The music industry’s very public derision of YouTube may just all be noise after all, according to Bloomberg Gadfly’s Leila Abboud. A number of industry insiders have publicly called on YouTube to enforce legal reforms to help end its reliance on Safe Harbor provisions that protect it from liability when users upload copyrighted content to the site. The industry is joined by the likes of other streaming websites such as Spotify, which pay royalties for every song heard, decried the YouTube free music model as being bad for the industry as a whole. But thanks to music business researcher Mark Mulligen’s report on Youtube’s music economics, the industry’s arguments don’t appear to hold water. According to his data between 70-80% of popular music videos on the site are actually uploaded by the record labels themselves, while a mere 2% of YouTube music videos are unofficial. Furthermore, record labels get a share of the ad revenues at a time when music distribution on YouTube is growing, making the site a godsend from a promotional perspective. So the next time you hear Taylor Swift moan and groan about royalties from her private jet, just remind yourselves that she wouldn’t be where she is today, without 1.7 bn viewers checking out her Blank Space video for free.