Avril Lavigne is set to score a big pay day thanks to YouTube revenue. Nettwerk Management CEO Terry McBride told MusicTank’s Face To Face With The Millennials in London today: ”There’s about a $2 million cheque waiting for her for all her YouTube plays.” The YouTube video for Lavigne’s Girlfriend track is nearing a mammoth 100 million views after it was gamed by a coordinated fan campaign, making it the most viewed video ever. Next up, Nettwerk is targeting the Far-East: “We will start a Mandarin website (for Lavigne) with Mandarin ads and we will make a shitload of money, because 40 percent of her intellectual property value comes from Asia.”

McBride, whose label gained notoriety through innovative online distribution strategies and for donating legal fees to those fighting RIAA filesharing lawsuits, said Nettwerk expects its revenue from digital to tip beyond 70 percent this year. That’s massively more than the 25.5 percent eMarketer forecasts the global music business will make from digital this year.

McBride also said labels should be retailing digital tracks at a sweet spot of just $0.25, albums for $2: “You’d see a huge shift; we haven’t even given kids the choice to show us this tipping point yet ... the profit margin in the digital space is about 300 percent that inside the physical space.”

MusicTank commissioned McBride to write a report describing so-called “millennial” consumers. “Today’s generation don’t want to own (music), they want to have access to it when and how they want it,” he said. McBride added western business misunderstands “piracy” in China: “Millennials think like the Asian culture, where music is owned by no-one and is shared by everyone. The west has viewed China’s use of free music as piracy - but the Chiense have been sharing free music for thousands of years.”

And McBride called back his vehement opposition to the RIAA’s legal efforts: “Suing our customers is bad for our business; they’ve created a separation between the creative community and the people who consume it - one of the biggest PR disasters I’ve seen.”

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