In 2013, Jason Calacanis wrote a post titled, “I ain’t gonna work on YouTube’s farm no more.” In it, the media entrepreneur detailed how, despite being one of the top funded YouTube creator partners, he turned down the platform’s money when it was time to renew his contract.
Many thought he was crazy to reject cash from the largest online video distributor on the planet. But if the claims made about YouTube’s new partner agreement in a blog post by cellist Zoe Keating are true, it may have been a smart move after all.
First, some background on Keating’s post: YouTube is launching a subscription streaming music service not unlike Spotify or Rdio called “Music Key.” Last summer, the Google-owned video platform took heat for allegedly bullying independent labels and artists into agreeing to below-market royalty rates, with the threat that their content would otherwise be removed from YouTube’s previously free, open platform. YouTube rightly reversed course on that decision, but the new agreement it’s now offering to YouTube Partners is even worse.
The terms of the new agreement, while logical from YouTube’s perspective, place huge restrictions on where and how a musician can host their music on both YouTube and other platforms. And the bullying hasn’t stopped. Keating wrote that, if she refused to sign the new YouTube music services agreement, her channel, which has over a half a million views and close to 5,000 followers, would be blocked from the monetization portions of the platform.
According to the new agreement, anything Keating uploads to Youtube will be automatically included in the Music Key subscription service. And it’s not just Keating’s uploads. If she chooses to withhold anything from YouTube, but a third party subsequently uploads it, including her name in the description, it will also be added to Music Key. Not that Keating would have much incentive to withhold music — anything she releases on another platform, like Bandcamp or iTunes, must be uploaded to YouTube at the same time, per the terms of the new contract. (...)
The agreement also states that all of Keating’s videos, along with any third-party uploads of her songs, will be “monetized,” meaning there will be pre-roll ads placed ahead of them — or as she describes them, “Doritos ads.” This is hardly in the spirit of artist control nor YouTube’s ContentID feature, which spots when an artist’s song has been used in somebody else’s video. Normally, when an artist discovers their work has been uploaded by somebody else, they have three choices: Issue a DMCA notice to have the video taken down, monetize the video by allowing ads, or do nothing. ContentID is a reasonable, if imperfect, system that prioritizes artist control over all else. But going forward, if Keating doesn’t feel it’s right to force ads onto, say, a mother’s video mashup of her son’s sporting achievements set to Keating’s work, she has no choice.
Moreover, the contract lasts five years, which is long by industry standards — the Musicians Union recommends not signing any contract that lasts over three years.
But perhaps the worst element of the contract is that, unless she signs, not only will Keating lose the free promotion and analytics that she currently receives as a YouTube partner, but she won’t be able to monetize through ContentID at all. Even if this “monetization” is only pennies for many artists, and even if they have to share those pennies with YouTube, the notion that artists will be paid literally nothing for their work unless they sign an onerous contract is egregious. Hell, I could upload a song I wrote to that most-despised service Spotify right now through a service like TuneCore and theoretically make money off it without signing an insanely restrictive contract. (The number of listens would likely be so low that the royalty amount would be less than the cost of the paper check it was written on, but that isn’t the point).
And again, if Keating refuses to comply with any of these stipulations, her channel, and the audience she’s spent years building and who expect to see her work on YouTube, will be eliminated, per YouTube’s latest demand. With this, YouTube has gone from the most artist-friendly major music platform on the planet to the least.
Many thought he was crazy to reject cash from the largest online video distributor on the planet. But if the claims made about YouTube’s new partner agreement in a blog post by cellist Zoe Keating are true, it may have been a smart move after all.First, some background on Keating’s post: YouTube is launching a subscription streaming music service not unlike Spotify or Rdio called “Music Key.” Last summer, the Google-owned video platform took heat for allegedly bullying independent labels and artists into agreeing to below-market royalty rates, with the threat that their content would otherwise be removed from YouTube’s previously free, open platform. YouTube rightly reversed course on that decision, but the new agreement it’s now offering to YouTube Partners is even worse.
The terms of the new agreement, while logical from YouTube’s perspective, place huge restrictions on where and how a musician can host their music on both YouTube and other platforms. And the bullying hasn’t stopped. Keating wrote that, if she refused to sign the new YouTube music services agreement, her channel, which has over a half a million views and close to 5,000 followers, would be blocked from the monetization portions of the platform.
According to the new agreement, anything Keating uploads to Youtube will be automatically included in the Music Key subscription service. And it’s not just Keating’s uploads. If she chooses to withhold anything from YouTube, but a third party subsequently uploads it, including her name in the description, it will also be added to Music Key. Not that Keating would have much incentive to withhold music — anything she releases on another platform, like Bandcamp or iTunes, must be uploaded to YouTube at the same time, per the terms of the new contract. (...)
The agreement also states that all of Keating’s videos, along with any third-party uploads of her songs, will be “monetized,” meaning there will be pre-roll ads placed ahead of them — or as she describes them, “Doritos ads.” This is hardly in the spirit of artist control nor YouTube’s ContentID feature, which spots when an artist’s song has been used in somebody else’s video. Normally, when an artist discovers their work has been uploaded by somebody else, they have three choices: Issue a DMCA notice to have the video taken down, monetize the video by allowing ads, or do nothing. ContentID is a reasonable, if imperfect, system that prioritizes artist control over all else. But going forward, if Keating doesn’t feel it’s right to force ads onto, say, a mother’s video mashup of her son’s sporting achievements set to Keating’s work, she has no choice.
Moreover, the contract lasts five years, which is long by industry standards — the Musicians Union recommends not signing any contract that lasts over three years.
But perhaps the worst element of the contract is that, unless she signs, not only will Keating lose the free promotion and analytics that she currently receives as a YouTube partner, but she won’t be able to monetize through ContentID at all. Even if this “monetization” is only pennies for many artists, and even if they have to share those pennies with YouTube, the notion that artists will be paid literally nothing for their work unless they sign an onerous contract is egregious. Hell, I could upload a song I wrote to that most-despised service Spotify right now through a service like TuneCore and theoretically make money off it without signing an insanely restrictive contract. (The number of listens would likely be so low that the royalty amount would be less than the cost of the paper check it was written on, but that isn’t the point).
And again, if Keating refuses to comply with any of these stipulations, her channel, and the audience she’s spent years building and who expect to see her work on YouTube, will be eliminated, per YouTube’s latest demand. With this, YouTube has gone from the most artist-friendly major music platform on the planet to the least.
by David Holmes, Pando Daily | Read more:
Image: Brad Jonas
