If you look past the tattoos and leather and just listen to what he’s saying, Nikki Sixx is a very articulate, smart guy.  There may be a little rock patois that creeps in, but Nikki can hold his own with any politician or lobbyist I’ve ever met.

And Nikki has discovered the sharing economy–just not the one that these brogrammers at Google and their progeny at their portfolio companies like Über want you to focus on.  Nikki is using his Sixx:AM tour publicity to piggyback a simple message to Google:  Do the right thing.

The fact is that artists at all levels of our industry spend a tremendous amount of time, effort, mindshare and of course money on promoting albums, tours, and a host of good causes.  While you’re doing that, hit one for the home team.

And it’s working already.  On the BBC 6’s radio show with Mark Radcliffe and Stuart Maconie, the presenters A/B’d Nikki’s interview asking Google to do the right thing and pay artists fairly with YouTube Chief Suit Robert Kyncl’s waffling weasel whine about how YouTube does pay artists fairly, it’s just the evil gatekeepers who are hoarding all the billions and billions….hogwash.   (The show will will be posted for another couple weeks so listen to it soon–starting at 38:00)

To their credit, Mark and Stuart called out Kyncl’s “obfuscation” compared to Nikki’s clear message.  They didn’t give the easy explanation–in order to believe Kyncl, you have to accept a whole bunch of premises that simply are not true and defy all the information we have about YouTube royalties.  Premises that get increasingly complex as YouTube’s excuses start looking like the Single Bullet Theory.  And as David Lowery has taught us, complexity is almost always covering up fraud.

Nikki, however, just told the truth.  And it shows.

Wouldn’t it be great if every artist with a press opportunity followed Nikki’s example?

Because sharing is caring.