Much like his musical peers Taylor Swift and Jason Aldean, who made statements when pulling their music off Spotify, Garth Brooks is speaking out on protecting his music. But it’s not the streaming service that’s in his line of fire. It’s YouTube.
The ‘Tacoma’ singer tells Access Hollywood that he has spent much time trying to get his material pulled from YouTube — he even sat down with the company — but has seen no success in the matter. And Brooks doesn’t mince words when sharing his opinion, either.
“I’m telling you, the devil — nice people, but YouTube, oh my gosh,” he says. “They claim they pay people. They’re not paying anything either, and people are getting millions and millions and millions and millions of views, and they don’t get squat. Trust me.
“I had a sweet meeting with them. They were all fired up,” Brooks adds. “And I said, ‘I just got the first question: How do you get out?’ Silence. You don’t.”
That’s why, Brooks says, he’s in favor of Swift and others who have made bold and proactive moves in removing their music from streaming services.
“Songwriters are hurting, and so I applaud Miss Taylor,” he says. “I applaud everybody for standing up for the songwriters.”
The superstar is hoping for a revolution of sorts among songwriters, producers and artists, but he admits it will require some giants in the industry to follow suit.
“I think a lot of people are going to start following,” says Brooks. “When music starts standing up for itself, it’s going to get a lot better … Don’t forget who’s creating the music and who should be doing this stuff.”
In a thought-out move, Brooks made his new album, ‘Man Against Machine,’ available digitally only via his newly launched GhostTunes platform. He hopes that statements like this will continue to propel the music sharing model back in favor of those creating the songs.
“It’s totally backward right now,” Brooks says. “If the artists will just keep hammering away, unify, stick together, then music will become the king again, which is what it should be. Music should always be first.”
So far, YouTube has not responded to Brooks’ claims.
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