When copyright protection mechanism bite the bands who own the music
 

Metallica were playing a slot in the opening ceremonies for BlizzCon, which is quite the big deal for players of games by Blizzard Entertainment. Very legit and above board, and with sufficient budget.

Naturally it was live streamed on multiple platforms. Not only do these platforms such as YouTube have the ability to detect and remove copyrighted music, the one at Twitch also has the ability swap in with music that won't bring any copyright grief to them. Better still, the inserted music was even in time with what it replaced.

Enjoy the hilarity of what happened next.


Andrew

Re: When copyright protection mechanism bite the bands who own the music
 

LOL! Do you think they understand the irony?

Re: When copyright protection mechanism bite the bands who own the music
 

I feel the pain - in my current copyright battle - my music on YouTube got a copyright claim registered against it by ....... me. The people who I no longer deal with as agents are still claiming my money. Youtube's system is very good at spotting your music, but you often still don't have control!

Re: When copyright protection mechanism bite the bands who own the music
 

Any particular reason for the "who I no longer deal with as agents" part? Just in case it's related.

Andrew

Re: When copyright protection mechanism bite the bands who own the music
 

Well - you asked. ALL my music, distributed by Dsitrokid - the biggest world wide aggregator got removed overnight - everywhere in the world. No explanations, no response to email - just removed - just when my sales were going from around 2000 streams a month to five million. The sudden increase was going to be very pleasant money wise, but no - my account got zeroed! I put lots back on youtube on my own personal account, not the one Distrokid set up. I then get copyright infringements - the music has been claimed by ....... Paul Johnson. They are not paying me, but have claimed the youtube revenue, on my behalf! The new distributer, Ditto are mnore complicated and reject everything for too few pixels, or mismatches in metadata between the track and the album art - and cannot have certain generic names in titles. Remember John Mile's Music song? My cover, all properly licenced, cannot be called "music" - I cannot have Concerto No. 21 - 21 is a numeric banned item. I also got one track called Jazzy G String deleted too - 'Jazzy' is out. Then - they deleted ALL the classical stuff because they are public domain - I tried to explain that there are thousands of pieces of classical music out there by Bach, Beethoven and the rest, and all are old - but no. So no classical. I have now found a third distributor who will take classical but they are so complicated. Today I also got a claim from A&M music for my licenced cover of a Carpenters song. I spent hours on the harmonies, the piano and flute solos making them as close to the original as I could. So close - they have determined I used the carpenters original music and they've pulled that.

With music it seems, as Metallica discovered, their computers make the decisions, and get reviewed by a human with 14 days. My streams were due to generate around $14,000 last week, rather than maybe 50-100 a month - people have told me this sudden increase triggered a takedown because it's suspicious - not my fault tiktok took one bit of music and went wild with it. Being in the UK, I'm also unable to take any kind of action because all these distributors are not in the UK, and deal in Dollars. So I am stuffed!

Re: When copyright protection mechanism bite the bands who own the music
 

Isn't it amazing how the incompetent manage to prosper?

Probably quite telling that they don't have their office address listed on their web site. Might be a few people wanting to bypass the email response time and make a personal visit.

Andrew

Re: When copyright protection mechanism bite the bands who own the music
 

Hey, they have a Twitter account and you could always leave them a nice message or two.

Plot twist: Others have had the same idea. https://twitter.com/DistroKid/status...87049906937867

Andrew

Re: When copyright protection mechanism bite the bands who own the music
 

They don't seem to respond to social media negatives either - there's a facebook group of disgruntled people, and I've joined that, but there's no point in getting angry with organisations who just don't care!

Re: When copyright protection mechanism bite the bands who own the music
 

How did you find out about them in the beginning?

Andrew

Re: When copyright protection mechanism bite the bands who own the music
 

Biggest and most efficient aggregator - and I thought they were worth using and up till the problem, they were. Oh well!

Re: When copyright protection mechanism bite the bands who own the music
 

I was thinking that say, if they were advertising in musician magazines etc, that would be a well targeted place to share the issues that yourself and many others are having. In other words, get their attention by messing with the effectiveness of their sales funnel.

In the very least you will be performing a public service by warning others.

Andrew

Re: When copyright protection mechanism bite the bands who own the music
 

I had no idea what Paul was talking about until I read an article explaining the issue. As far as I understand it you upload to an aggregator, they send your music to various platforms. The way you get paid on streaming services is how many people listen to your music. People then employ 3rd party companies that use bots to generate fake streams to generate revenue. These platforms combat this by blocking any content that this activity is detected.

Re: When copyright protection mechanism bite the bands who own the music
 

The YouTube/Metallica thing just shows how the industry has changed in a few short years. A friend of mine is a technology Luddite. He moved to the USA when his UK chart success in the 70s got him invited to join a US band. Every year his royalties were pretty much his living for then till now, but about three years ago they took a dive and now he can’t live on the money any more. People are still listening to his music but by different methods the old ascap/PRS mechanical system can no longer keep up with. The new distribution system isnt a members organisation, it’s a paid for service, and the copyright owners are no longer the masters, but just customers.if mega bands like Metallica have had to hand over their products to outside control, plainly it doesn’t work. I bet their record company are fuming, but powerless. I have no way to make them pay me. They have all the cards, I have none!

Re: When copyright protection mechanism bite the bands who own the music
 

Did anything come of the Dsitrokid situation in the end?

Andrew

Re: When copyright protection mechanism bite the bands who own the music
 

Well, basically, no! The account is still zero'd - the TikTok streams are still there and I get nothing. My options seem to be that I have to prove I didn't use a cheating method - which I didn't, but I'd have to fight it in the US courts and various comments tell me this just means they drag it out and out till my money runs out. So the Toal now is around 10 million, but I don't look that often any longer - it makes me angry! Running at less than 100$ in total a month from all the Spotify, iTunes, Apple Music etc to thousands of dollars in a week triggered the system and I can't prove it genuine - especially as most of the videos it is on are in foreign languages.

Re: When copyright protection mechanism bite the bands who own the music
 

I'm wondering if there are similar situations for audio only artists to this one with YouTube and bogus royalty/contentID claims.

Two men have been indicted by a grand jury for running a massive YouTube Content ID scam that netted the pair more than $20m. Webster Batista Fernandez and Jose Teran managed to convince a YouTube partner that the pair owned the rights to 50,000+ tracks and then illegally monetized user uploads over a period of four years.

To protect copyright holders YouTube uses an advanced piracy recognition system that flags videos or music used on users’ channels without permission.

Through this ‘Content ID’ system, infringing content can be removed or monetized by funneling ad revenue to copyright holders, which can be quite lucrative for the rightsholders in question.

https://torrentfreak.com/u-s-indicts...d-scam-211203/

Re: When copyright protection mechanism bite the bands who own the music
 

There is another customer of "the system" who is dissatisfied:
[read the complete article from the link: https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-58643787 ]

Abba’s Bjorn Ulvaeus launches campaign to fix £500m music royalty problem Sep 21, 2021

Bjorn Ulvaeus said there was "no excuse" for record labels not to credit writers properly. Abba star Bjorn Ulvaeus has launched a campaign to ensure musicians don't miss out on millions of pounds in royalties. Called Credits Due, the scheme aims to ensure all songwriters and musicians are correctly identified when a song is recorded.

At present, missing and incomplete data means that about £500m is unallocated or misallocated globally every year. "It happens frequently," Ulvaeus told the BBC. "Which means that streaming services don't know who to pay."

The scheme will also ensure fans see the correct credits for songs - from the writers and producers to the session musicians and engineers.

"We want to get back to that experience we had when we opened a double-sleeved LP and listened to the songs while reading the liner notes," Ulvaeus explained. "I think that's a very valuable experience that young listeners today are missing."

The scheme will ensure that every person who is involved in the creation of a song will be "clickable in the digital liner notes", allowing you to look up every other record they have worked on. .......
[it is a long article]
Edit, Key words: about £500m is unallocated or misallocated

Re: When copyright protection mechanism bite the bands who own the music
 

He was very vocal about it here. He pointed out they don't actually need the money like struggling artistes do - but their income plummeted. In the UK - the royalties paid out by PRS (the Performing Rights Society - I'm a member) still seem based on CDs in the main. One of my friends had a modest hit in the 70s and got decent royalties every year, then when streaming started, his money dropped and dropped each year. He's older and totally non-computer literate so didn't even understand streaming. His music is not on spotify and the others because he didn't know he had to do this. We also have PPL - in the UK these people deal with recording royalties - so the people in the studio get money. I get a little from them, not a lot. One of my recordings was of a popular song from the 70s - and got some airplay on the BBC. I get nothing from PRS because I didn't write it, but I do get a little from PPL for the recording rights. PPL get their BBC play info so that works - but PRS and PPL have never paid me a penny for anything streamed. This is what ABBA are complaining about. Thousands or even millions of downloads and streams just ignored by the two biggest rights organisations. I do get money from my 'go to sleep' music - own compositions that are so dull people fall asleep. Maybe $20-30 a month, so not that exciting, but that's with me doing all the distribution and stiff like that, and Songtradr who I use for my own work don't do the cover versions. I've just gone with a new company and am trying them out, because they licence them for the USA - oddly, covers in the UK seem unregulated at the moment, but without the US licence, Youtube is a problem.

It's a real mess. It's broken and needs fixing. My Distrokid cancelled account took my royalties from Tik Tok and just refused to pay them to me (and loads of others) I can't do anything about it. I contacted Tik Tok and complained Distrokid were claiming my royalties. Tik Tok solved it. They removed the videos with my music on them! No wonder people are bitter.

Re: When copyright protection mechanism bite the bands who own the music
 

You might be interested in this development: This $23 million YouTube music royalties heist is a huge reminder that online copyright is deeply flawed

There is more at the article, and more still at the referenced Billboard source article.

Ultimately it was "an investigation by the IRS and their indictment that month on 30 counts of conspiracy, wire fraud, money laundering and aggravated identity theft" which took 'em down.

This quote from the Billboard article will resonate with you. "Batista’s plea agreement revealed that it didn’t take a criminal mastermind to rob music creators of their rightful royalties. According to multiple industry sources, hustles similar to MediaMuv’s are well-known among those in the music business who work in digital rights management..."

Andrew

Re: When copyright protection mechanism bite the bands who own the music
 

On YouTube you have people like mr beast earning so much that they give away houses and even desert islands, yet they are totally reliant on YouTube paying them what YouTube say they owe them. You sell items on ebay and you know what you will get. Imagine ebay if they paid you three months later and just listed your sales data and you just had to trust they got it right. I had somebody claim one of my songs, I disputed it and eventually just got a note saying they have dropped their claim, not sorry, or even any details about why they thought they owned it anyway, just, they’ve closed the request. Stinks, but that’s how it is nowadays. That said, YouTube, Spotify and the others now pay me more than out official rights organisations have ever done. They are totally useless, so how much of my money did they simply miss over the years?

Re: When copyright protection mechanism bite the bands who own the music
 

... and reports are in that it's getting worse on yet another level with the "visual claim" being put to use by schemers. Even if the footage is from NASA and therefore copyright can't be claimed by anyone.

Andrew

Re: When copyright protection mechanism bite the bands who own the music
 

Well as they say, the wheels of justice turn very slowly ... at least until lunch time.

Looks like someone has woken up to the scam. The US government is seeking a prison sentence of 70 months for one of the guilty offenders.

One of the plea agreements revealed:

Plenty more at https://torrentfreak.com/u-s-seeks-7...cammer-230623/

Andrew