Google’s YouTube Rickrolling the Music Industry?

I’ve never been much of a BitTorrent user–I’d have to pull up Wikipedia to give you a decent explanation–but I do know that the music industry has long hated the practice of downloading music without a single royalty being paid.

Enter Google; the owner of YouTube, the world’s largest BitTorrent host.

I know, I know, YouTube’s not exactly a BitTorrent, but it’s annoying the heck out of the music industry by allowing music to be downloaded for free–with little making it back to the music companies in the form of royalties.

How little? Consider the juvenile web practice of RickRolling. Users post links to what appear to be legitimate web sites but instead the user winds up on YouTube watching Rick Astley croon “Never Gonna Give You Up!” Oh, the fun factor is way up there with wedgies and prank calls that start “Is your refrigerator running?”

But I digress. Of the 40 million times the music video has been viewed on YouTube, Pete Waterman, the man who co-wrote the ’80s hit, has earned…wait for it…$16!!!

Now the UK’s PRS is raising cane that Google is using its muscle to avoid having to pay the royalties songwriters and artists are entitled.

So, at $0.0000004 royalty paid per view of Astley’s video, what can we learn from this. Either YouTube is really, really, REALLY bad at generating revenue, or Google is really, really, REALLY tight with its royalty payments.