You have to feel for the indie labels tuning into Alan Carr’s Chatty Man on Friday night. Just one week after the Worldwide Independent Network (WIN) understandably castigated YouTube for “indefensible” licensing terms offered to Merlin members, a major label act is set to wow the nation as a direct result of a giant, megabucks commercial deal.

Now, let’s be clear: there is no real defence of this particular ‘indefensible’. Google-owned YouTube appears to have licensed music from the three ...