Copyright Fiasco at YouTube

[Vlad]

3 two minute + cues per day seems unrealistic to me. And I can’t imagine they would be of much substance. I take great care in sound choices, song structure, and mix quality…in addition to as many real instruments as possible. 3 to 4 hours per tune? I think not.

[More Advice]

I am “trashing” the entire situation Michael and this entire scene of what comes across to me as companies rounding up tracks from thousands of composers and songwriters with the original pitch being “We’re going to get your music placed into TV Shows, spots, films, games, etc…and pay you 50% of synch fees and share the publishing, etc.” and now, there is this golden opportunity to give away the music ( in mass bulk) in exchange for YOUTUBE monetization. Sure, the publishers benefit because they have volume on their side, but the “cattle” or each “individual cow” in the heard is maybe only going to make a few dollars here and there…and this is not cool.

I say make people license the music on the cheap for their silly YOUTUBE videos, but make them pay something. Let’s not rely only on back end monetization schemes that can only benefit those who have control of thousands or hundreds of thousands of tracks. Let’s get the dough up front for the synch….even if the video is mama singin’ jingle bells with the kids.

Then, we hear multiple stories about songwriters and composers getting copyright infringement claims slapped on their own videos that they created.
This has actually happened to me. It’s annoying and just wrong. There I am, in a performance video of my own track, and I am the one who filmed myself, I wrote the music, I edited and up-loaded the video to YOUTUBE and a publisher suddenly claims they own the copyright to the music? I have had all these claims taken down, but I never should have had to deal with it in the first place.

Michael, I am not sure what your position is on this… [Removed by moderator]

[MichaelL]

Yes, More Advice, it’s a terrible situation. You are correct. It works well for the publishers…the ones who control thousands of cues. On the micro…individual composer level, it’s nearly worthless in most cases. Having a youtube hit of 1 million views is like winning the lottery. Even at that the payout is what, 10K? You and I both know that there are better ways to make 10K in this business, than handing your cues over to an “aggregator.”

Sorry about the highlighting thing. It’s just the way the “quote” function works on this site. It’s an easy way to focus on the pertinent part of a paragraph or sentence. If you mean the bold letters, that was to highlight the part of your sentence that corresponded to the number that Paul Schreer stated in an interview, and to show that we’re talking about 1,700 cues here, not 20 or 30.

And, as I said in a previous post, the most egregious thing to me, as an attorney, is unilaterally changing the terms of a contract. That is not good.

All the best,

Michael

[Vlad]

@MichaelL,

Thank you for your contributions to this and all other discussions on this site. I always find your posts to be informative and walk away with something to think about on the business end of all of this. All of your posts are truly in the spirit of sharing information.

[MichaelL]

@Vlad, thanks for the kind words.

There are a lot of folks here with different levels of experience, and knowledge to share, and we each express ourselves in different ways.

You can learn from everyone!

Best of luck in your endeavors.

_Michael

[Desire_Inspires]

I will probably keep my music out of traditional libraries and start to monetize my own works. That makes more sense to me.

[Supercomposer]

Just take control of your Youtube on your own at AdRev . I think enforce Youtube for all the big libraries and can get your stuff out of TuneCore / IND Music. Just upload to them and they will take care of it . Did it for me when IND was trying to hold me hostage when they did not have rights, took them 3 days and about 5 emails and I was free and in control of my stuff. IND is dirty and Audiam is TuneCore. don’t let those pirates take your stuff.

[MichaelL]

Bump

[MichaelL]

Just take control of your Youtube on your own at AdRev

Just be aware that doing this will get you dropped from, or barred from joining, a number of libraries.

[Desire_Inspires]

Just be aware that doing this will get you dropped from, or barred from joining, a number of libraries.

That is rather unfortunate. But it is a risk worth taking for some.

[Nick D.]

I wanted to let everyone know this:
If you submit your library to YouTube’s ContentID any of your paying customers who licence from the publisher/composer to use it in a YouTube video will get unnecessarily flagged for copyright infringement. It happen to me. I had to dispute it, letting them know I licences the track, sent a link to the tracks page on the stock media licencor’s site, and a screen shot of my receipt. What’s worse is that I have to do this every time I upload a new video with the track.

The other thing that seems fishy is the ContentID names the track by one title while stock media licencor gives it another name. I have listened closely and they are the same track.

There is no mechanism in place to let ContentID know that a customer has rightfully licensed it. The YouTube user is guilty until proven innocent. This means that the video could be blocked, have a pre roll add, a lower-thrid ad, or and ad to the right of the video on the play page.

[Author]

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