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MMF’s members have been approached in the last week by their artists’ labels to sign a letter to the European Commission calling on them to close the ‘value gap’ between services like YouTube and rights holders.

We support this position alongside that of the International Artists Organisation whose recent letter reinforces that that principles of transparency and duty of care are relevant across the whole value chain and must ensure fair value is returned to artists.

The Value Gap concerns the zero or extremely small payments for the exploitation of copyrighted works when platforms use ‘safe harbour’ exceptions to copyright law in all or part of their service offer.

We believe strongly that whilst we want a better deal from YouTube, we also want a transparent and fair deal from rights holders with their YouTube income. These two issues come hand in hand and are not to be divorced. We hope the Commission will consider this as a whole in their proposals for a digital single market.