YouTube Pulls All Professional Music Videos In The U.K.

[satsmo]

YouTube is to block thousands of music videos by the biggest names in rock and pop for British users after failing to reach agreement with the UK music licensing body.

Official videos from all major music publishers and independent labels, covering artists from Rihanna to U2 to The Killers, will become unobtainable in the next couple of days. YouTube said it was taking the unprecedented action after PRS for Music, the royalty collection body in the UK, demanded a "prohibitive" hike in licensing fees.

Patrick Walker, director of video partnerships for YouTube in Europe, said: "In the UK we've had a licence from the collecting society called PRS for Music to make music videos provided by our record label partners available to our users in the UK. 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."


Source: YouTube to block British music videos - Times Online (http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/technology/article5877051.ece)

[lfc4life]

i read this on bbc teletext last night! its a right shame :(

[mark015]

i am annoyed at this ..lol..will there be anyway that uk users can still access youtube music vids? a proxy maybe?.any info on this wud be good guys..

[Raven]

That's typical of this country though....money, money, money and take, take, take all the time. I'm not particularly bothered about youtube music videos being banned here but it's just so typical that the UK were asking alot more money and got shut down for it. Serves them right I say it'll teach them not to be greedy in future......not!