Jonathan Strauss: Celebs Rumors

Jem Aswad Senior Music Editor YouTube’s royalty system has long been criticized by multiple music-industry organizations for opaqueness, a lack of oversight and, many feel, insufficient payments. But a new report in Billboard makes a number of detailed allegations, supported by claims from a number of unnamed sources, who say that YouTube — which is the single largest streaming service for music in the world — has a rights-management system that is “full of errors” and “ripe for abuse,” and claim that Create Music Group, which initially established itself as a royalty-collection service for music companies, frequently collected royalties to which it is not entitled. Create co-founder Jonathan Strauss categorically denied those claims, and said the company’s claims are always guided by its clients’ deals — “CMG does not input or remove shares without authorization.” In a statement to Variety, a rep for Create said: “At Create Music Group we work tirelessly to ensure that our clients, independent artists and labels, receive all of the revenue that they are entitled to. We take that responsibility very seriously. We unequivocally deny, however, the assertion made in the Billboard article by our competitors that we “game the system,” and the data proves this out. More than 90% of the conflicts created by our competitors, over 26,000 in all, have been settled in our favor. We follow both the letter and spirit of the rules YouTube has set up for our industry and are very proud of our track record in this regard.”

Jem Aswad Senior Music EditorThe Los Angeles-based music and technology company Create Music Group has launched a beta version of Create Carbon, a credit card that it says will give music creators the ability to access their royalties as soon as they’re earned, rather waiting to receive them via regular monthly payouts.The company prides itself on showing artists how much money they’re making on a daily basis by pulling millions of different data points from sources like Spotify, Apple Music and YouTube.“Traditionally in the music industry an artist is lucky if they receive streaming royalties within 60 days, and it’s not uncommon for artists to wait 6 or even 12 months to get paid,” says Creat founder and CEO Jonathan Strauss.

Variety seeks to identify the next generation of leaders in the entertainment business who represent the creative community of film, TV, music and the digital space. The 2020 music industry group has in common ambition and conviction and includes a pair of duos — Warner Chappell’s Ryan Press and Shani Gonzales and Create Music Group’s Jonathan Strauss and Alexandre Williams — along with selected solo acts from such innovation-forward companies as Cactus Jack and SB Projects.Named managing director of Warner Chappell’s U.K.