News Story WEEK 8: YouTube Songwriters Only Receive $40 for 1 Million Views

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2012/nov/13/youtube-songwriters-payment-copyrights 

"Their only option is to look at their royalty statements in an attempt to figure out how much each service pays, and trust that they've been paid correctly and fairly. As I've reported, in the case of YouTube, songwriters could only conclude that the rates the company pays are ridiculously low, at about $40 (£25) per million streams (if the song was written by a single writer)."

• sales of records, radio play and movie or ad soundtrack accounted for professional songwriters income.
• songwriters only get 15% of royalties from iTunes sales
• Independent labels make around £1000 per million views

I think $40 per million views is not enough for songwriters. The case of rich controlling the media can be brought up as suggested in Marxist theory; companies like Vevo take majority of the revenue. And YouTube itself will take its cut of the profit before giving some to Vevo. I think laws may need to be brought in to give more power to songwriters.