I mean, you're supposed to ask permission to make a cover. That's kind of their choice?
No, that’s actually a specific carve-out in US copyright law dating back to the Copyright Act of 1909.
It’s certainly a nice thing to do (like weird al and parodies), but it’s not required, and it’s completely useless for a budding singer to “ask permission” to do a cover from a popular artist or group, the request will go straight to the bin unread.
> That's kind of their choice?
Of course it is, but a copyright strike is a heavy handed and damaging choice. The Eagles are apparently notorious for this behaviour.
Keep in mind that a mechanical license wouldn't cover you on YouTube anyway - once you're making a video for your cover you now need a sync license which you do need permission for.
NOTE: This was explained to me by a musician/producer. I don't have firsthand knowledge of the system.
From the last instance I’ve seen that wasn’t even an option, the video was struck down and that was it.
Granted that was a cover not just a small bit of cover inside a longer video, but the cover-er specifically noted the Eagles opted to neither revenue-share (which was the cover’s state as it’d been properly content-id’d as a cover) nor demonetise, just take down the video entirely.
He also cites Rick Beato as having repeatedly had analysis of Eagles songs taken down.
Though maybe it’s because YouTube only has revenue sharing, you can’t send 100% revenue to the eagles?
Once (at least!) burned, forever shy. And they're not wrong: what YouTube does is also exploitative. Anybody on YouTube who's building a career on publicising the reprocessing of other people's music in any way, is building on sand. In no way are they any better off than the Eagles were under their original contracts.
Leaving the question, is it better to do react videos on Creedence because the owners aren't issuing copyright strikes, when you know that Creedence was robbed?