MIDEM 2008: YouTube ask 'who should we make the cheque out to?'

In the MidemNet warm-ups for Midem proper, one of YouTube's founders Chad Hurley has been talking about the frustrations of trying to be legitimate worldwide. One of the problems is the patchwork licensing covering each country - he had a cautious welcome for recent EU plans to try and create a single licensing regime from the Baltic nations west - but a more interesting problem is caused by - yes - the big music companies:

. "Beyond streamlining the process, what we really need is the data, is to understand what they need to be paid, because (collectors) are not telling us," he told the crowd. "With the labels, they've invested in the infrastructure to automate that process. To do to a deal and not to understand what or who to pay? I think we need a solution there to really be able to make these deals move forward, because we want to do deals."

Now, we're not conspiracy minded here, but if we were... we'd be wondering if the reluctance to share that data might be for fear that future licensing deals between creators and YouTube could then proceed without the need for a label to perform any middlemen functions.

[Part of MIDEM 2008]