YouTube Wins German Appeal Over Artists' Fees

A German court has handed Google another legal victory over German performing rights organisation Gema, which had sought to make the company's video-sharing service YouTube pay each time users watch music videos by artists it represents.

YouTube has introduced schemes that allow artists to earn money from advertising sold alongside their videos but many in the music business argue this does not go far enough.

However, the regional court in Munich on Thursday rejected Gema's demand that YouTube pay 0.375 euro cents ($0.004) per view of certain videos, confirming the ruling of a lower court last year.

Google, now part of holding company Alphabet Inc, bought YouTube in 2006 and has faced multiple lawsuits from artists and music labels who say it makes money at their expense, even as it has emerged as one of the most popular for fans to discover new music by their favourite artists.

Gema said it intends to appeal the ruling at the federal court.

Google earlier this week launched its new Donation card for YouTube video creators. The cards will help viewers directly donate money to non-profit organisations from YouTube itself.

The search giant added that it recently rolled out donation cards to US YouTube video creators. All creators have to do is to add a donation card and pick a non-profit organisation while uploading a video. Creators can choose over 1.8 million IRS-validated 501(c)3 public non-profit organisation, Google said in a post on the YouTube Creators blog post.

Google says that the non-profit organisation will receive 100 percent of the money donated via this method. The search giant also plans to make the new Donation card available to Youtube video creators outside the US region in future.

Written with inputs from Reuters