http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/19/business/media/new-youtube-music-plan-faces-challenge.html 2014-11-19 02:15:13 New YouTube Music Plan Faces Challenge Irving Azoff has asked YouTube to remove from its music plan thousands of songs by the Eagles, John Lennon and other songwriters associated with Mr. Azoff’s new music publishing venture. === YouTube unveiled its long-awaited But it has already run into an obstacle named Irving Azoff. Mr. Azoff, a powerful artist manager who is the former executive chairman of Live Nation Entertainment, has asked YouTube’s new service, called Music Key, upgrades many aspects of its free site, and adds a paid subscription tier that will allow people to pay up to $10 a month to eliminate ads and gain other perks. YouTube, which said it attracts more than one billion users worldwide each month, is owned by Google. According to a letter dated Monday from Howard King, a lawyer for Global Music Rights, YouTube has not complied with two requests last week from the company “demanding the immediate cessation from public performance of almost 20,000 songs.” The brief letter does not list those songs or even the composers, but Global Music Rights has signed deals with more than 40 writers, including pop stars and major songwriters like Bruno Mars, Pharrell Williams and Smokey Robinson. YouTube confirmed that it had received the letters, but that they did not follow the standard procedure for take-down requests under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, the federal law that protects websites that host copyrighted content from third parties. In a statement, YouTube said it would “keep working with both the music community and with the music fans invited to our beta phase,” which is set to begin this week. The letter from Global Music Rights may set up a dispute over exactly what rights the company can enforce. Many of its clients’ songs are still covered under licensing deals made while those writers were still with Ascap and BMI, a process known as “licenses in effect.” Randy Grimmett, a former Ascap executive who now works with Mr. Azoff at Global Music Rights, said that the company fully represented its writers’ songs when it came to the new service. “YouTube’s recently launched Music Key, as far as Global Music Rights is concerned, is not covered by existing licenses in effect because it is a service that has yet to launch,” Mr. Grimmett said in an interview on Tuesday. News of Global Music Rights’ letters to YouTube first appeared on the website of