(CelebrityAccess) — YouTube is reportedly poised to pull Danish music from its platform if a new agreement with Danish collection society KODA is not reached by Saturday night.
The last agreement between Google and Koda expired in April, but was extended temporarily as negotiations with Polaris, a coalition of Nordic collection societies was underway. The negotiations with Polaris would cover music from multiple states in the Nordic region, including Norway, Finland, and Denmark.
According to Dan Chalmers, director of YouTube Music in Europe, KODA is demanding more money than Google pays to other collection societies.
“Koda asks for significantly more than what we pay our other partners around the world, and we believe this is not fair to our other partners and content creators,” Chalmers said in an interview on Danish radio.
“Without a license, we are not able to make the content available in Denmark,” Chalmers added, highlighting the Saturday night deadline.
According to KODA, Google, as a condition of a temporary extension, demanded that the money that composers and songwriters receive for YouTube’s use of music be reduced by almost 70 percent, despite sharp increases in usage on the video platform.
“Google has always had an ‘our way or the highway’ strategy, but even for Google, this is a low point. Of course, Google is well aware that they can create enormous frustration both with our members by denying them access to YouTube, and with the many Danes who use YouTube daily. YouTube hopes to be able to push through an agreement in that way, where they alone dictate all terms of the agreement,” Koda’s media director, Kaare Struve said in a statement.
