YouTube could lose about 20,000 songs, including Pharrell’s Happy
There’s a fight brewing between YouTube and a group representing 46 artists and songwriters, including Pharrell Williams, John Lennon and even Ira Gershwin, which could result in all their songs being removed from the online streaming site. Let’s put it this way: Pharrell is not Happy…
Global Music Rights (GMR) is the company behind the dispute. It was established last year by Irving Azoff – who has managed Christina Aguilera, the Eagles and Steely Dan – to help artists get the licensing money they deserve.
This week it emerged that the company’s lawyers have sent letters to YouTube, demanding that it pulls 20,000 songs off its site, because it doesn’t have a licence to play them.
Google, YouTube’s parent company, countered that it did have the right licences, which it negotiated for its subscription service, YouTube Music Key, launched last week.
But the Wall Street Journal reported that the lawyer, Howard King, had written that each broadcast of one of its songs constitutes “a willful copyright infringement”.