Nikki Sixx Wants YouTube To Work Harder To Protect Artists

Nikki Sixx has a very simple message for streaming-video giant YouTube: "Don't be evil", and "Do the right thing".

The Mötley Crüe co-founder echoed the legendary one-time motto of Google — which owns YouTube — as well as its present slogan in a long and heartfelt message simply titled 'DON'T BE EVIL, YOUTUBE', posted on the Facebook page of his band Sixx:A.M. on Monday (AEST).

As Forbes notes, in the missive, Sixx and bandmates James Michael and DJ Ashba implore YouTube to work harder to protect the rights of artists whose work frequently appears on the platform without proper payment, clearance or copyright, noting their own positions of privilege as successful musicians — and wanting to use that advantage for the benefit of smaller acts, in keeping with their history of artist advocacy.

"We recently completed our fourth album called Prayers For The Damned, in our singer/producer James Michael's recording studio," the band began. "We are a lucky band, grateful to have all had success prior to the creation of Sixx:A.M.

"Nikki came from Mötley Crüe, DJ played guitar in Guns N' Roses for the past six years and James has had a successful career as a writer and producer. Releasing an album and being part of a tour going on sale allows us to use the promoters' marketing money to create a larger platform to get our message out, and having a record company that generates publicity gives us an opportunity to speak up about issues we think are important — specifically the crisis with the music business and YouTube."

The band go on to recall the occasion on which they backed Taylor Swift "when she spoke up about the absence of royalty payments to artists by Apple Music", as well as explaining that the band has "long been an advocate for new artists", as evidenced by Sixx's predilection for featuring emerging acts on his radio show, before taking aim at Google (and its founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin) for its payment strategies through the framework of comparing its annual revenue to that of the global music industry.

"We chose today to speak up about how YouTube unfairly pays artists and labels an estimated 1/6 of what its competitors, Spotify and Apple pay and why this must be addressed, along with a revision of the antiquated Safe Harbor provision of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA)," the band wrote.

"YouTube’s parent corporation, Google, has the second highest market capitalization in the world and its two founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin are worth a combined $75 billion, and total 2015 revenue of Google was $75 billion. The total annual revenue of the global music business, in comparison, is less than $15 billion. We have deep respect for Google’s spirit of innovation and YouTube’s contribution to the field of technology and entertainment, in fact the data we are citing comes from Google itself, but the facts don’t lie: Our large community of hardworking artists is being exploited to make a very small percentage of people extremely rich.

"This is an important issue to us. We are the lucky ones, like so many veteran artists, who came up in an era where there was much more income from record sales. Today, streaming is a fraction of income from that time. This is not about us. We are speaking up for the current and future generation of musicians who must be compensated fairly for their hard work.

"We would not have had Prince, Blondie, Bruce Springsteen, Ice Cube, Taylor Swift, or many other artists without a system to support and nurture them."

Ultimately, the band plead with Google to "Do The Right Thing", telling the organisation to live up to its corporate motto and "invest in the future of music".

However, as The Guardian reports, a spokesman for Google maintains the online behemoth is doing just that (while insinuating that it's actually cheap-ass music fans who are really the problem).

"Google has paid out billions to the music industry, and we’re engaged in productive conversations with the labels and publishers around increasing transparency on payouts," the spokesman told The Guardian. "We believe that by providing artists and songwriters greater visibility around revenue earned on YouTube, we can solve many of these issues.

"We’re also working hard to bring more revenue to the music industry through our subscription service, as well as continuing to grow our ad supported business, which allows artists and labels to monetize the 80% music listeners who historically have never paid for music."

Despite Google's argument, Sixx and his bandmates are adamant that YouTube and Google simply have to do better.

"YouTube have said, 'Here’s our solution: we will ask artists to agree to our licensing terms, and in exchange for that we will pay you,'" Michael told The Guardian. "But what they’re offering to pay is such a small fraction of what their competitors are paying.

"The technology does already exist to do a much more accurate job of protecting artists against unlicensed use of their music. The problem is that the only way they will engage that technology to protect you is if you agree to their terms. And those terms are just not adequate."

Read Sixx:A.M.'s full post to YouTube below.

Prayers For The Damned is out on Friday 29 April on Eleven Seven Music.