Streaming music has been under heavy fire as of late. The heaviest of which came from Taylor Swift, 2014’s best-selling artist, who made headlines when she penned a Wall Street Journal piece in July detailing her hopes for the future of the music industry and just a few months later, her label, Big Machine, removed all her music from Spotify. This week, YouTube, which just launched its own on-demand music streaming service called Music Key, saw another high-profile music industry player, manager Irving Azoff, take shots at the company’s service.
According to Azoff, who in 2012 was named the Most Powerful Person in the Music Industry by Billboard, YouTube doesn’t have the proper rights to play over 20,000 songs created by artists whose publishing is managed by his company Global Music Rights, artists like Pharrell Williams, John Lennon, Bruno Mars, and the Eagles.
