YouTube removes many hit songs due to SESAC copyright dispute | Hacker News Reader

YouTube removes many hit songs due to SESAC copyright dispute

theverge.com

> SESAC stands for the Society of European Stage Authors and Composers,

> content represented by SESAC is no longer available on YouTube in the US.

This seems weird? SESAC is European but it's the US which loses the content? (Or is SESAC a global organization that just happens to have Europe in the name, in the same way the ECMAScript language isn't just used in Europe?)

According to Wikipedia, SESAC is american but has that name because they started out representing european composers abroad.

A Facebook poster capitalized on this a few days ago. A "Video Unavailable" image was posted with the Rick Astley title "Never Gonna Give You Up", and said "oh no, it's been removed after millions/billions of views!"

Since this was plausible with SESAC in the news (I don't know, Rick is a UK artist?) I did my own search, and indeed, got rickrolled...

I'll tell ya, it's a good strategy for YouTube to collect some stats on who searches for which songs, or tries to access them, after the announcement was planted!

I fell for it myself--as soon as I read the article I searched out Britney and my two favs were still online. However, I just now searched out Lily Allen, and it appears that the promo video for "Smile" is under embargo! A pox upon both their houses!

tl;dr YouTube's existing deal with SESAC (European artists union) is expired and the new one is still in negotiation.

Actually, apparently not yet:

> According to an unnamed source cited by Variety, this could be a negotiating tactic by YouTube because, they say, “the previous deal actually does not expire until next week.”

EDIT: Also if this is just a negotiating tactic, this is fucking stupid. I just pulled up the YouTube Downloads on my phone and a bunch of them are marked as unplayable for exactly this reason:

“This video contains content from SESAC. It is not available in your country.”

This is just making me pissed off at YouTube. YouTube as like the premier host for music and playlists that can’t be found anywhere else is the primary reason I use and pay for YouTube. Everything else is just a bonus.

YouTube claims the deal has expired

> our music license agreement with SESAC has expired without an agreement on renewal conditions

> https://x.com/TeamYouTube/status/1840098708274168037

And elsewhere stated the same: https://9to5google.com/2024/09/28/youtube-music-sesac/

I agree this would make zero sense as a negotiating tactic (If they did want to use it as a negotiating tactic, don't needlessly do it before the real expiration date.)

Assuming the unnamed source is correct, I would guess the agreement expires end-of-month, and countries start entering October at 3am Monday Pacific Time, and Google wanted to turn the switch off ahead of the weekend, in case there were issues.

I would have much rather had some transparency like "your monthly fee may increase by $X.XX because of SESAC negotiations, please vote yes or no to drop SESAC from the repository". Much better negotiating tactic, and possibly worth the extra cost.

On another note, if Blackstone is planning to squeeze profit out of SESAC and make it uncompetitive that's really unfortunate. I have loved having roughly equal access to all the music licensing/rights organizations for decades.

And SESAC was bought by equity firm Blackstone.

Hah, love this zombie epidemic of equity firms walking around not moaning "brains... brains" but "money... money", and swallowing anything they think they can squeeze money out of. Housing? Culture? Transportation?

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