That sucks.
Here's The Guardian's report:
Quote:
YouTube in the UK is to be stripped of its most popular music videos after the site failed to agree a new licencing deal with the Performing Rights Society for Music, the trade body that collects music royalties.
YouTube said today that after the expiry of its former deal, PRS had proposed new payment terms that would be financially prohibitive for the site and would require YouTube to pay out more than it makes from the ads next each video.
It also said that PRS would not agree to identify which artists and songs are covered by which licence, something essential for YouTube's content ID system to identify and reimburse rights holders for each song that is viewed.
"We value the creativity of musicians and song writers and have worked hard with rights-holders to generate significant online revenue for them and to respect copyright," said Google in a statement.
"But PRS is now asking us to pay many, many times more for our license than before. The costs are simply prohibitive for us - under PRS's proposed terms we would lose significant amounts of money with every playback."
Google said it is still negotiating with PRS but in the meantime, premium videos from artists on EMI, Universal, Warner and Sony and some indie labels have started to disappear for UK viewers and will
be systematically removed over the next few days.
PRS said in a statement that it is "outraged on behalf of consumers and songwriters that Google has chosen to close down access to music videos on YouTube in the UK".
Contradicting Google's statement, PRS insists that Google has made this move because it wants to reduce the amount it pays in royalties, despite an increase in viewer numbers.
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