Posted on Tuesday 26 May 2009
The Performing Rights Society (PRS) collects royalties for music artists, and it generally does a good job. Except when it pushed YouTube to the limit a couple of months ago and got music videos booted off the online video site. But things now look set to change for the better, and about time too.
Stuck In The Past
The music industry has not shown its best side in trying to evolve to include new digital forms of media. Instead of encouraging the fledging businesses, it has chosen to stamp on them. Its reward for such a heavy-handed and short-term approach? Piracy increasing in popularity year-on-year.
What’s truly bizarre is that it never seems to learn from its mistakes. After stifling rather than using Napster and those early file-sharing services, the music industry is now continuing to make the same basic errors. And this is even extending to the world of music videos.



To hear that YouTube is the most popular, most visited, and most content-filled online video site on the Web is hardly surprising. However, to hear that 20 hours of video is uploaded to the Google-owned site every minute is surprising. And to hear YouTube still wants more is nothing less than a shock.


