YouTube "Video Distributor" Lies Exposed!

Hi and Happy New Year 2015!!

This is a great read for anyone who has music that they wrote and performed, (and paid for) a music video, and then posted it on YouTube. I have personally encountered this issue with my song, Psalm on Danny Boy, where some online Distributor has taken all my rights and money for over 300K views!  When I contested it with YouTube and sent them a copy of my copyright, they told me that the case was closed.  Huh??  Well that's just sick, I wrote it, I sang it, and I paid some guy a bunch of dough to produce it as a work for hire, and now I'm getting zippo.  I hope the below info is informative whether you're an artist, musician, or you just care about what's happening in music and to us artists!

Best, DeDe W. :)

www.DeDe-Music.com
www.Youtube.com/1dwedekind

This Is How Distribution Companies Are Stealing Artists’ YouTube Revenue…

Tuesday, August 13, 2013 
by

Jeff Price

The following guest post comes from Jeff Price, the original founder of TuneCore and now founder/CEO of Audiam.com.  Audiam’s objective is to get artists paid much more for the use of their music on YouTube.   

“Each time there is a new way for an artist to make money, a new way emerges for others to take it from them.”

The most recent example: with no justification, a significant percentage of an artist’s YouTube money is being taken by many of the music distribution companies – (music distribution companies are the companies that place an artist’s music into iTunes, AmazonMP3, Spotify etc.)

The distribution companies get away with this by claiming that they, not the artist, control the rights to the artists’ recordings for licensing into videos on YouTube.  This allows them to take a percentage of the artist’s YouTube money for doing nothing. They pull off this financial sleight of hand due to the incredibly tangled, confusing, backwards and, in some cases, almost impossible to understandcopyright laws and music business practices.

Case in point.  Distributors have never, ever controlled an artist’s right to license recordings into videos.  This makes sense; the distributors’ role is to distribute recordings of music onto the shelves of music stores and then administer back the money from the sale of the music.

Distributors do NOT license music into videos.

As we are all aware, YouTube is not a “store”; music is not placed on a “shelf” and consumers do not pay money to buy music from it.

These rather glaring facts are not stopping some distributors from sticking themselves between the artist and YouTube, taking a percentage of the artist’s YouTube money for doing absolutely nothing and adding it to their bottom line.

If this does not yet make sense to you, it’s for a good reason.  It’s confusing – and this confusion makes the unsuspecting artist vulnerable to being taken advantage of.

Let me explain in more detail.

How YouTube Works

There are two main ways to make money on YouTube.

One is from views of your own videos on your own YouTube account – this is called a “Channel.”

The second is from views of videos which use your music in them – this is called a “Claim.”

CHANNELS – How A Musician Can Make Money On Their Own Videos On YouTube.

Let’s say you wrote a song, recorded that song and made your own video with that song in it – like an official music video. This video would have three copyrights in it, all controlled by you:

1) One copyright for the video itself

2) One copyright for the recording of the song (called “The Master)

3) One copyright for the lyrics and melody to the song (called “The Composition”)

Next, you create an account at YouTube, called a “Channel” and upload your own video with your own music in it.  You then tell YouTube to “monetize” your video with ads (this option appears in your YouTube account for everyone. No middleman needed). When the ads generate money, YouTube pays you about 55% of what the advertiser paid them.

NOTE: This option to make money on your YouTube video is open to everyone; no middleman is needed.

CLAIMS – What Some Music Distribution Companies Are Doing On YouTube To Take A Piece Of The Artist’s Money

Let’s assume that as before, you wrote a song, recorded that song and made your own video with that song in it – like an official music video – and uploaded it to your own YouTube account (called a Channel).

Also as before, the video has three copyrights and as before all three copyrights are controlled by you:

1) One copyright for the video itself

2) One copyright for the recording of the song (called “The Master)

3) One copyright for the lyrics and melody to the song (called “The Composition”)

This time however, there is a twist; the artist used a distributor to put the music in his/her YouTube video on the shelf of iTunes, AmazonMP3 etc.  Unbeknownst to the artist, this distributor also has a special contract with YouTube called a “Direct Licensing” contract.

These “Direct Licensing” contracts are typically only given to larger music companies or distributors, not to individual artists or songwriters.  These contracts allow the distributors to tell YouTube that they, not the artist, control the rights to the music of a song being used in videos on YouTube.

In addition the “Direct Licensing” contract also allows the distributor to go into YouTube, find the artist’s own videos in the artist’s own YouTube account, have YouTube place ads on the artist’s videos and then (here’s the important part) have the YouTube ad money flow from YouTube directly to the distributor, not to the artist.

(NOTE – these same “direct licensing contracts can be used for good by finding other people’s videos using the artist’s music and making the artist money off of those, something an artist cannot do on his/her own).

Now that the distributors have the artist’s money, they take a cut of it before paying the artist whatever is leftover.  They very misleadingly call the percentage of money they take from the artist’s YouTube revenue a “distribution fee”.

Let’s be clear.  It is NOT a distribution fee, the distributor did not “distribute” anything to YouTube. It’s a “we’re taking a piece of your revenue because we can” fee.

What justification does the distributor have to get a cut of the artist’s money? Good question, and sadly there is not a good answer.

The distributor did not write the song, record the song or create the video.  They did not create the artist’s YouTube account or even upload the artist’s video to YouTube.

And they certainly did not cause people to watch the video which generates the ad money.

Finally, unlike other digital services like iTunes and Amazon, no middleman is needed; artists can go direct with YouTube and make ad money on their own videos themselves by simply uploading their video and clicking the “monetize” button.

In other words, the artist writes a song, records the song, mixes the song, masters the song, shoots a video, edits it together, uploads it to YouTube and gets people to watch it based on the merits of the music and video. The distributor, which did NOTHING to cause these views, create the music and is not needed as a middleman to make money on YouTube, sits back and just takes a chunk of the artists’ money.

Due to the complexities of copyright law and/or the artist not knowing they can just go direct with YouTube a chunk of the artist’s money is being taken by someone else.

In other words, these distributors do it because they can get away with it.

They don’t need to do this, they consciously choose to.  Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

In this day and age, I can’t believe we still have to fight for an honest system.  It really is not hard to give the artists all the money they are entitled to in a clear, timely and transparent fashion; you just have to want to do it.

But let’s say they don’t want to do it, and they’re solely in the game to make a lot of money at any expense. These sleight of hand business models work against them. Each time a stunt like this is pulled, eventually someone else will step forward with a way to correct things and completely cut them out (just look at what happened to the old school music industry).

As one example, in, 2005, I watched the artist needlessly have to give up their copyrights and a percentage of their money from the sale of their music in order to get it onto iTunes, so I started TuneCore (sadly, the investors in TuneCore threw out the three original founders and appear to no longer have the artist’s best interest in mind).

Now, in 2013, I’m watching the distributors have the artist needlessly give up a percentage of their YouTube money from views of their own videos on YouTube.   So I started Audiam (via Audiam, the artist gets 100% of the revenue from the views on their own YouTube videos and also makes money on other people’s YouTube videos).

Can’t the new music industry take a moment and look at the past and learn from it?  

If you screw the artist, eventually you are going to get cut out. Yes it’s easier to just take money by hiding behind the complexities, but if you truly want to create a great long lasting business of value, it’s going to take innovation and hard work.  You actually have to create something that makes money predicated on real value, not on smokescreens and sleight of hand.

Change the model from exploiting the artist to serving the artist and we all win, both financially and morally (and maybe you can even sleep better at night).

In the meantime, can you just cut it out?  Stop taking the artist’s money needlessly, its hard enough for them as it is.

- Jeff Price

Twitter Handle: @TuneCoreJeff

Blog: artistcore.blogspot.com

What does U2’s Deal With Apple Mean for the Music Industry?

Hi, DeDe here,

Personally, I love U2, and I think this was a very smart move for them. Bono has proven over and over through the years that he's not just a super-talented musician, he's also a true marketing genius. Look how he keeps re-creating his music, yet keeps it true to the U2 sound, and it's stayed more or less, quite popular...for almost 30 years.

However, this just shows how truly bad the situation has gotten for almost all of the artists in the music industry. What everyone's not telling you is that U2 got a huge paycheck (~100Million) behind the scenes from iTunes, Apple, etc. But for us non-famous, unknown, hardworking musicians and songwriters, this may be a signal of the final kiss of death for album and CD sales, which 99.9% of us still rely on for survival and in order to keep creating music....

There's got to be a solution here that protects artists, and pays us a fair amount for our new music-keeping copyright protections in place, while at the same time keeping music affordable and available to consumers. I'm open to your thoughts on this, any suggestions or ideas?... http://www.DeDe-Music.com

What does U2’s Deal With Apple Mean for the Music Industry? The world's biggest band have given their new album away for free on iTunes. But what's in it for them?

-From entertainment.ie, Sept. 2014

U2 sent shockwaves through the music industry last night by announcing at the launch of the new iPhone 6 that their new album 'Songs of Innocence' was to be given away completely free of charge on Apple's iTunes online music store.

To say that this is an unconventional method to release new material would be an understatement and it could potentially be seen as a seismic shift in the way music is delivered to its audience. Since the advent of iTunes and, more lately Spotify, the means by which people experience music has been subverted. Purists suggest that this is to the detriment to the concept of the album as a standalone collection of music, as today's listeners seem more content to download or stream a series of individual tracks as they grow their personally curated collections. It's the musical equivalent of separating the wheat from the chaff.

By partnering with Apple and giving their entire record away for free, U2 have embraced the digital age in a way that many of their contemporaries have appeared so hesitant to do and also encouraged fans to download and listen to the albums as a whole rather than to cherry-pick their way through it by downloading the odd single here or there.

But what exactly is in this for U2? Quite a lot, it turns out. Bono has said on many occasions, and as recently as last week, that he doesn't believe in "free" music so it would be naive to suggest that this is an entirely philanthropic gesture by U2. Various figures are traversing the internet this morning about exactly how much U2 will earn from their "free" album and it's entirely possible that this could generate Bono and co. more than any other album they've released in the last two decades.

The Wall Street Journal quotes a source "familiar with the talks" who said U2 were paid an astonishing $100 million for their participation, with Apple only too happy to realign with the group they previously worked with ten years ago to release a special U2 iPod. This move was also presumably designed to incentivise the purchase of U2's back catalogue in iTunes to a younger audience and to highlight ticket sales for the eventual tour on the back of 'Songs of Innocence' (though it's unlikely they would have needed to much help in that regard).

Jimmy Iovine, record producer and co-founder of Beats, explained Bono's intentions further to Time.

"The charts are broken", he said. "The old music industry has reached a low point and hasn't kept up with the digital world. He wants to see the artists' reach measured by how much they're listened to, by whatever medium or method."

U2 are following the lead of Beyonce, Jay Z and Radiohead who in the past have released music either unannounced, packaged with a tech company or free. In fact, Beyonce sold around 800,000 units of her last album within a week (though fans had to pay for it) when it was made instantly available on iTunes and U2 are expected to far eclipse that figure.

What can we take from this? It's a pretty strong indicator from U2 that they think the traditional means for music distribution is broken and what they have done with 'Songs of Innocence' is set a very appealing, if completely unsustainable, precedent. When the sales figures are released in a week or so we expect there'll be a few happy faces around the Vico Road but where does this leave the bands who are relying on album sales to generate income or recoup losses?

Releasing an album for free (or by having Apple write you a Euro Millions sized cheque) is a luxury only afforded to the 1%, leaving countless other bands trying to keep their balance on the shaky ground that is today's music industry.When the world's biggest band acknowledges that the system in place to sell music to the public is broken, where does that leave the little guy? U2's free album will no doubt be a delight to many but it might just be the clearest indicator yet that the system we have in place is irreparably damaged.

Time for a Royalty Check? Kiss that goodbye...or, is there any hope out there?

A great read about Royalties for songs, movies, video games, photos, books, etc. Be sure to see my comment at the end.  DeDe :)

William Buckley Jr.

Founder and President, FarePlay, Inc.

Online Piracy Finally In the Crosshairs

On March 13, the Congressional Subcommittee on copyright reform held hearings on proposed revisions to the DMCA, Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Those invited to testify were evenly split between those who represented the tech industry and those who represented the artist and Copyright. Maria Schneider, a Grammy Award Winner, was the lone artist represented on the panel. She presented honest, impassioned testimony framing the serious challenges of out-of-control piracy from an artist's perspective.

Written in 1998, with the intent of protecting both copyright holders and website owners, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, quickly became a devastating problem for copyright holders. Not coincidentally, barely a year later, in 1999, Shawn Fanning launched Napster, marking the beginning of online piracy and over a decade of artist abuse.

Now, fifteen years later, most pirate sites are still operating under the protection provided by the DMCA's Safe Harbor; a loop-hole that has enabled pirate sites to thrive in a quasi-legal gray area. A safe harbor from which online pirates claim compliance by engaging in what is commonly referred to as whack-a-mole, a process where infringing sites comply with take down notices by taking down the infringing content only to have the same content reposted almost immediately from another source.

Read more here:  http:http://www.huffingtonpost.com/william-buckley-jr/online-piracy-finally-in-_b_5086820.html