YouTube’s Support for Musicians Comes With a Catch

Lucas Shaw, reporting for Bloomberg:

In recent months, YouTube has given a handful of musicians a couple hundred thousand dollars to produce videos and promoted their work on billboards, part of a larger campaign to improve the site’s relationship with the music industry.

Yet such support comes with a catch, with some musicians required to promise the won’t say negative things about YouTube, said the people, who asked not to be identified discussing private business transactions. Non-disparagement agreements are common in business, but YouTube’s biggest direct competitors in music don’t require them, the people said.

YouTube’s non-disparagement agreements go beyond a requirement not to criticize the video site, one of the people said, without going into detail. YouTube requires many partners to agree to such conditions, including creators who make original series for its paid service, the person said.

These agreements are common in business-to-business deals, but when dealing with artists they seem one-sided. This makes YouTube seem like they lack confidence in their own service. If criticism from musicians is apt, it’s wrong to suppress it. And if it’s not apt, why worry about it?

★ Wednesday, 24 January 2018