YouTube Deletes My Audio Tracks
Posted on: March 3, 200917 comments so far (is that a lot?)
Last night’s video “Skittles, Twitter and the Snowstorm” featured one of my “EndVideos”, where I cut some scenic video shots with a song. Well, Warner Music Group and YouTube cut the audio from my video for copyright infringement. I’m going to try to find a workaround, but if you want the full steveisaacs.tv experience, I recommend you watch the videos here and forget about YouTube.
I add music for the enjoyment of my viewers and for promotion of the bands I choose. This isn’t copyright infringement. Someday maybe the record industry will see this, but I doubt they will ever get it. Do they stop music from being played in bars, clubs or parties? Of course not. Why is someone using music in the same way any different?
What do you think?
March 3rd, 2009 at 11:56 am
Steve, I would typically agree with you, but the problem with posting clips of copyrighted music online is that, technically, you are then “distributing” it. Yes, I know, for a 15-second clip on your video it doesn’t seem worth Warner’s fuss, but lawyers don’t see things in gray. Anyway, that’s the difference between music played in a bar or club and music posted in any form on the internet, where suddenly a billion people can possibly capture it.
Oh, they’re still f*ckers for doing so, and it’s BS, but … well, that’s why you have your own site, right? I mean, until Warner contacts your web host and demands you remove the video (I’ve had my entire website shut down by Viacom before. Not fun.).
March 3rd, 2009 at 12:46 pm
what’s really funny to me is- immediately after watching it last night- I went and purchased said track, as it was missing from my collection…
March 3rd, 2009 at 3:12 pm
I just really oppose the whole shape of music copyright law at the moment. I discover music often from plays in videos, bars, parties etc. I consider it a promotion and not a distribution. I’m trying to help people discover this music, not profit from it. Sure, if I had a million views things might be different, but even then I would consider it helping the musicians not hurting.
March 3rd, 2009 at 3:12 pm
I just really oppose the whole shape of music copyright law at the moment. I discover music often from plays in videos, bars, parties etc. I consider it a promotion and not a distribution. I’m trying to help people discover this music, not profit from it. Sure, if I had a million views things might be different, but even then I would consider it helping the musicians not hurting.
March 3rd, 2009 at 5:24 pm
Robin – You should buy that whole album (Absolution). Muse should always be enjoyed in full album brilliance.
March 3rd, 2009 at 5:25 pm
Steve – as a musician who often gives his stuff up for promotion’s sake, I totally feel you. That being said, you can use As Yet Unbroken’s music anytime, royalty-free, for your videos, so long as we get a link back.
March 3rd, 2009 at 6:59 pm
Thanks PJ!
March 4th, 2009 at 4:22 pm
I agree 100% with your above position on the music. Redistributing the music is much different than promotion. If we were making movies for profit, than different story and I would be sure to get the proper licenses and permissions to include whatever songs I was using in my movie.
I like how Universal Music Group handles it’s inclusion of music it finds in YouTube videos. It’s a win-win for both the uploader/creator and the viewer.
March 5th, 2009 at 12:21 pm
Steve, the major difference between you using music in a video and a bar having music playing is that typically the bar will pay a licensing fee to one or more of the big publishing houses. One way you may be able to “work around” it is to add popups in your YouTube video advertising the artist playing at specific times in each video. I don’t know if that will keep them from removing the audio, but it would be the first step I would take in this situation.
March 5th, 2009 at 8:53 pm
Great frigging track to sum up NYC and Snow in March…Your loss You Tube…Keep ‘em coming Steve!
March 6th, 2009 at 2:14 pm
Most of the musicians I work with would agree with you. It’s the “suits” that would disagree.
March 9th, 2009 at 1:16 am
Well…I do agree with your sentiment 100%…and people should be allowed to use music in this way…however
to answer our question: bars and clubs DO pay to have the music played at their venue. they pay a yearly fee to ASCAP, BMI, and SESAC. and then from that pool, the performance rights organizations split up and pay out the money to the songwriters (directly) as well as the publishers. It’s very small, but it adds up. That would be a performance royalty, and some num nuts should’ve figured out how to set this up on the internet. Well…the labels and the publishers (yes, my fuggin business) have made this much too hard. so fuggem! (except that martymakins gives my place a shout out, so maybe we’re not the worst)
go for it!
March 9th, 2009 at 1:19 am
Queenzilla:
feel free to go ahead and besmirch music business folks (I do it myself, and I’m one of em)….but you need to update your music biz terms. I don’t think anyone has worn a suit to work since disco broke big.
April 3rd, 2009 at 5:13 pm
I am really not happy about this…all I want is to share some enjoyment for the kids and their families on our gym website….I am not making money from their music…and actually it is for the pure pleasure of a fun song to go along with some fun photos of kids in sports….The kids love it and the families and relatives think it’s great to see the children doing their sports. I want to post on you tube then to our site because it uploads so quickly and offers the viewers the fun of watching all the gym videos from the channel. Really it’s SAD…the songs I have used that were stopped are great older songs I thought the kids might??? like….really it’s free promotion for the artists or owners of the songs….too bad. This has happen several times and OMG the music swap is so bad!!!! I have no problem telling everyone what happened and now instead of having a happy thought whenever you hear the songs you just think about what a BUMMER it is to have this happen…I don’t even want to listen to the songs any longer…makes me mad and truly SAD that it has come to this.
April 3rd, 2009 at 5:19 pm
thanks
April 4th, 2009 at 2:52 pm
Robin: You can always use http://www.vimeo.com. It’s what I use for the videos here, and so far they haven’t altered my videos like YouTube.
March 25th, 2010 at 8:06 am
I really like youtube but yeah it can have some bad points. Like with copyright and things.