YouTube under fire from musician Zöe Keating over Music Key contract

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/jan/23/zoe-keating-youtube-block-channel

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Musician Zöe Keating has criticised YouTube for threatening to block her channel unless she signs up to new terms covering its recently-launched YouTube Music Key service.

Keating is one of the most prominent artists releasing music herself, rather than through a label. She is therefore not covered by a deal between YouTube and indie labels licensing agency Merlin, which was signed in 2014 following a similar dispute over contractual terms for Music Key.

“My Google Youtube rep contacted me the other day. They were nice and took time to explain everything clearly to me, but the message was firm: I have to decide. I need to sign on to the new Youtube music services agreement or I will have my Youtube channel blocked,” wrote Keating in a blog post outlining her concerns.

Keating’s YouTube channel has 19 videos with a total of just under 520,000 views since she joined the service in 2007.

However, her blogpost explains that she also uses YouTube’s “content ID” system to get a credit and sometimes a share of ad revenues from the nearly 10,000 videos uploaded by other people that feature her music.

Those videos were watched 250,000 times in the last month alone, according to Keating, who claims YouTube has told her she will lose the ability to use content ID if her channel is blocked.

She also sets out the terms that she is being asked to sign up to for Music Key:

1) All of my catalogue must be included in both the free and premium music service. Even if I don’t deliver all my music, because I’m a music partner, anything that a 3rd party uploads with my info in the description will be automatically included in the music service too.

2) All songs will be set to “montetise”, meaning there will be ads on them.

3) I will be required to release new music on Youtube at the same time I release it anywhere else. So no more releasing to my core fans first on Bandcamp and then on iTunes.

4) All my catalogue must be uploaded at high resolution, according to Google’s standard which is currently 320 kbps.

5) The contract lasts for 5 years.

Keating adds that she had a phone call with YouTube in 2014 to discuss her concerns when its plans for Music Key were first announced, and did not enjoy the experience.

“The meeting was similar to one I had with DA Wallach of Spotify a couple years ago. Similar in that I got the sense that no matter how I explained my hands-on fan-supported anti-corporate niche thing, I was an alien to them. I don’t think they understood me at all,” she writes.

Keating worked as a software developer in San Francisco earlier in her career, which she believes gives her an insight into the approach of technology companies like Spotify and YouTube that is far from a luddite’s distrust of the new.

She sells music directly from her own page on Bandcamp, and has regularly published details of her digital earnings with the aim of sparking more debate about what changing digital music business models mean for musicians.

“A lot of people in the music industry talk about Google as evil. I don’t think they are evil. I think they, like other tech companies, are just idealistic in a way that works best for them. I think this because I used to be one of them,” she wrote.

“The people who work at Google, Facebook, etc can’t imagine how everything they make is not, like, totally awesome. If it’s not awesome for you it’s because you just don’t understand it yet and you’ll come around.

They can’t imagine scenarios outside their reality and that is how they inadvertently unleash things like the algorithmic cruelty of Facebook’s yearly review (which showed me a picture I had posted after a doctor told me my husband had 6-8 weeks to live).”

In her blogpost, Keating indicates she is in two minds over whether to accept the terms offered by YouTube, or let it block her channel.

The Guardian understands that YouTube’s policy is not to block or remove artists’ channels if they do not agree to its Music Key terms. They can still upload videos, but they cannot make money from advertising around them, nor can they claim third-party videos that include their music via the content ID system.

Keating would still be able to get those tracks removed if she chose, but without content ID she would have to first find them herself, and then submit individual “takedown” requests for each video – a time-consuming process, especially for a self-released artist.

YouTube also says that artists who sign up to its Music Key service remain free to release music earlier on other platforms, although this appears to contradict the terms that Keating has blogged about receiving.

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