YouTube exec: we’ve paid more than $1b to labels

YouTube has paid record labels more than $1 billion in ad revenue over the last several years, said Google’s YouTube Content VP Tom Pickett during a panel at the music industry conference Midem in Cannes, France Monday, according to a Music:Ally report (hat tip to TNW). Music has long been one of the most popular types of content, and there have been a number of reports indicating that the Google-owned video site may launch its own music subscription service soon. Altogether, YouTube generated an estimated $5.6 billion in ad revenue in 2013.