Maintaining access to water and other essential utility services remains as vital as ever to safeguard public health, as the pandemic continues.
But the vaccines are still in a race against time, with COVID-19 again resurging in many states. Will she see a piece of this YouTube action? If her lawyer has any sense, he or she will insist that Boyle receive a share of YouTube revenue going forward.This blog is co-authored by Larry Levine (NRDC) and Olivia Wein (National Consumer Law Center).įor many of us, the accelerating rollout of COVID-19 vaccines provides hope for a light at the end of the tunnel. As a result, Warner’s pulled its videos, and all official music videos on YouTube are blocked in Germany and the United Kingdom.Īssuming Boyle continues her run without succumbing to a fan backlash, she’ll win the Britain’s Got Talent competition’s $200K first prize and a possible a recording contract with Cowell. But despite breakaway successes like Lavigne’s and Boyle’s, some licensing deals between music copyright holders and Google have broken down over revenue-sharing disagreements - an indication that the labels see YouTube as an important source of revenue.
If YouTube’s audio fingerprinting technology works as advertised, Cowell and company should be paid when people watch the user-uploaded videos, in addition to the official version.Īvril’s manager suggested last summer that she would earn $2 million from her YouTube video views, as part of the labels’ revenue-sharing program (which almost certainly offers more favorable terms than those offered by the standard YouTube Partners program).
Update, 5:55pm EST, 4/21: A Fremantle spokesman said via e-mail, "No comment is our official position." 4/23: Waiting to hear back from ITV, which apparently could not come to an agreement with YouTube over how to share ad revenue.īoyle’s rendition of "I Dreamed a Dream" from Les Misérables currently has 70 million views on YouTube’s first search-result page alone, and multiple estimates have pegged the total number of views at around 100 million and still climbing steeply over the weekend.
Update, 6:58pm EST: Hours later, a Google spokeswoman responded to our e-mail and phone queries with some surprising news: "That video is not being monetized." We’ve contacted Sony (Simon Cowell’s label) and FremantleMedia (the show’s producer, owned by RTL Group not Sony as appeared in this update earlier) and now ITV to try to determine why the $500,000 or more Boyle’s video should have generated so far is apparently being left on the table - despite the fact that both companies are confirmed revenue-sharing partners of YouTube. Susan Boyle’s Britain’s Got Talent video is on track to become the most popular video in the history of YouTube, amassing nearly 100 million views in its first nine days and earning the producers of the program a serendipitous, potential windfall that should already be in the millions.