Yeah, but the problem is that those users are often her fans, and they'll be pissed at her too. And the fact is that she has more to lose than Google, no matter what she does.
Essentially, you'd be implementing the earlier, non-evil, version of the Content ID program yourself.
"FOOL! You dare to use my music on your worthless trinket of a video? Demonstrate your complete submission to my will by adding credits and a link, as directed [link], and I may spare your pitiful life. KNEEL BEFORE ZOË!"
From the user's perspective, the change would be "Go here ... and request a sync license to this music content." rather than a checkbox to just turn on Google advertising. If they didn't want to do that then they would need to take down the video.
She is already sending auto-takedowns, Google simply wants to double dip on the value, both getting advertising revenue from her work when fans use it in their videos and using it to attract more customers to their music service by giving her songs away for free when it pleases them.
It's not free, it's the paid youtube service they're going to offer:
http://arstechnica.com/business/2014/06/artists-who-dont-sig...
You need only look at the Amazon Prime Music service as an exemplar, take an artist, make a couple of recognizable hits available for 'free', and the rest behind the service paywall. That is a pretty classic and well used content service feature for attracting new customers, only the content service decides what to give away for free, and what to charge for, not the artist. And if you read closely the original article Zoe said she had to put it on Google's service at the exact same time she did anywhere else. This is a huge loss in marketing leverage for a small artist because she loses the ability to have a special "fan release" that she can get out early to fans to subscribe to her own version of an affinity service.
So lets say she produces an awesome track, and her fans are all abuzz because they hear it first. It pulls people on the edge into the fan subscription service.
But with this arrangement all of that marketing leverage is ceded to Google. They might decide to put her best paying track on the 'free' side to highlight great indie artist tunes on the 'pay' side. She loses her best source of revenue and Google gets to push some people over the edge into paying for their streaming service.
Artistic content, whether it is games, movies, music, or books, has a strong 'freshness' peak in value when it first comes out and then tapers off rapidly. Collecting that value is fundamental to the economics of information, that is why there are "exclusive" stories and "sneak previews".
Google is requesting that artists cede that value over to them in order to participate on Youtube. In my opinion, that is an exceptionally high price to pay.