The YouTube Contract for Indies
digitalmusicnews.com
digitalmusicnews.com
Key Points
1. Removes windowing, unless you give youtube offers within reason (but what reason?). (Part 4/3b)
2. Google forces you to offer them comparable offers.
3. Parts of the contract are Illegal in many countries.
4. Prevents future sales through multiple means.
Major Paragraph:
“Catalogue Commitment and Monetization. It is understood that as of the Effective Date and throughout the Term, Provider’s entire catalogue of Provider Sound Recordings and Provider Music Videos (including Provider Music Videos delivered via a third party) will be available for the Premium and Free Services for use in connection with each type of Relevant Content, (excluding AudioSwap Recordings, which will be at Provider’s option) and set to a default policy of Monetize for both the Premium and Free Services, except as otherwise set forth in this Agreement. Further, Provider will provide Google with the same Provider Sound Recordings and Provider Music Videos on the same day as it provides such content to any other similarly situated partners. The foregoing will be subject to reasonable quantity of limited-time exclusive promotional offers (in each case, with a single third party partner) (“Limited Exclusives”), as long as a) Provider provides Google with comparable exclusive promotional offers and b) the quantity and duration of such Limited Exclusives do not frustrate the intent of this Agreement.”
Meaning:
YouTube not only forces artists to make their entire catalogs available on its free service however, it also demands that it happens on release day, online AND off-line.
This prevents future sales — i.e. YouTube users can now download all songs for free, which means there’s no need for anybody to buy music from iTunes anymore.
Side notes:
3. Rate Change. To the extent that any major label agrees to any rates for the Google Services that are lower than the rates set forth in Exhibits C or D, including with respect to bundling, Google will have the right to reduce Provider’s analogous rates accordingly, following thirty (30) days written notice (via email will be sufficient) to Provider.
Also, check below for some more in-depth links that convert to laymans more.
No it doesn't. It says right there in what you quoted that it doesn't.
> "The foregoing will be subject to reasonable quantity of limited-time exclusive promotional offers (in each case, with a single third party partner) (“Limited Exclusives”), as long as a) Provider provides Google with comparable exclusive promotional offers and b) the quantity and duration of such Limited Exclusives do not frustrate the intent of this Agreement."
And AFAIK the common case of music labels is to license an entire catalog or not
1) The time limited offer can only be with ONE single third party.
2) You must provide Google with comparable offers (when they might not be a suitable partner for comparable offers).
One problem with this whole discussion is that we have no previous contract to compare to. It's possible these are all new conditions or it's possible these are exactly the same clauses except with the subscription service mentioned.
Edit: In fact, here's the iTunes similar clause:
> "Except for a special circumstance, such as an exclusive, limited-time, one-off promotion for particular COMPANY Content, or for a reason beyond COMPANY’s control (e.g., a third party contractual restriction), or as otherwise agreed by the Parties, COMPANY (or a third party designated by COMPANY in writing and approved by ITUNES) shall commence delivery of all existing COMPANY Content as soon as reasonably possible following the Effective Date, and prospectively during the Term, for just cleared COMPANY Content and new releases, at least in time for ITUNES to begin selling eMasters the earlier of a general release date, provided by COMPANY, or when any other distributor is permitted to begin selling, or making commercially available, COMPANY Content in any format."[1]
essentially, absent exclusive one-off promotions, all the company's music has to be provided to iTunes, and new music has to be made available on the general release date or when other distributors can start selling it, whichever is earlier.
[1] http://www.digitalmusicnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/i...
IANAL though, and don't even understand the contract after reading it.
More like: Users can pay for a service that allows them to cache songs for offline playback in their YouTube app. It's not free and it's not like users are downloading the MP3s.
Edit: And in fact, this whole thread is kind of a red herring. We already had this same conversation about DRM, and it turned out people did indeed go to paid services when it's easy to use them. It turns out many millions of people will pay to stream music, even when there are many ways to get music for free for a little more effort.
Same thing here. As far as I've heard, it's for offline listening, not download and have a file forever. The file will probably live in your youtube app and it will require breaking into it to get the music for free. I'm sure there will quickly be programs to do that, but most people won't care.
Every penny you contribute to these criminal assholes is hurting the artists you love. The sooner the recording industry goes bankrupt, the sooner we can move on to something better.
(not to mention a quick google for artist - track [zippy|mp3skull|hulk|mp3|etc] typically will give a download link with next to no effort)
This is about an official service offered by Google/Youtube.
If there was a news story about a new video streaming service, would you reply "all the movies are already on the Pirate Bay"?
The point is, you can't just as easily rip content from Spotify, Pendora, or any of the other streaming services.
Enough with this idiotic copyright bullshit. If you don't want people to copy your stuff, stop publishing it! We don't need copyright. Why is the law enforcement that I pay for with my tax money working to prevent alice from copying something bob put out in public?
Now if bob took alice's secret documents, and put them out for the world to see I can understand. However, this copyright mess is out of control. Please... Let's put an end to this nonsense.
Offtopic, but what do you mean YouTube doesn't "allow" downloading in 1080p? If you can watch it in 1080p, you can download it in 1080p.
youtube-dl -x [video link]I'm not expert on contract or antitrust law, but this seems like its sailing very close to the wind. I can see a consumer benefit argument for YouTube, but I can equally see an argument that it's just an incumbent entrenchment strategy designed to keep content providers locked in, a poison pill that prevents them entering into an exclusive arrangement with any other distributor.
They either take the deal Google has given them which is bad, or say no, and risk getting removed from YouTube and having their music uploaded by fans as lower quality streams. In other words, they take less money, or possibly lose everything while paying huge fees to send YouTube take down notices.
This is bad for the consumer in my opinion. I want indie musicians and labels to be able to make more money, not less. This further incentives musicians to look for another path of work.
Its disappointing that while technology is making it easier than ever to record and produce music, its becoming tougher and tougher to make a living off it.
That's normal. Market commoditization. The problem is musician and labels don't want to change and they are learning the hard way.
I'd be interesting to see how many people live off music in the last century.
If they aren't willing to compete in new ways and change their business models, yes.
Even television shows have this problem. Commercial revenues are down, so production costs go down (more reality TV) and the format of advertising has adapted (more GM cars featured prominently).
We are inevitably reaping the consequences of what freeloaders have been sowing for some years now. It still costs a lot up front to make good quality content, more than ever as we push the envelope in some media like the big name games and movies. If too many people just take it for free with whatever excuse instead of doing something that ultimately supports all the artists and other creative professionals who make these works, then those people are going to have to find other jobs to do to pay the rent, and our culture is left poorer for it.
If they started selling episodes for $1.99/each in HD the day after they air they'd see their upfront capital they get from their recurring subscriptions evaporate, and the show would also go away.
The difficulty with the "adapt or die" reasoning isn't GoT, it's shows 2-10 on the popularity chart, where show 2 has only a fraction of the audience and brings in only a fraction of the revenue but its fans still want the same production values.
Ironically, in the time of the sacred internet, cutting a limited edition on Vinyl is still more profitable than any other digital form for a lot of small artists :)
I'm not complaining though, because I refuse to look at art as plain business and rather earn nothing at all than compromise doing what i love for a better ROI.
I think people should value money less. The artists/label on one hand, and the people who are too greedy to spend a few bucks on something every once in a while, because they can get it for free on the other.
Update: And i do believe that the current time is probably the best ever to make music, from a purely artistic viewpoint.
This is true of every single profession that involves creating digital media. Writing, journalism, video, film, game dev, photography, you name it. The money is falling out.
I think a large part of the problem is that in all of those fields, people love what they do. Of course, they work very hard at it too, but what that means is that there are a large number of people producing media for the sheer joy of it.
As the cost of production goes down, an increasing number of "amateurs" can create media, and as distribution costs drop, that media is more easily disseminated. The end result is that people willing to do stuff for free are crowding out the paid players.
There are some exceptions, of course, creative people who make a ton of money, but they're the narrow end of the power curve. For an increasing number of people, being creative isn't a lucrative gig.
I don't believe that's a good or bad thing, just a thing. What I do think is bad is when people who make great creative works don't have the time or opportunity to do that. It's a waste if a talented musician has to spend 40 hours a week at some lame job to pay their bills and only has a few hours for music on the side.
But that's not a problem with the music not paying the bills as much as it is with the bills themselves. If we lived in some sort of utopia where we all the essentials we needed to get by for free, then there'd be no reason to whine about artists not getting paid. They wouldn't need to.
Also, the absolute amount of good content keeps going up. Those old Louis Armstrong albums aren't going away. People still listen to the Beatles and the Stones. And this is true of nearly all varieties of content.
The only timely content (sports, news, contest shows) is partially immune to this, but even then, attention is scarce and more quality entertainment enters the public domain every year. Right now it's mostly (classic!) books, but decades in the future, HD content will be 100% free to use and distribute and the bottom will really fall out of everything.
I don't see how that follows, except for the terrible logic of less profit for the musician is automatically bad for the consumer because people will just stop making music if they can't get rich off it. It looks like they're fighting back against exclusives and bullshit restrictions like "you can stream the first 5 songs, but if you want more you have to buy the album for $14.99", just the sort of thing everybody was complaining about two weeks ago when amazon launched their streaming service.
I understand that musicians like money. I can empathize with that, i like money too. But trying to frame it as good for the consumer is silly.
It's not terrible logic, it's fundamentally sound. It's just not absolute.
That is, people won't "just stop" across the board. But the harder we make it to make money from making music itself, the more time would-be music makers will have to spend finding some other way to make money to finance their life.
So you lose music at the margins, particularly music that requires a higher level of investment to produce, particularly from those who have less disposable time/money.
but among professional full-time music only indie musicians - the majority are below middle class. they do not own a home, they have debt.
a minority have achieved enough success to live a normal middle class lifestyle.
Are people expected to feel sympathy for these companies? Have we forgotten that people turned to big centralized services for their music as a direct result of the recording industry's aggressive effort to kill P2P? This situation was created by the labels' own actions, their failure to embrace the Internet early on before these kinds services existed.
"Its disappointing that while technology is making it easier than ever to record and produce music, its becoming tougher and tougher to make a living off it."
It did not have to be that way. We could have set things up so that when a song was downloaded, the artist and recording studio that produced it received a small payment automatically. It could have been a truly innovative revenue stream.
We are talking about small independent labels.
> This situation was created by the labels' own actions
You are talking about major labels.
Illegal digital downloads disrupted everything, and cut profits substantially. Luckily, Apple and Steve Jobs showed up and offered a brief reprieve. But now, just a 10 years into paid digital downloads, when the new revenue is still a tiny fraction of the old revenue, the field is disrupted again by streaming. And as with previous disruptions, it appears revenue will again be cut dramatically.
I'm not sure what the takeaway is. Maybe the importance of owning your distribution channels?
That's a dangerous stance in general, probably better to listen to both sides whilst acknowledging that they are both likely to be biased in their own favour.
http://musicfeeds.com.au/news/study-confirms-illegal-downloa...
Supply of all types of media content is way up. There are only so many hours in the day, so demand is comparatively inelastic. This means per-unit cost has to go way down.
This is the general trend for pretty much all media, including things normally categorized as something else, like news and stage productions.
On the plus side, distribution is basically free and gatekeepers are losing their monopolies and monopsonies, so creators and consumers of niche products can connect better than ever.
Every year, the average household spends proportional more money on entertainment than the year before. If you only look at one part the market, the conclusion will be equal incorrect. First it was radio, the cassette tape, VHS, P2P, streaming, ectra ...), and each time someone proclaimed this was going to doom the "industry".
The music industry could argue that illegal music is pushing purchases to the movies, and the cinema could argue that illegal movies is pushing purchases to music services. Why should anyone believe either claim when the total profits from entertainment is going up?
Only because a decade beforehand the RIAA decided that instead of working on ways to monetize the Internet, they would work on ways to make computers less useful for music distribution. Basically the recording industry's shortsightedness and failure to embrace the greatest communications revolution since the printing press led to everything else you described.
To put it another way, the RIAA could have pushed for Congress to set up a micropayments system for music downloading, before most people even knew about music downloading. Instead they lobbied for the DMCA and spent their money developing DRM schemes that failed before they were ever deployed. Their "bad karma" is a result of their response to the complete failure of those efforts: abuse of the legal system on a massive scale.
Indie music may not show up on Google's metrics as being all that important, but it's a gateway drug of sorts. The internal data analysis is probably missing that.
Some other video site will pick this up (Vimeo is so primed for it) and pick up a lot of viewers in the process.
But there's also no guarantee YouTube will retain its viewers.
The viewers are only there for the content, not for YouTube.
If YouTube doesn't have the content, it won't have the viewers.
This is a market segment that can shift much more quickly than people (including Google, apparently) imagine.
Content is still, and will always be, king.
So, even if you want to start your own service, you are competing against the illegal copies on YouTube.
What's worse is that, technically, I'm not even sure how you do anything about this.
You could remove YouTube's safe harbor (which, to be fair, they really shouldn't have since they are monetizing the content), but I still don't see how YouTube would then police this.
The summary is that these terms are very unfavorable according to the indie artists and the companies they are affiliated with. They feel they are being strong-armed by Google and that Google is showing a strong preference toward large media companies and making it very difficult for future indie artists to become successful with this agreement.
It's worth noting that this is a negation process. This is Google's proposal and the labels aren't even willing to negotiate: http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jun/24/youtube-mu...
Also the fact that someone leaked this is most likely part of the negotiations.
The labels and Google were negotiating, the whole reason it went public was their shitty terms compared to major labels. No one said there wasn't negotiations taking place.
And it's wrong about its two major points, as other commenters pointed out: the contract doesn't limit "windowing", and the "covenant not to sue" just covers suing over copyright infringement for exactly what's covered in the contract itself.