8Sided Blog

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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.’

Mechanical Royalty Rates Revisited

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America’s Copyright Royalty Board yesterday got around to thinking about what the country’s mechanical royalty rates should be for the next five years.

Mechanical royalties – paid to songwriters when recordings of their songs are copied and distributed – are covered by a compulsory license Stateside. Which means songwriters and music publishers are obliged to license third parties making and distributing those copies at a statutory rate, so that rate-setting processes like this one are rather important.

Traditionally the main customers of mechanical rights have been record companies, which need a license from the relevant songwriter or music publisher every time they press a CD.

In the US, unlike in Europe, it was the label which paid the mechanical royalties on downloads too, so that iTunes didn’t have to worry about making sure the owner of the song copyright was paid their share of any income.

However with streams, where both the mechanical and performing rights of the copyright are exploited, it is the digital platform that is the licensee and which therefore pays the mechanical royalties directly to the writer or publisher (or not as the case may be, as those songwriter lawsuits against various streaming services have demonstrated).

Discs and downloads also remain a decent part of the recorded music business for now of course, but – after a bit of a stand off – the US record industry reached a deal with the music publishers on mechanical royalty rates last year. Which means that the CRB hearing is very much focused on the rates paid by the streaming services, which are, after all, where all the growth is in recorded music these days.

The tech giants are expected to argue to reduce the amount they pay, while the National Music Publisher’s Association and the Nashville Songwriters Association International will lobby for an increase.

NMPA wants songwriters to be paid each time their song is played, or each time a user purchases a subscription. It also wants to share the profits from the sale of technology and subscriptions that include access to music.

The US government has been setting mechanical royalty rates for over 100 years, beginning in 1909 when Congress determined that the rights would be subject to a compulsory license. This means that anyone can record a songwriter’s work for a fixed rate without permission or approval. Congress used to set this rate, but has since delegated the task to the CRB judges. The current rates were set over ten years ago when digital streaming was just starting to take off.

Hitting The Links

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So many links, so little time. For your perusal, here’s a round-up of some unrelated articles that I’ve found interesting in the past week:

Alchemy Of Sound: On The Occult And Soviet Synthesizers

The father of futurist music, a Russian occultist and experimental composer by the name of Alexander Nikolayevich Scriabin, inspired the creation of an optoelectronic machine capable of converting into sound any symbols sketched onto a large pane of glass: the Soviet ANS synthesizer.


Dubbing Is A Must: A Beginner’s Guide To Jamaica’s Most Influential Genre

For many, dub appears an impenetrable genre – the sort of thing we know we should be into, but we don’t quite know where to start with. That’s why we asked David Katz – renowned reggae historian, photographer and more – to write us the Beginner’s Guide to Dub, with quotes from Bunny Lee, Niney the Observer, Glen Brown, Adrian Sherwood, Dennis Alcapone, Roy Cousins and more. We’ve also compiled an accompanying playlist on the last page of this article.


Apple Admits It Has ‘Homework To Do’ To Improve Apple Music

“There’s a lot of work going into making the product better. Our focus is on editorial and playlists, and obviously we have teams all around the world working on that, but we’re also adding features and cleaning up certain things,” Oliver Schusser, vice president, iTunes International, told the Guardian.



Asked about criticisms of Apple Music’s usability – which has seen users complaining of corrupted libraries and unintuitive interfaces – Schusser said: “The product is always our priority, and we are getting a lot of feedback. Remember, this was a very big launch in 110 markets instantly, so we get a ton of feedback. We’re obviously trying to make it better every day.” he said.


Lawrence Lessig: The Question For My Critics

Yes, we cannot know the details. But we cannot let the details stop us from the most important reform our democracy needs. The question isn’t simply, what might go wrong. The question is also, what do we know will go wrong if we do nothing? And is that risk greater than the risk of trying something different?

The Dept. of Justice Said to Be Considering a Baffling New Rule Change for Song Licensing

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Billboard Biz:

According to numerous sources, the DoJ has sent a letter to the two performance rights societies governed by the consent decree, telling them that on “split works” songs — songs written by multiple writers — any writer or rights holder can issue a license for 100 percent of the song. In other words, the long-established industry practice of each rights owner greenlighting their particular portion of a song in order to establish a license — also known as fractional licensing — may no longer be allowed.



The DoJ has, somehow, become convinced that it is common practice in the music industry for any rights holder to license an entire song, not just the share they own.



I can’t see this going through as it only takes some simple explaining to realize the tumult it would create, but its consideration illustrates the growing political influence of tech — the Pandoras, etc — versus that of the PROs in our present climate.