Youtube, the world’s most popular video-sharing website, announced it will block UK users from watching music videos starting from Monday as talks between Britain’s music industry collapsed, according to AP report.
Google Inc., owner of the popular site, said the decision will result to “significant disappointment” as British Netizens will no longer access music videos starting Monday night.
Meanwhile, the Internet giant defended this new policy saying that PRS for Music, which represents music labels and collects royalties, is demanding higher percentage for every time users will watch a music video from Youtube.
In a statement, Google said that its previous license with PRS for Music has already expired and renewing the contract was not executed since both parties failed to come up with the most beneficial agreement.
“We will block all the music videos of record labels”, Google added.
When asked for comments, officials of PRS for Music expressed their disappointment over Google. The group said that despite the increase of Youtube viewers for the past couple of years, the latter still insists it will pay significantly less compared to the last agreement.
Because of the popularity of the Internet medium, record labels have started using websites to distribute music. And since the music industry have been suffering from declining CD sales for the past couple of years, Youtube has been the most sought-after site for record producers since they can easily reach web-centric consumers.
Despite that agreement between Youtube and PRS for Music has collapsed, the two sides expressed their desire to resolve the issue immediately.
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That is a shame for both companies.