Patrick Carney, the drumming half of the Ohio-born blues-rock band The Black Keys, decided late last night to wade into an increasingly noisy argument between YouTube and Apple Music concerning artist compensation for streaming services. The squabble seems to have started when Apple Music’s Chief Creative Officer Trent Reznor threw a verbal punch during an interview with Billboard. “Personally, I find YouTube’s business to be very disingenuous,” the Nine Inch Nails frontman said. “It is built on the backs of free, stolen content and that’s how they got that big. I think any free-tiered service is not fair.”
YouTube responded via a statement delivered to Pitchfork yesterday. “Any assertion that this content is largely unlicensed is false,” a spokesperson said, adding that fan-uploaded videos generate about half of the money YouTube pays to the music industry. “To date, we have paid out over $3 billion to the music industry—and that number is growing year on year.”
After reading this, Carney took to Twitter to call (alleged) bullshit on YouTube’s statement:
He then appeared to jab an elbow in Reznor’s direction, referencing his business dealings with Apple Music:
He finished up by saying something sagely inscrutable about the crossroads between music and produce: