From Iceland — YouTube Refuses To Pay Icelandic Musicians

YouTube Refuses To Pay Icelandic Musicians

Published January 13, 2012

Video hosting site YouTube has denied a request from The Icelandic Society of Authors and Composers (FTT) to receive royalties for Icelandic material broadcast on the site.
YouTube has for a long time gone beyond being a place for people to post video journals of their daily lives and game walkthroughs. Today, the site also pays a portion of ad revenues to professional musicians whose work is hosted on YouTube.
FTT recently made a request to YouTube to receive revenue for Icelandic material hosted on the site, like many similar organisations do around the world. However, YouTube has turned them down, RÚV reports.
Jakob Frímann Magnússon, the director of FTT, told Fréttablaðið that he believes Icelanders probably have a record for YouTube use, as they do for Facebook, but believes that YouTube considers the Icelandic userbase not large enough to be worth considering.
Repeated requests can be made to YouTube for revenue. Whether and when YouTube will ever accept FTT’s request remains to be seen.

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