Dutch Buma/Stemra losing the pedals, wants to charge music blogs ridiculous sums for embedding videos

The Dutch collecting society for composers and music publishers Buma/Stemra has lost it completely so it seems. They plan to charge Dutch bloggers and website owners ridiculously high sums for using embedded YouTube music videos. That's right, apparently someone at the organisation dug up an 'old' idea from 2008 to start charging bloggers for every embedded video they have on their site. And this starting from 2010. The prices (ex VAT) for embedding videos are shocking:

• 6 embedded files € 130 / year
  
• 12 embedded files € 260 / year
  
• 30 embedded files € 650 / year
  
• 31 and more embedded files € 650 x (number blocks of 30 files) / year

Length or total views have no single impact on the prices. Speaking about lazy bookkeeping, this is a master example. If Side-Line would have a Dutch owner, this would mean a yearly staggering cost of no less than € 65.000 (ex VAT) per year, that's right, sixty five thousand Euro because the site has over 3000 embedded music videos in news articles. It speaks for itself that if Side-Line would be asked to pay this, that all video material would be deleted on the spot. There is no way that Side-Line would even consider to pay a single euro for this kind of free promotion. Plans for doing this on a larger European scale do exists and it is believed that this is just a test case to see how the organisations can recoup some of the money they have lost due to the lower CD (media) sales in general.

Get your Industrial Music CDs at the following eBay sites:
	eBay USA	eBay België/Belgique
	eBay UK	eBay France
	eBay DE	eBay Nederland

Major labels so far have refused to give any comment on the matter and when being asked by Side-Line to give a reaction various labels said that it was way too 'touchy' to answer in order to keep the relations with Buma/Stemra intact. But it's rather clear that none of the labels we contacted agree with this kind of policy which in the end will mean the end of any serious music (blogging) website using embedded videos.


After the not so clever decision of certain major labels in the USA to hunt for money for the 30 sec clips on iTunes and related websites, this is yet another desperate move from that part of the music business which seems to be completely internet unwhise and which creates a very negative image for the whole of the music business. So, conclusion: instead of helping the rightholders, they are actually turning the whole blogging music community from Holland against them. Quite a nice result.

Post your comments, they'll be gathered and sent to Buma/Stemra to show what YOU think of this.