Global Music Rights Faces Off With YouTube - Threatens $1 Billion Lawsuit

Through a new outfit called Global Music Rights, music industry heavyweight Irving Azoff manages the performance rights of some 20,000 songs including works composed by The Eagles, Pharrell Williams, John Lennon and others. Many of the songs were previously handled by ASCAP and BMI, which thanks to consent decrees with the Justice Department, were subject to blanket licenses anytime a digital outlet like YouTube requested one. Not anymore.

Azoff has informed YouTube that it lacks performance rights for these 20,000 songs — including ones by Smokey Robinson, Chris Cornell, and George and Ira Gershwin. Since November, when YouTube announced the coming launch of a subscription service to compete with Spotify and Pandora, Azoff has kept up the pressure to license, but Google isn't backing down.

According to Kramer's letter, GMR must not only submit a statement under penalty of perjury that it is authorized to act on behalf of the owner, and not only identify the works at issue, but also identify URLs where infringing material resides. That would mean sending lots of takedown notices over some 20,000 songs being used in probably hundreds of thousands of videos.

We struggle with the same thing. One site copies our forums and Google ignores us. We hope they continue to ignore it get what they deserve in court.

More on this story at The HollyWood Reporter.