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Don’t be evil? Google’s plans for a new YouTube music service

June 25, 2014 — by

There’s been quite a buzz within the music industry recently about Google’s latest move to bring a new music streaming service to YouTube. Having signed major labels (apparently representing 95% of the recorded music industry) up to the service it is how indie artists will be treated that has the internet flustered. Using the Blurrt system to collect tweets around YouTube and Indie, you can see a high volume of tweets on the subject in the last week.


Youtube indie block volume
Whilst the service has yet to be released, artists and fans have already begun debating the effect of the planned venture, with recently leaked screenshots of the indie contract adding fuel to the fire. The main talking points and confusion seem to centre around labels having to make their entire catalogue available through the service if signed up to it, any agreement in royalty changes with major labels will automatically affect indie artists whether they agree to said changes or not, and blocking music content from users not signed up to the service.

Looking to Twitter it is clear that a lot of people are interested in the topic, however most tweets appear to just be referencing the story as opposed to giving any clear insight on their own thoughts and feelings.

Looking at the Blurrt stats seem to corroborate this as you can see the sentiment slightly favours negative opinion but for the most part shows neutral, from Twitter users just referencing the story.


Youtube indie block stats

How this develops will be interesting to follow, if Google follow through could we see replacement websites fill up the space, or a mass convert over to Vimeo and Dailymotion. Some people already seem to be planning for the future space.


Whatever comes of it, it’s clearly not the big break independent musicians have been waiting for.