As far as Neil Young is concerned, Google has anything but a heart of gold when it comes to compensating artists.
“Harvest” musician Young vented at Google and other tech companies in a post published by Neil Young Archives on Friday, accusing them of “building their wealth on music’s back and paying nothing to the artists.”
“Today, in the age of Facebook, Google and Amazon, it’s hard to tell how a new and growing musical artist could make it in the way we did,” Young wrote. “The Tech Giants have figured out a way to use all the great music of everyone from all time, without reporting an artist’s number of plays or paying a f—king cent to the musicians. Aren’t they great companies!!! It makes you wonder where the next generation of artists will come from. How will they survive?”
Young went on to say that, while Google might have changed mottoes in recent years, the song remains the same in terms of artist compensation.
“‘Don’t be evil.’ That was Google’s corporate motto as they directed users to pirate sites to get artist’s creations and not pay!! Amazing tech breakthrough!! Meanwhile, they reap the bucks from ads people read while listening to music made my artists,” Young wrote.
“Google just changed their motto from ‘Do the Right Thing,’ but haven’t changed anything else as they continue to rip off the artist community, building their wealth on music’s back and paying nothing to the artists,” Young continued. “WOW! Brilliant tech breakthrough! BTW, Google is YouTube. Guess who’s next?”
Read Young’s entire post here.