The newest trend, I’ve just read in the Biz & Finance section of yesterday’s WSJ (I don’t know if it’s available online, but you can try finding it by searching on the author’s name: Hannah Karp), is for Swedish songwriters, who have had successes writing hits for the likes of Jennifer Lopez, Britney Spears and others here, to develop their own stables of performers. Since the death of the CD and the rebirth of the single (alas without a B side), songwriters have been hurting, earning royalties only when they hit on a hit. Previously (and I suppose still), songwriters collected for each of sold album’s fillers, whether radio played them or not.
The new racket is to permit the public to make “fan made videos” but then contact Google’s Youtube and demand revenue (in the form of revenue from a paid ad before the clip airs).
So in essence, the studios are profiting on the work of others in the absence of any court order giving them ownership of the work.
The song owners can demand that the song audio be stripped but they have no legal claim to the video work of someone else.