YouTube's upcoming subscription service is facing another setback as a prominent figure in the music industry, Irving Azoff, is pushing for higher royalty payments to his artists with legal action. In total, some 20,000 songs fall under the care of his royalty collection service, Global Music Rights (GMR) and its 46 songwriters – including a number of mainstream pop artists. According to the Wall Street Journal, lawyers representing GMR have contacted Google twice about the issue, but have yet to resolve the conflict.Without a favourable deal, Azoff and his lawyers want those tracks removed from YouTube. Here's where things get tricky: YouTube insists that rights holders find and identify the infringing songs themselves, making it close to impossible to enforce by anyone in the music industry. In comparison, SoundCloud's equally-frustrating copyright enforcement policy shifts the burden to users by letting an algorithm remove songs automatically. If independent record labels are to adopt the service, this feud raises concerns about how companies with shallower pockets could possibly fight to protect themselves from infringement as well.
The highly-visible dispute between the two heavyweights underscores key frustrations on all sides of digital music copyright disputes: rights holders need to be paid fairly, services need to be able to provide content, and users need access to libraries that aren't constantly having songs removed. If you've been following the ups and downs of services like SoundCloud, Spotify, and Pandora, you'll agree with us in thinking that both copyright reform and technological advancements are necessary now more than ever to protect the interests of all parties in the digital age.Ziad Ramley is on Twitter: @ZiadRamley
