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Transmitter
The Transmitter YouTube channel will feature British artists including The Saturdays
The Transmitter YouTube channel will feature British artists including The Saturdays

Labels launching Transmitter YouTube channel to promote British music

This article is more than 10 years old
BPI and LoveLive team up on channel aiming to be a Top of the Pops for the modern generation that 'has moved from television to mobile'

British music labels are launching their own YouTube channel, Transmitter, to promote UK artists with a mixture of live performances, interviews and album playbacks.

The channel will launch on 11 November as a joint venture between industry body BPI and online video firm LoveLive, which has previously worked with a range of artists, labels and brands on video projects.

Original shows on Transmitter will include collaboration-focused The Hook-Up; First Play for album playbacks; and weekly magazine show Live At 5. Fans will be encouraged to chat to artists during the live streams, while another show called Matchmaker will see artists and YouTube stars teaming up.

"There's been a lack of platforms that promote multiple artists. It used to happen on television, but since Top of the Pops finished there's no weekly show any more in primetime that introduces consumers to what's going on in music," BPI chief executive Geoff Taylor told The Guardian.

"And on YouTube, there's nothing for mainstream chart music that does that. The audience has moved from television to mobile, so we want to both help labels promote their artists and help fans find really high-quality content."

British stars Tinie Tempah, Drenge, The Saturdays, James Arthur, Wretch 32 and The Wanted will be among the first artists to appear on Transmitter, with overseas musicians including The Strypes, Sean Paul and Janelle Monae also set to take part.

"I think Transmitter is a great and exciting new way for artists to talk about music in detail, from their early influences to new and exciting discoveries, all within one of the biggest platforms for music in the world," said Tempah in a statement.

The BPI points to a YouGov survey in May 2013 that found 77% of 16-24 year-olds in the UK listening to music on YouTube, compared to 33% listening to streaming music services like Spotify.

Some music-related brands are already taking advantage. Youth lifestyle broadcaster SB.TV has notched up more than 189m views on YouTube, and recently won private equity backing in a deal valuing the company at £8m.

Meanwhile, bass-music brand UKF, which launched its UKF Dubstep and UKF Drum & Bass channels in 2009, now has more than 6.1m subscribers and just under 1.5bn views across the two channels, and has used YouTube as a platform to expand into compilations, merchandise and live events.

It's no co-incidence that both SB.TV and UKF were started by teenage entrepreneurs. Transmitter is an attempt to show that established music industry companies can find similar success on YouTube, with another example being the All Def Music channel being launched by Universal Music and Def Jam founder Russell Simmons.

The BPI will take comfort from the example of Turkish industry body MÜ-YAP, whose channel aggregating videos from artists in Turkey has become one of YouTube's most popular channels.

In September, MÜ-YAP generated 179m video views, making it the third largest channel behind only Miley Cyrus and PewDiePie. However, Taylor said the BPI is keen for Transmitter to not be seen as another MÜ-YAP, in terms of being driven by a trade body.

"We're not doing this because we're a trade body or because we think it needs to be done by a trade body. We're doing it because all labels think it's something that can add to what's out there, and the BPI is a convenient place for labels to do something together," said Taylor.

"The BPI does a lot of things to protect the market, but we want to promote the market as well as protecting it. We've embedded click-to-buy in the videos in quite an interesting way, so it's very much about helping the legal music market to grow."

It's also a positive turn in the fractious relationship between the BPI and YouTube's parent company Google. The BPI has been harrying Google in 2013 over what it sees as broken promises over its anti-piracy strategy.

In August 2012, Google announced that it would begin using "valid copyright removal notices" from rightsholders as one of the signals for its search rankings, with the result that sites receiving a large number of successful takedown requests might appear lower in Google's search results.

Industry bodies like the BPI and its US counterpart the RIAA ramped up the number of takedown notices accordingly – Google's own stats show it received 5.4m notices from the BPI alone in the last month – but both bodies have complained vociferously that piracy sites aren't being demoted as a result.

"Google is a very important business partner for the music industry: not just YouTube, but Google Play too. We want to work with Google growing the audience around music and monetising that music with them," said Taylor.

"On search results, we still believe there's a lot more for them to do to be supporting real music and legal services ahead of sites that they know to be illegal. They need to think hard about their position on that. We want to encourage them to improve their search results so consumers are directed to legal sites, not sites full of malware and porn."

On YouTube's music potential, at least, the BPI and Google can find agreement. And with YouTube rumoured to be launching a subscription-based music service later this year, that role as a business partner for the British music industry may soon be strengthened even more.

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