Yes it’s true, age certificates will not feature on just movies, but now on music videos too. Violent and raunchy music videos will soon carry the cinema-style certificates to make adults aware when a content is too graphic for young children to view. Major record labels, which includes Universal Music, Sony Music and Warner Music, have agreed on submitting their artist’s music videos to the British Board of Film Classification, before being uploaded on to YouTube/Vevo.
The protests, which caused this action to take place, includes videos from artists Miley Cyrus and Rihanna. Even Robin Thicke received criticism over his “Blurred Lines” video, due to the video including crude lyrics plus naked models dancing around.
A pilot scheme took place, where the record labels submitted 132 videos to the BBFC, and 56 were rated as 12, whilst 53 were classified as 15. Unfortunately Dizzee Rascal’s “Couple Of Stack” was the only one rated 18 due to its strong bloody violence and very strong language.
David Cameron commented on this topic last year mentioning that control needs to brought in for music videos, as he said; “Bringing up children in an internet age, you are endlessly worried about what they are going to find online.”
An agreement was put in place between the Department for Culture, Media and Sport and Universal Music, Sony Music and Warner Music. Independent record labels will also be signing up to this scheme on a pilot basis.
David Cooke, who is the director of the BBFC, commented: “Parents want to see clear and recognisable age ratings on online music videos and we look forward to building on the success of the pilot, in partnership with the industry, so that the public can have the trusted signposting which they seek.”
Candice Morrissey, content partnerships manager at YouTube, said: “We have been working with the participants in this pilot to help them display the BBFC’s age ratings on their music videos on YouTube. These ratings are in addition to the controls we already provide on YouTube including the ability for uploaders to add age warnings to videos and a restricted mode.”