The Black Keys’ Patrick Carney Blasts YouTube’s Payouts: ‘A Song Should Cost as Much as an Avocado’

After Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails and Nikki Sixx’ new band Sixx:AM publicly slammed YouTube earlier this week, the Black Keys‘ Patrick Carney is jumping on the dog pile to trash the streaming service over its artist royalty payouts. 

YouTube Responds to Latest Criticisms From Trent Reznor, Sixx:AM

In a series of tweets Thursday (June 16), Carney said that artists aren’t getting paid the money their due on YouTube due to unauthorized videos. He also said any artist who is invested in a streaming service but doesn’t speak out for fair pay is a sell out. 

Give me five minutes on @youtube and I probably can find 250 songs that are available which the artist isn’t getting paid for. At least.

— Patrick Carney (@patrickcarney) June 16, 2016

A sell out in my book in 2016 is anyone that takes a share in a streaming company who also is an artist and doesn’t advocate for fair pay.

— Patrick Carney (@patrickcarney) June 16, 2016

A song should cost as much as an avocado. They should be traded similarly at least until people discover a similarly thick and savory fruit

— Patrick Carney (@patrickcarney) June 16, 2016

On Wednesday, YouTube responded to criticisms, specifically from Reznor, who claimed YouTube is “built on the backs of free, stolen content.”

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In a statement to Billboard, YouTube said, “The overwhelming majority of labels and publishers have licensing agreements in place with YouTube to leave fan videos up on the platform and earn revenue from them. Today the revenue from fan uploaded content accounts for roughly 50 percent of the music industry’s YouTube revenue. Any assertion that this content is largely unlicensed is false. To date, we have paid out over $3 billion to the music industry — and that number is growing year on year.”