8Sided Blog

thoughts about music’s place in the 21st century

When Small Podcasts Want Big Music

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Vintage Microphone

Billboard:

For about a year, music-business sources say, rights holders have been monitoring podcasts more aggressively for unlicensed content. “We realized we were undervaluing the podcast market,” says one source, “and started proactively approaching people who had been using music without proper licenses.” […]

Podcasters who use music say their business is evolving from an anything-goes atmosphere reminiscent of early hip-hop sampling or online radio into an industry that depends on licensing — one, some say, in which only big companies will be able to afford the resulting fees.

I like the comparison with the early days of sampling and online radio. Podcasts have legally existed under-the-radar for over a decade, inviting the ‘wild west’ cliche when it comes to music licensing. The media attention given to Spotify’s acquisitions and start-ups like Luminary is a cause for monied interests to sit up and notice. Though most podcasts continue to live in the underground, the industry is no longer an underground industry.

Those ‘underground’ podcasts — 94% of podcasts supposedly have less than 5000 downloads an episode1A statistic that I heard repeatedly at Podcast Movement 2019 but I can’t find an online source to back it up. — have little separation from the Mark Marons and the Conan O’Briens. We judge and hype-up the industry according to its successes and highest valuation. So there’s not much wiggle room for a podcast in the 94-percentile to license a well-known piece of music at an appropriately adjusted fee. And to be fair, the rights-holders for, say, “Bohemian Rhapsody” can’t maintain the infrastructure to field thousands of small-paying requests.

Another problem is the archival nature of podcasts. Licenses are more expensive the longer they are active, so licenses with set terms — such as a one-year license — are a way to cut costs. Perpetuity is ideal, and is standard in film and television licensing, but can be out-of-range for podcast budgets. The Billboard article notes that “an annual track license generally costs between $500 and $2,000 for the master recording, plus the same amount for publishing … and must be renewed for a podcast to remain online.” A podcaster in this arrangement would pay this fee annually or have no choice but to delete the archive.

Here’s Music Ally’s take:

Now imagine the admin (let alone the mounting costs) for a podcast that puts out shows on a weekly or even daily basis. […] That’s not an argument for rightsholders not to be compensated for use of music in shows that can reach wide audiences, but the annual-renewal model seems fraught with challenges: we’ve seen some catalogue games ‘deleted’ by their developers because their music licences elapsed, and the games weren’t generating enough revenues any more to make renewals pay off. Could the same thing be happening for older podcasts?

An in-the-works solution is the forthcoming SoundExchange/SourceAudio collaboration that I wrote about previously. I’m sure annual renewals from podcasts will be required through this system as well but at a much lower cost2Supposedly this service will adjust the licensing fee based on the podcast’s estimated listener numbers. and the assistance of the platform in keeping track of it all.

A more immediate solution for the indie podcaster is to eschew “Bohemian Rhapsody” for independent music, focusing on labels and artists that are receptive and probably maintain all of their rights. Most small labels I know would be happy to have music featured in a podcast, or anywhere for that matter. Of course, that’s no help if you’re doing an episode about Queen. But maybe there’s already too much out there about Queen and not enough about emerging bands. Consider giving the airtime to an independent artist that would enjoy some podcast love.

He Provides the Soundtrack, We Make the Movie

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Be sure to check out this mini-documentary from Mixmag on the enigmatic Detroit producer Moodymann. I love his vision for his city, his ruminations on record shops, and how the staff at Archer Record Pressing warmly welcomes him. But mostly I love this, said to Gilles Peterson:

We went to the club to get down and dance. Everybody knew the DJ and we didn’t sit there and look at the DJ. He provided the music … we was more into the room. He provides the soundtrack, we make the movie. Well, nowadays everybody just stands there and looks at the DJ. It’s not like that’s Prince up there performing live. That’s the fucking DJ.

I got into DJ’ing via punk rock. That may seem like a non-obvious association, but hear me out. What I liked about underground punk rock was that the band wasn’t the star — the band was merely the facilitator, and everyone in the club was on an equal level. We were all part of the show, and together we made it memorable.

There was a similar feeling in underground dance music when I started DJ’ing. It was fine — even preferable — if the DJ was in the dark or behind a wall looking through a slit.3Many clubs in the early ’90s had ‘the slit.’ I admit that I hated this at first as it seemed like a (literal) wall between the DJ and the audience. But I’ve grown nostalgic for a time when the nature of the booth implied that the music was the true star of the show. We were there to come together, every person as necessary to this party as the next, rejoicing in the feeling of the music. That vibe, combined with the fiercely independent distribution and economy of underground dance music, was, to me, a new kind of punk rock.

I’m not shaking my fist at a cloud or feeling like things are worse or better than ‘back in my day.’ But it’s different. And I feel Moodymann’s frustration here. A couple of decades ago the role of DJs changed, elevated to stars as punk rock bands eventually were. And more and more it’s a DJ’s responsibility to be the movie. When that happens, who’s the soundtrack really for?

Related: On the Music Tectonics podcast The Verge’s Dani Deahl mentions, with trepidation, a new AI engine that selects, programs, and mixes music from a DJ’s predetermined selection. That way the DJ can focus on ‘performance’ rather than pesky details like queuing up and beat-matching songs. Canned performance is nothing new — the draw of many DJs and music artists is a cult-of-personality anyway — but the thought of such an app has me looking testily toward the sky.

Opening Up Content ID for Everyone

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Complete Music Update:

The eight Congress members who wrote to [Google CEO Sundar] Pachai last week acknowledged the benefits of Content ID, writing in their letter that “we appreciate Google’s efforts to combat the illegal distribution of content on YouTube”. However, they then said: “We are concerned that copyright holders with smaller catalogues of works cannot utilise” the copyright tools. […]

Expanding on this point, the Congress members’ letter goes on: “It has come to our attention that access to the Content ID system is only granted to companies that ‘own exclusive rights to a substantial body of original material that is frequently uploaded to the YouTube user community’. We are concerned that copyright holders with smaller catalogues of works cannot utilise Content ID, making it more difficult or impossible for them to effectively protect their copyright works from infringement and, ultimately, impacting their livelihoods”.

I’ve faced this issue as a music publisher. I’d rather directly submit my works to Content ID than through a third-party distributor, especially as many of our tracks are production music and not commercially released. I’ve reached out and received crickets.

YouTube’s requirement that an applicant’s catalog has to be already ‘frequently uploaded to the YouTube user community’ is a head-scratcher. Applicable music should be in the Content ID system in advance. If it takes multiple viral videos to get an acknowledgment from YouTube, then there’s money due to songwriters left on the table.

Prolific music producer Kevin MacLeod brings up another problem in his interview on 2 Girls 1 Podcast. MacLeod lets anyone use his music for free in videos as part of a Creative Commons license. As an independent music creator, he didn’t have direct access to Content ID. And using a third party for Content ID made no sense. Most of his music is not commercially available and, as anyone could use his music — no questions asked — there’s no money to be made on the distribution side.

The dilemma for MacLeod appeared when other people started claiming his music using Content ID through third-party distributors. That’s right — nefarious folks were seeing this unregistered music racking up views on YouTube and took advantage by registering it as their own.

Eventually, after repeated appeals to YouTube, MacLeod was able to work something out and get direct access to Content ID. But only after the nightmare scenario of video creators using his music, trusting there would be no issues, and then having their videos monetized or pulled by an unknown party.

I planned to set up a Creative Commons catalog for non-commercial user-generated content through my publishing company. But MacLeod’s story gives me cold feet. There’s no way I’m allowing our music used on YouTube without an assurance the rights won’t be questioned. Perhaps Google will heed Congress’s concerns and give rights-holders a choice — to use a third party for Content ID or go direct. That’s not so different than how SoundExchange operates. So, file this story under ‘fingers crossed.’