Surprisingly, YouTube is only now getting its foot in the door with the music streaming game. Their grand entrance, according to this article at Salon, involves terms with which a large number of independent artists disagree—Radiohead, Vampire Weekend, and Animal Collective, just to name a few. YouTube is planning to block these artists from streaming.
Ultimately this tactic to get independent labels to agree to YouTube’s terms, hurts artists — much the same way that Amazon’s price war with Hachette hurts authors. The Financial Times singles out Adele, The xx and The Arctic Monkeys, but the list of artists is far longer, and some of the bands are far less well known. These bands will be hit in an era where some like David Byrne, fear that independent music is unsustainable.
