YouTube's Label Payment Rate

A report from Midia this week has shed some new light on YouTube's payment rate to labels, claiming that the streaming video platform increased payment to rights holders by only 15% last year, despite a 132% jump in streams. According to the numbers, this means that if YouTube paid rights holders per stream instead of ad rev, "this kind of increase in streams year-over-year could could have generated an additional $755 million from YouTube, more than doubling revenues to the U.S. record business." The report also showed that YouTube paid rights holders 55% of music video revenue in 2015, while Spotify (which has a much lower view count) paid 83%. Read more on the debate over YouTube's music industry pay rate here.