Garth Brooks: YouTube Is "The Devil"

Garth Brooks

Garth Brooks may have finally joined social media, but that doesn’t mean he’s all-in with the digital revolution. In a new interview, the country icon blasts digital music providers and what he sees as their negative impact on the music business, reports A Taste Of Country.

Brooks released his first new studio album in more than 13 years, ‘Man Against Machine,’ last week, and while the project is projected to open strong compared to most other contemporary albums, the numbers are still likely to equal just a fraction of Brooks’ sales in his heyday, which took place prior to iTunes and the dominance of the internet.

In an appearance on ‘Access Hollywood‘ on Monday (Nov. 17), Brooks applauded younger stars like Taylor Swift and Jason Aldean for their recent decision to pull some or all of their music from Spotify over concerns about what many see as paltry revenues for artists, producers and songwriters.

When Brooks was unable to make a suitable deal with iTunes, he finally made his music available digitally via his own newly-launched service, GhostTunes. But one place fans still won’t find his music is on YouTube.

“And I’m telling you, the devil — nice people, but YouTube,” he says. “Oh my gosh … they claim they pay people. They’re not paying anything either and people are getting millions and millions and millions of views and they don’t get squat. Trust me.”