The European Union's digital chief has told YouTube that it needs to start compensating copyright owners properly.

Andrus Ansip is currently updating Europe's copyright rules and spoke publicly about how the Google-owned video site was providing far less to copyright owners than competing services such as Spotify.

Co-manager of heavy rock band Metallica, Peter Mensch, this week called YouTube "the devil," noting, "we don't get paid at all." In an interview with the BBC, he argued that "if someone doesn't do something about YouTube, we're screwed. It's over. Someone turn off the lights."

Ansip admitted, however, that it was "unclear" exactly how the EU will enforce such a framework, when most of the services in question are based in the United States, and therefore outside the EU's jurisdiction.