Google removes all Danish music from YouTube

[SpaceGhostC2C]

18 hours ago, duncannah said:

Maybe the EU could step in? They probably won't though

Why would they? I don't even think it's correct to say "Google removed" - it's the other way around.

Copyright holders are the ones requesting their music not being on youtube. In many countries, especially in Europe, you have these kind of "copyright unions", associations that negotiate on behalf of the myriad musicians (or not, as long as they hold the copyright) that join them, and distribute the proceed between the members. Examples would be GEMA in Germany, SGAE in Spain, etc. Such organizations have often been under scrutiny for two main problems: 1) how they split the money among members (or in some cases, where is the money?), and 2) they organizations with voluntary membership, yet they often intervene despite the content belonging to non-members, or are endowed with some power or used as instruments for public policy by governments, as if the organization was equivalent to the entirety of the creators in the country, or was itself a government agency.

 

Therefore, by default, these organization have always blocked everything appearing everywhere. The "not available in your country" is commonplace (they are still available if your IP is foreign, though). Youtube makes money from monetizing views, so it's in their interest to have content that people watch, and the KODAs of the world want to either prevent it or receive a share. Hence, without an agreement there can be no content or KODA/GEMA/etc would sue Google immediately

 

Basically, this is like saying that Napster "removed content to force an agreement" to offer downloads of copyrighted material: it's the only legal course of action available to them.

[mr moose]

The thing about all this that it is a shite situation for majority of artists.   As someone who works with artists and my son is a budding artist who already has work being used in more commercial ventures, I am firmly on the side of the artist.  IF the artist can't get what they want (regardless of whether it is a classic piss take or due to  streaming services not being able to afford it) then they have the right to say no to them using it.    If youtube isn't viable enough to pay reasonable royalties then it should either shut down or stick to content from people who don't care about being paid.   I say the same thing about spotify and apple as well.   If your business structure is not profitable then fuck off, stop insisting everyone else take a pay cut so you can stay in business. 

 

 

And yes I would happily pay A$20 for a cd off the shelf than watch musicians struggle.

 

 

Also for those who have never considered what it's like.  Imagine rehearsing several times a week, investing 10's of thousands of $ into instruments and gear then get told they can do the gig for exposure.  Or worse get told $1000 is a bit much for nights work isn't it? Ask yourself, would you be happy working 6 hours on a Saturday night for $100?  Imagine trying to get 6 plumbers to work 6 hours for that!  What about spending 6 months full time putting together an album that cost you $1500 just for studio time only to find out it isn't even likely to earn half that through streaming royalties.

 

 

[Spindel]

2 hours ago, The89Lunder said:

Spotify Premium - 1,40 USD

Spotify Free - 0,14 USD

Apple Music - 4,22 USD

Tidal - 2,32 USD

YouTube - 0,32 USD

Looking at that table artists (or at least copyright holders) should out right endorse Apple Music.

 

 

[Tea-Sir]

15 minutes ago, Spindel said:

Looking at that table artists (or at least copyright holders) should out right endorse Apple Music.

 

 

Yeah I was quite surprised to see that as well.

[Macedk]

16 hours ago, The89Lunder said:

@porina

I know Spotify did not have an easy time getting into Denmark either. KODA can be very protective, to the point of overprotective. It felt like they were dragging their feet back then.

 

Without knowing the numbers, it is difficult to figure out who is in the wrong. The way I see it, they can both be at fault. Maybe the world needs a discussion about what YouTube is? Is it a subscription service or something else, maybe we need to invent a new word?

 

YouTube has so many good things going for it, I use it to upload tutorial videos sometimes. I also use it to keep up with news and reviews. LMG is a fairly good example of what YouTube also is.

 

YouTube is just such a large platform, it puts Google in a position where they can bully the contributors to just accept their rules and prices or hit the fence. Who tells Google/YouTube when fair is no longer fair?

 

@Macedk

I didn't try to snipe the post, we just both saw something missing here I guess, and because I needed a little time to clean up my english writing, you got there first

(at least you didn't write "first" )

All good sir

[mr moose]

1 hour ago, Spindel said:

Looking at that table artists (or at least copyright holders) should out right endorse Apple Music.

 

 

It certainly is out of the ballpark. I wonder if there are any other countries with a Koda equivalent fighting that that hard for artists?

[mr moose]

2 minutes ago, Benji said:

I think the German GEMA had basically everything locked off on YouTube because they couldn't come to a compromise that fits both companies. I think their issue was also that YouTube paid too little, as it seems to be in this case.

It really illustrates just how ill suited the entertainment industry is for the internet from a viability perspective.   Too many mouths to feed and not enough ways to increase the revenue.

[straight_stewie]

Would this deal be in line with other deals Google has made with music companies?

[Mihle]

1 hour ago, mr moose said:

It certainly is out of the ballpark. I wonder if there are any other countries with a Koda equivalent fighting that that hard for artists?

There are are a Norwegian equivalent, TONO, but I do not know about their deal with YouTube, and I dont know when the deal between them is negotiated next time/last time, so dont know how how hard they fight for the artists.
But if their deal renewal for this time have not happened yet, then its just logical that TONO is looking at what happens with this deal...

[porina]

I didn't go looking for it, but I found this: https://soundcharts.com/blog/music-streaming-rates-payouts#how-much-does-spotify-pay-per-stream

Post date was June last year, so just over a year old.

 

I'll scale it to USD/1000 plays below. Please see link above on how they got to these values.

 

11.96 Amazon Music Unlimited

9.89 Tidal

8.02 YouTube Red (is that still a thing? If I search for it, it takes me to YouTube Premium. Article also includes YouTube Music in this)

5.63 Apple Music

5.51 Google Play Music (now transitioning to YouTube Music)

3.39 Amazon Prime

3.18 Spotify

1.64 YouTube official channel content

0.87 YouTube ContentID (indirect usage)

 

Again, this is at best a year out of date numbers, but it gives a wider picture. YouTube subscription services seem to pay within the ball park of other services. Presumably the complaints Koda have are that ad-supported views are a much lower payout, if they're not also dropping lower due to current world circumstances.

 

It was also interesting that sub fees vary across the world quite significantly. I wonder how that might affect payouts also, although probably not for Koda since they only represent a geographic region.

 

I wonder if a way out of this would be for Google to say, here's what hosting and serving costs are. You pay that separately, but you get a bigger cut of the ad revenue. It would give a more transparent picture than the current model where running costs have to be taken out of the ad income. I don't for a moment think this would result in them getting paid more, and it would shift more of the risk to Koda.

[kpluck]

On 7/31/2020 at 5:00 AM, The89Lunder said:

I don’t have any idea what the artists receives now, or what Google is demanding specifically. That info does not seem to be out there yet.

 

The only thing I could find to add to this is this quote from Youtube Music…

Quote

Dan Chalmers, director of Youtube Music for Europe, Middle East and Africa, said that Koda was “asking for significantly more than what we pay our partners around the world”.

 

-kp

[Luxzio22]

These are exactly the kind of stories I want to see on an international forum. If something shady has been pulled on me, I'd want everyone who can help and is knowledgeable about the topic to know about it. +1 to OP.

[Brooksie359]

On 7/31/2020 at 11:08 AM, Drama Lama said:

Oh they will if „ article 13 „ has shown us anything it’s that the EU is often on the side of copyright owners ( like publishing companies )

and the EU isn’t known for touching Google, Facebook and others with silk gloves 

No they won't. What has Google or YouTube done wrong in this case? They simply didn't want to pay the rights for the songs so they removed them from the platform. The EU can't force YouTube to pay for the music license and keep the music on their platform. That would be ridiculous.