Peter Mensch, the manager of bands including Metallica, Red Hot Chili Peppers and Muse, said earlier this week that YouTube is killing the record industry, which was reported BBC News.

"YouTube, they're the devil," he told a BBC Radio 4 documentary on the music business. "We don't get paid at all."

He said the site's business model, in which artists make money by placing ads around their music, was unsustainable.

"If someone doesn't do something about YouTube, we're screwed," he said. "It's over. Someone turn off the lights."

Mensch's arguments echo concerns raised in the annual report of the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), which was released last week. It said there was widening "value gap" between the volume of music consumed on free, "user-upload" services - including YouTube, Daily Motion and Soundcloud - and the amount of revenue they generate for the industry. An estimated 900 million consumers on these sites resulted in revenue of $634m (£447m) in 2015. By contrast the world's 68 million paying music subscribers generated about $2bn (£1.4bn).

Read the full story at BBC News.

Scott Timberg at Salon.com has responded to the report, stating "Don’t blame YouTube for screwing musicians, blame Metallica. Their fight with Napster set the tone for today’s crummy digital deals."

Following is Timberg's take on Mensch's comments in the BBC News report:

"Now, it’s good to have musicians and industry folk pushing back against the digital services as a way of keeping the tech corporations honest. But to liken YouTube to Satan is not especially useful. Plenty of musicians are justifiably mad about the low royalties paid for music that runs there, and getting that money to musicians still doesn’t work as smoothly as it’s supposed to.

But a smaller number of musicians – mostly very vocal ones – have found real success by posting their music there and building audiences. Digital utopians would tell you that everyone can get rich online. It’s not true, but some certainly have.

Mensch’s statement is a bit strange, though, for reasons that go beyond its overstatement: It’s a reminder that one of the reasons musicians have so much trouble getting paid these days comes from a gargantuan mistake made by… Metallica. The first big battle in the digital services vs. musicians war was fought by Metallica, and the band misfired so badly that a lot of people who’d otherwise be sympathetic turned on musicians and haven’t turned back. And younger people inherit an atmosphere in which the artists seem like the greedy ones and the tech companies are – like the fans – rebels fighting for choice and freedom."

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On August 20th, Metallica will headline the first rock concert at US Bank Stadium in Minneapolis, the new home of the NFL's Minnesota Vikings. They are currently in the studio working on a new album.