Peter Mensch — co-manager of L.A.-born Metallica — doesn’t worship money, but he knows where his band is losing it: YouTube.com.

Metallica in 2008. Photo via Wikimedia Commons
Metallica in 2008. Photo via Wikimedia Commons
“YouTube, they’re the devil,” he told a BBC radio documentary on the music business. “We don’t get paid at all.”

As blabbermouth.net reported, “Despite the fact that YouTube has an estimated 900 million users, it generates roughly $680 million a year for the music industry, according to Andrus Ansip, Vice President for the Digital Single Market on the EU Commission. This is significantly less than the $1.8 billion Spotify contributes a year from about 30 million paying subscribers.

“If someone doesn’t do something about YouTube, we’re screwed,” Mensch said. “It’s over. Someone turn off the lights.”

For his part, YouTube CEO Robert Kynci blamed certain record labels.

“The artists who are signed up directly with YouTube are seeing great returns,” he said. “Not everybody — but if you’re generating a lot of viewership, you’re making a lot of money. There are middle-men — whether it’s collection societies, publishers or labels — and what they do is they give advances and they want those recouped. So it’s really hard when there’s no transparency for the artist.

“The people who don’t have visibility are generally the ones who tend to be less happy. If you don’t have full visibility, you’re somehow more susceptible to negative thinking.”

Meanwhile, Metallica invests in other social media:

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