People doing cover songs on youtube

[breakaway]

I have noticed virtually every single popular musician on youtube has mostly videos of them doing covers of other people's songs. According to what I remember, this is illegal. Yet they are Partners of youtube which mean they get advertising revenue from it, and also many of them even offer iTunes for these cover songs and get paid for it.

Why is this permitted??

 

[Some Random Guy]

Performing covers of other people's songs is not illegal. It just requires licensing payments.

http://www.benmclane.com/PerfRoyal.htm