YOUTUBE SITUATION WORSENS

Industryites are apoplectic over the Bible’s reported plans to include YouTube streams in its Top 200 chart—which has refocused attention on the formula behind its Hot 100 chart, in which a YouTube view counts the same as a stream from Spotify or Apple Music. Top execs at rights holders want YouTube out of the Hot 100 altogether and are very vocally objecting to the absurd notion of further empowering Lyor “Lyr” Cohen and company.

These execs note that unlike other streaming services, YouTube requires no login, increasing the potential—and now incentive—for manipulation and fraud. That fraud and manipulation, they add, could be punitive to country and rock acts and indie labels.