Garth Brooks is living the title of his latest album Man Against Machine, and the latest “machine” Brooks is against is the all so popular video sharing social platform YouTube.
In a November 17th appearance on Access Hollywood, Brooks railed against YouTube, calling the video-sharing website “the devil.” The conversation started when hosts Billy Bush and Kit Hoover asked Brooks to weigh in on the recent battle between Spotify and top-tier artists like Taylor Swift, which lead to a broader conversation about the way digital music providers hurt not only the artists who release music, but the songwriters who compose it.
“YouTube; oh my god,” Brooks began. “They claim they pay people, [but] they’re not paying anything, either. People get millions and millions and millions and millions of views, and they don’t get squat. Trust me. Songwriters are hurting. So, I applaud Miss Taylor and I applaud everyone for standing up for the songwriters, because without them, music is nothing.”
Brooks added that despite having reservations with the Google-owned company, he doesn’t think he’ll be pulling any of his videos from there any time soon.
“You can do it but you can’t get out of it,” he said of removing his videos.
Bush broached the digital music topic with a question about Taylor Swift‘s exodus from Spotify, which Brooks wholeheartedly endorsed.
“When music starts standing up for itself, it’s gonna get a lot better,” he said. “Guys, there’s some big friends in music we need to stand up to. I mean, if iTunes is gonna tell you how to sell your stuff and it’s only gonna go this way, don’t forget who’s creating the music.”
Brooks recently launched his own iTunes-like retailer, called Ghost Tunes, on the occasion of his first new album in 13 years, the fittingly titled Man Against Machine.
On Monday, Nov. 17, he was honored alongside Stevie Wonder and Billy Joel at the ASCAP Centennial Awards.
