{"id":279439,"date":"2025-10-05T12:01:16","date_gmt":"2025-10-05T12:01:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/279439\/"},"modified":"2025-10-05T12:01:16","modified_gmt":"2025-10-05T12:01:16","slug":"irving-azoff-slams-youtube-as-a-bully-says-its-only-gotten-worse-for-artists","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/279439\/","title":{"rendered":"Irving Azoff Slams YouTube as a ‘Bully,’ Says It\u2019s ‘Only Gotten Worse’ for Artists"},"content":{"rendered":"

Irving Azoff, legendary music mogul as well as the chairman and CEO of The Azoff Company, bashed YouTube in a keynote session on Tuesday at TheWrap\u2019s TheGrill 2025<\/a> conference, where the industry icon called the Google-owned company a \u201cbully\u201d and doubled down on his previous assessment that they\u2019re not paying artists \u201ctheir fair share.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m fiercely protective of artists rights, and YouTube is by far the worst offender,\u201d Azoff told moderator and TheWrap founder and editor in chief Sharon Waxman on Tuesday morning at the DGA Theater in Los Angeles. \u201cI\u2019m really not fond when companies take advantage of creators. But YouTube has, in my opinion, invented new words for the way to bully people.\u201d<\/p>\n

Azoff\u2019s frustrations with the company come down to how YouTube treats musical artists. Specifically, the executive accused the company of underpaying artists compared to its closest competitors and of threatening to remove artist channels when it receives pushback during negotiations. <\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Irving\t\t\t\t\t<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you get down to the end on a negotiation with them, they call your artists, they call the record company, they go take your music down,\u201d Azoff said. \u201cObviously, their market power is unchecked at this point.\u201d <\/p>\n

Azoff\u2019s comments come amid rising scrutiny over the power that YouTube\u2019s parent, Google, wields, including the U.S. Justice Department extracting a court decision for the search giant to end certain exclusive deals and to share its search data with third parties (the DoJ had sought to break up the company). Azoff noted it\u2019s not just music and pointed to YouTube\u2019s carriage dispute with NBCUniversal as another example of the company throwing its weight around.<\/p>\n

This isn\u2019t the first time Azoff has criticized YouTube. It isn\u2019t even the first time the executive has done so at TheWrap\u2019s annual Grill event. Nine years ago, Azoff appeared onstage and called YouTube \u201cevil.\u201d \u201cWe\u2019re at a time, especially in music, when there\u2019s such a lack of respect for intellectual property, and they\u2019re the worst offender of it,\u201d Azoff said at the time.<\/p>\n

\u201cWell, things never changed,\u201d he said on Tuesday after watching himself speak, adding later that YouTube \u201cinvents new ways to bully people.\u201d <\/p>\n

As an example, Azoff said that YouTube\u2019s rates on songs were 20% \u201cof what their top competitor pays,\u201d declining to elaborate on who that competitor is (moderator Sharon Waxman noted the two other major players were Spotify and Apple Music).<\/p>\n

YouTube did not immediately respond to a request for comment for this story.<\/p>\n

But Azoff\u2019s complaints go beyond the music industry. Without naming names, Azoff also pointed to several in the television industry \u2014 including a late night host \u2014 who are frustrated with YouTube for not paying artists fairly and for contributing to declining linear TV ratings.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s incredible that YouTube doesn\u2019t pay their fair share, so therefore the parent company is losing money on your show,\u201d Azoff said, specifically referring to the economics of late night. \u201cIf they paid their fair share, the economics on these shows would look really different.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"SharonSharon Waxman, Founder & Editor-in-Chief, TheWrap and Irving Azoff, Chairman & CEO, The Azoff Company speak onstage during Spotlight Conversation: Irving Azoff Unplugged Panel at TheGrill 2025 at The Directors Guild of America (DGA) on September 30, 2025, Los Angeles, Calif (Photo by Randy Shropshire for TheWrap)<\/p>\n

Azoff pointed to the massive viewership that late night shows from hosts like Stephen Colbert, Jon Stewart and Jimmy Fallon get on YouTube. As TheWrap has previously covered<\/a>, the ad revenue made from when shows post clips or entire episodes on YouTube are peanuts compared to the advertising dollars made from cable and broadcast. So while a series like \u201cThe Tonight Show\u201d may have tens of millions of YouTube followers and its videos have high view counts, the amount of money it\u2019s making is significantly less than if its total viewership was on traditional television.<\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\"niall-horan-snoop-dogg-reba-mcentire-michael-buble\"\t\t\t\t\t<\/a><\/p>\n

YouTube and the music industry<\/p>\n

Azoff, who kicked off TheGrill with the first panel, noted that in 2024, YouTube alone made $50 billion in revenue. The estimated revenue for their nearest competitor during that same time period was $10 billion. Yet during that time in question, Azoff said that competitor paid its music creators five times as much as YouTube paid theirs.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s likely that Azoff is referring to the numbers Alphabet reported during its third quarter earnings for 2024. Though Alphabet typically doesn\u2019t break out YouTube subscription revenue in its earnings, during that earning call, the company reported that YouTube\u2019s total ad revenue, including subscriptions, surpassed $50 billion over the past four quarters for the first time. Though Alphabet typically doesn\u2019t report the subscription revenue from YouTube TV, YouTube Premium, YouTube Music Premium or NFL Sunday Ticket, that $50 billion figure does include those subscription-based services. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe continue to have significant growth in our subscription products, driven primarily by YouTube TV and YouTube Music Premium, as well as Google One, primarily due to increases in the number of paid subscribers,\u201d Anat Ashkenazi, Alphabet and Google senior vice president and chief financial officer, said on the call. <\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Fox\t\t\t\t\t<\/a><\/p>\n

Azoff\u2019s claim is a splashy one. But the more you poke into it, the more difficult it becomes to validate, largely because of how these companies report their finances and creator payouts.<\/p>\n

What makes YouTube\u2019s $50 billion figure difficult to compare to similar companies is that it doesn\u2019t just reflect the revenue YouTube made from music. It represents the company\u2019s other subscriptions, videos from media companies and the billions of creator-made videos that power the company. <\/p>\n

But for the sake of argument, let\u2019s take YouTube\u2019s $50 billion in revenue figure at face value. Throughout 2024, total revenue at Spotify \u2014 one of the company\u2019s top rivals \u2014 totaled \u20ac15.7 billion, or about $18.4 billion. [Note: Because Apple does not break out the revenue for Apple Music, it won\u2019t be included in this article.] In 2024, Spotify also reported that it paid $10 billion<\/a> to the music industry.<\/p>\n

When you try to figure out how much YouTube has paid to music creators, you quickly run into another headache. During the company\u2019s 2025 Made on YouTube presentation, it revealed that YouTube has paid over $100 billion to creators, artists and media companies globally over the last four years. YouTube does not break out this metric by either year or segment. <\/p>\n

This lack of transparency coupled with YouTube\u2019s vast content ecosystem makes it difficult to track how YouTube has paid musical artists based on publicly available data. But the music industry isn\u2019t the only one that\u2019s felt the impact of the tech giant.<\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Made\t\t\t\t\t<\/a><\/p>\n

YouTube and decreased linear TV rating<\/p>\n

Azoff\u2019s feud with YouTube hasn\u2019t only existed in the court of public opinion. In 2014,<\/a> the executive issued a legal warning to the company after YouTube failed to immediately remove 20,000 songs that were produced by his company, Global Music Rights.<\/p>\n

YouTube has had disputes with a number of major media companies, including a contract dispute over carriage rights between Paramount and YouTube TV in February as well as one between Fox and YouTube TV in August. YouTube TV is also in the middle of a carriage rights dispute with both TelevisaUnivision and NBC Universal. <\/p>\n

As part of this dispute, NBCUniversal said in a statement <\/a>\u201cGoogle, with its $3 trillion market cap, already controls what Americans see online through search and ads \u2013 now it wants to control what we watch.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Sharon\t\t\t\t\t<\/a><\/p>\n

Despite his skepticism and frustrations with the company, Azoff was overall optimistic that the landscape will eventually shift to be more favorable to artists. <\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m more hopeful that something gets done, because it\u2019s not just the music industry that they\u2019re bullying \u2026 It\u2019s everybody,\u201d he said. \u201cI can\u2019t believe that everybody versus them isn\u2019t going to make a difference.\u201d<\/p>\n

Watch the full Grill panel below. And catch up with all of TheWrap\u2019s TheGrill 2025 coverage here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Michelle\t\t\t\t\t<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Irving Azoff, legendary music mogul as well as the chairman and CEO of The Azoff Company, bashed YouTube…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":279440,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[185,171,92159,144453,144454,67,132,68,75614,3894],"class_list":{"0":"post-279439","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-celebrities","8":"tag-celebrities","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-freemium","11":"tag-irving-azoff","12":"tag-the-grill","13":"tag-united-states","14":"tag-unitedstates","15":"tag-us","16":"tag-wrappro","17":"tag-youtube"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115321457418575714","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279439","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=279439"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279439\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/279440"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=279439"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=279439"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=279439"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}