Nikki Sixx: Don't Be Evil, YouTube, Pay More

The former Motley Crue bassman is leading a campaign to get YouTube to pay artists more for their music.

The video-streaming site, which is owned by Google, pays about one sixth of the royalties paid by other music streamers Spotify and Apple (LSE: 0R2V.L - news) , according to Nikki Sixx, now a bass player for Sixx: A.M.

His campaign is called "Don't Be Evil" - after Google's original corporate motto - and he has a history of winning these battles, having teamed up with Taylor Swift last year to force a climbdown from Apple Music over a similar issue there.

Speaking to Sky News business presenter Ian King from Los Angeles, Sixx said: "No one is saying they're not paying and no one is saying that they're not a great company. What we're saying is that they're paying a sixth of what everybody else pays.

"If you're going to go to work and do the same job as your friend who goes to work and you're going to get paid a sixth to do the same work, you're going to have to change where you live and you might have to change your job.

"We're talking about the future of music."

Sixx's band wrote an open letter to YouTube executives earlier this week, which they posted on their Facebook (NasdaqGS: FB - news) page, saying: "We are the lucky ones, like so many veteran artists, who came up in an era where there was much more income from record sales.

"Today, streaming is a fraction of income from that time.

"This is not about us.

"We are speaking up for the current and future generation of musicians who must be compensated fairly for their hard work.

"We would not have had Prince, Blondie, Bruce Springsteen, Ice Cube, Taylor Swift, or many other artists without a system to support and nurture them."

"When Google first started, its corporate motto was 'Don’t Be Evil'.

"That motto has since changed to 'Do The Right Thing'. It’s time to live up to your corporate mottos, Google and YouTube, and invest in the future of music."

YouTube told Sky News: "No other platform gives as much money back to creators – big and small – across all kinds of content.

"To date, we have paid out more than $3bn to the music industry and that number is growing year on year.

"We believe that by providing artists and songwriters greater visibility around revenue earned on YouTube, we can solve many of these issues (Other OTC: UBGXF - news) ."