Did you know that every minute another YouTube video is silently muted?  I just experienced this trying to promote Easy Rider and Steppenwolf’s “Born to be Wild. When I looked for a video on YouTube, I was happy with the one I selected because it promoted buying the download of the song.  Great, I thought! Within a couple of minutes of posting the video, YouTube muted the audio part of the video.  YouTube states, “This video contains an audio track that has not been authorised by all copyright holders. The audio has been disabled.”  Who do you think will buy the song now? 

How long before YouTube has no voice?  Although the problem had gotten some exposure, no one has fully offered a viable solution.

If you have the power to make a video go viral with 100 million views, you have the power to force a paradigm shift.  As the battle ensues, no one makes any money, witness Susan Boyle.

I see many uninformed users blaming YouTube for their compliance with copyright licensing organizations. However, these are powerful, litigious and very wealthy organizations.

The power must be put back into the hands of the artists who have created the music.  Let the artist give you permission to use the music,  express your creativity and promote the music. 

The master of music promotion, Trent Reznor and his company NIN.com, prove you sell more music by giving it away  (new iPhone app.) “It’s free anyway, for anyone who wants to admit it,” says Reznor.  Is it? 

As I was thinking about this conundrum, I thought why can’t there be something like a “YouLicense,” someplace artists could register and automatically respond to requests for use of their material.  Fans could get a YouLicense to use the music and attach it to their video agreeing to set terms and conditions.  There could be a YouLicense widget that would allow someone to buy the music from your site and you and the artist could make a portion of the sales.

I did a search and found there was something called  YouLicense, but not exactly the model I was thinking about.  Check it out and let me know what you think. Could someone like a YouLicense partner with YouTube and make this seamless and simple? 

As record labels are dying, are licensing organizations, like ASCAP and BMI, next? 

Any passionate young entrepreneurs have some new ideas about this? Maybe some of you involved in the gogivertour.com and extremebusinessmakeovers.com this weekend with @BobBurg? Certainly, the music biz needs an extreme makeover.

For some reason, embed code for video of Trent Reznor Interview with Kevin Rose did not work, please click here.