1,815
edits
Changes
In the past, emerging artists would "cover" popular songs on YouTube for advertising and audience building purposes. These emerging artists would generally be very straightforward about providing the name of the covered song and the artist who made the song famous. The copyright holder of the song has three options, do nothing, monetize the video and collect advertising royalties, or take down the video. Traditionally, the emerging artist would license downloads through iTunes and would not monetize their videos.
In addition to COVID 19, the industry took a double hit as music download platforms switched to a streaming subscription model. CD-Baby no longer makes CDs, nor offers downloads, iTunes download links are redirected to Apple Music streaming page and Google Play is slated to be shut down, music.youtube will stream audio. With the download income drying up and the artists adding pay links and subscriptions, this appears to change the advertising only relationship between the artist and the video performance.
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