UPDATE–Since we posted this article at 7:00 AM Eastern Daylight Time, PewDiePie did, indeed, delete a channel on YouTube today when he hit 50 million subscribers. It wasn’t his main channel though; it was a spoof channel – JackSepticEye2 – he’d created for a friend, reports Tubefilter. As PewDiePie explains it, he said his deleting his primary channel was a joke that got way out of hand. Considering it generates millions of dollars (an estimated $124 million since 2010, according to Coed), his “change of heart” is not surprising. – 12/9/16, 12:39 PM EDT

If you believe the adage “there is no such thing as bad publicity,” YouTube is in luck. It is has had a busy few weeks with both positive and negative news reports. Among the news stories are CBS signing on to join ‘Unplugged,’ YouTube’s pending over-the-top TV service; YouTube’s supposed payout of $1 billion to the music industry; and big decreases in video views for some of YouTube’s top content creators.

CBS Signs on to Unplugged: The most recent information about Google’s  Unplugged, a new over-the-top TV subscription service, came out in October after a 10-month slow leak of information. The new service would offer skinny bundles as an alternative to pricy cable packages. At that time, it was believed that CBS had signed on. Earlier this week at the UBS Global Media and Communications conference in New York, CBS CEO Les Moonves inadvertently confirmed the network’s inclusion in Unplugged, reports Business Insider.

“There are other things, digital rights, and stacking rights and all those sorts of things,” Moonves said, according to Business Insider. “It’s not just economic factors, look … We’ve been able to make a deal, as you said with, well we haven’t announced yet, potentially with YouTube.” 

YouTube and parent company Google (Alphabet) are not confirming or denying.

YouTube Pays Out $1 Billion to Music Industry: On Tuesday, YouTube announced that it had paid out more than $1 billion to the music industry for advertising, which they say demonstrates that “multiple experiences and models are succeeding alongside each other.” YouTube went on to say that, as advertising dollars shift from print, radio and TV to online services like YouTube, the model will also shift with subscriptions and advertising contributing relatively equal amounts of revenue in addition to digital and physical sales.

“At a time when there’s never been more competition for attention, fans can’t get enough good music. It is clear that this creative industry has two strong engines of growth — subscriptions and advertising — and we are honored to be a part of it,” said Robert Kyncl, chief business officer for YouTube.

Not so fast, said the International Federation of the Photographic Industry (IFPI). They don’t agree with YouTube’s figure. According to Pitchfork, the IFPI compared YouTube’s revenue of $1 per user to Spotify’s 2015 payout of $2 billion which equates to about $18 per user.

“YouTube, the world’s largest on-demand music service, is not paying artists and producers anything like a fair rate for music. This highlights more than ever the need for legislative action to address the ‘value gap’ that is denying music rights holders a fair return for their work,” said the IFPI.

YouTube stars are losing subscribers and viewership has declined 30 percent to 40 percent: Last week Tubefilter reported that YouTube Stars like Ethan Klein of h3h3productions, PewDiePie and Furious Pete are losing subscribers to their YouTube channels. It seems that YouTube may be automatically unsubscribing people, and they are no longer letting users know when a channel they subscribe to has a new video. Users are reporting to their favorite YouTube stars that they are no longer getting notifications, and viewership is down as a result.

Tubefilter points out this is more than just a drop in numbers; it also means a drop in revenue to the creators, regardless of their size. In an 8-minute video Klein created to discuss the problem, the video creator says he reached out directly to YouTube and didn’t get any satisfactory answers. They told Klein that nothing was wrong, and they favor channels with more “engagement.” Klein said this is encouraging more clickbait-style videos, degrading the site and taking views away from legitimately popular content. Klein also said YouTube’s Trending Tab has become more like Paid Promotions instead.  

“I wish they would just explain what they’re doing. Just tell us what you want. What are you doing?” Klein said, “It’s time for YouTube to be upfront with us and tell us what’s going on.”

PewDiePie is also frustrated, so much so, in fact, that he has threatened to delete his YouTube channel after hitting 50 million subscribers because he feels YouTube has sabotaged his account, reports Venture Beat.

Venture Beat quotes a YouTube spokesperson’s response to the alleged problems:

“Some creators have expressed concerns around a drop in their subscriber numbers. We’ve done an extensive review and found there have been no decreases in creators’ subscriber numbers beyond what normally happens when viewers either unsubscribe from a creator’s channel or when YouTube removes spammed subscribers. We do the latter to ensure that all creator subscriber numbers are accurate.”

Insider Take:

This is quite a mixed bag of news. As we’ve said before, while the launch of Unplugged is positive, it is hard to get excited about yet another OTT service. Even if it is packaged as a skinny bundle, those are already available through Sling TV and other services. Do we really need another service in an already saturated market?

Also, Google and YouTube have been teasing this service for more than a year. If they’ve only signed CBS recently and don’t have other additions to announce, they may not be ready to launch in the near future.

Regarding the music stats, the general feeling behind streaming music services is that they are not adequately compensating artists, so this backlash isn’t a surprise. This is an industry-wide problem, not isolated to YouTube, and so far no good solution has been found.

As for the content creators arbitrarily losing subscribers and the decline of video views, this is a problem. Subscribers are reaching out directly to the content creators and telling them what’s happening, and they aren’t getting solid answers from YouTube. Is YouTube making changes too quickly and maybe not coordinating their teams to prevent such problems? Regardless, this is a PR nightmare and likely to cost them some valuable, revenue-generating partners.