially, YouTube is starting small: making a play to create exclusive video from emerging artists via an existing training initiative called Foundry.
According to Bloomberg
, recent Foundry workshops have got taken place with most up-to-date music talent in UNA and London - with videos of their 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 take action BJ The Chicago Child and R&B act Gemaine.
But this is just a taster of YouTube's goal.
Apparently, the online giant has mapped out talks with senior music company figures over the coming weeks to discuss the 'deeper collaboration'.
What could that mean?
Come on. We're sure you can risk a guess.
Bloomberg suggests that, in these meetings, YouTube will 'outline ways to better promote artists and bring more exclusive videos to the service'.
In return for a dedication 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.
Within addition, YouTube will likely offer its video creation and post-production resources (aka 'YouTube Spaces') for artists to shoot videos.
As we ruminated on Fri, this could result in YouTube opening up its Original channels to music skill. Existing YouTube Original shows combine hi-spec, TV-style production values with popular 'amateur' broadcasting personalities such asPewDiePie and Lilly Singh.
Getty Images/Christopher Polk


The large question now: which type of senior music biz figures is YouTube focusing on for these meetings, specifically?
If it's the major labels, then a new era of peace and harmony between two oft-warring factions may be upon us; YouTube making available the gigantic resources would leave some rocket fuel under the promotional firepower associated with the global record business.
Yet YouTube's general music philosophy, as shown simply by its $8m BandPage acquisition earlier this year,
is likely to be a small more 'direct-to-fan' than that.
A more likely scenario: YouTube will target the managers of top artists, offering to pay almost everything they need to create their own YouTube-exclusive video clips - perhaps even their own YouTube-exclusive shows - complete with a tasty marketing/promotion commitment.
That kind of strategy would not only help Youtube . com neuter the growing special video threat from Apple Music, TIDAL, Spotify plus others, but could also turn out to be helpful ammunition amidst its current haggling with major music rights-holders.
YouTube will be currently locked in discussions with Universal Music Group over the new long-term certification deal after the earlier one expired without restoration.

YT's ongoing deals along with the other two main labels, Sony and Warner, are believed to expire within the coming months.
In the mean time, the majors are tossing everything at challenging YouTube's safe harbor protections in 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.
At the end of last month, a string associated with top music managers additional their signatures to a petition asking the US Copyright Office to dismantle safe harbor laws peddled by the Digital Centuries Copyright Act (DMCA) in the States.
You have to wonder if certain artist managers could be swayed to side with YouTube in case their artists were given paid-for music videos plus special treatment on the world's biggest bokep perawan Streaming press platform.
YouTube, meanwhile, provides other problems that simply getting cozy with performers ain't gonna solve.
Upon Friday, Andrus Ansip, VP for the Digital Single Market at the Western european Commission, delivered some painful news for Google -- publicly siding with the particular 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 per 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 plus their remuneration - it is also about a level playing field among different service providers, inch said Ansip.
"Platforms centered on subscriptions are remunerating those authors; other service providers [are] not. How can they will compete? "
Right right now, 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.