The Upcoming YouTube Music Showdown

YouTube multichannel networks (MCNs) like Maker, Machinima, and Fullscreen have reshaped the business of online video, but there's still one dicey area that hasn't yet been worked out to everyone's satisfaction - the music that accompanies many of those videos.

It's about to get interesting in that regard as music library Freeplay Music recently filed a lawsuit against some of the largest MCNs in the business.

Disney's Maker Studios, DreamWorks Animation's Awesomeness, Big Frame and BroadbandTV where all slammed with suits that claimed the unauthorized use of Freeplay's music in videos on their channels.

Not satisfied with YouTube's Content ID system of spotting music usage, Freeplay incorporated its own digital fingerprinting technology called TuneSat to discover what it claims was rampant unauthorized use of its music.

The company offers free licenses to video producers to use its music for non-commercial purposes, and that's the rub. In a countersuit, the MCNs have claimed that Freeplay is being deceptive with their licenses, getting a producer to use its music for free only to turn around later and demand payment.

The problem with all this is that the MCNs are responsible for policing their own copyright situations, but you could see how difficult this could be with thousands of channels and millions of videos, which is why Freeplay went to the fingerprinting system to more precisely determine for sure if its music was being used.

YouTube has been like the Wild West for a number of years when it came to music licensing, but now that everyone is aware huge amount of the money involved, it's finally gotten the attention of everyone in music publishing in a big way. Whichever way the lawsuit turns out, it can only be good for songwriters, as every little income stream is now so important.

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Bill Gates Enters The Music Business

It was recently announced that Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates is getting into the music business, which is an interesting move, although not in the way you might think.

Gates owns Corbis, which is a photo, film, video and art masterpiece library service, which is taking the next step by getting into the music licensing business by launching GreenLight Music with songs from the four largest music publishers.

What the service will do is allow film and video customers to purchase the license for a wide variety of songs available from a library of about a million strong, but in many cases the users actually have to bid on the song and negotiate with the publishers for a price instead of doing a clean purchase online.

One of the first deals that GreenLight did was to license The Monkees' "Daydream Believer" for $1,875 so it could be used during a corporate meeting. Just about any songwriter or publisher will take that kind of dough any day of the week.

The interesting twist is that GreenLight doesn't actually control the copyright to any of the songs in its library, it's merely a middleman. Since producers and editors are already used to checking out Corbis for visual material, it's a no brainer to offer the audio as well.

You may or may not like Microsoft, but no one ever said that Bill Gates isn't one smart guy. After all, he is worth about $56 billion. His action does show that someone actually is bullish on the business thriving in the future, as least on the publishing side of things.

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You should follow me on Twitter for daily news and updates on production and the music business.

Check out my Big Picture blog for discussion on common music, engineering and production tips and tricks.

MySpace Gains A Million Users

Can Justin Timberlake really be making a difference over at MySpace? Believe it or not, the once dominant social network claims to have "one-million plus new user accounts" in the last 30 days. In fact, it says that it's now "averaging 40,000 new registrations daily."

Why would anybody want to go back to MySpace? According to the company, it's because they have the world's largest song library at 42 million, and they have a new music player available. They also claim that it's Spotify, and not Facebook and Google+ that are their competitors. In fact, a quick check of the site shows that they have indeed rebranded themselves as "social entertainment," and they're now focusing on mainstream music, instead of the being indie focused as they once were.

Okay, a little reality check here. More does not necessarily mean better. What's the point of having a library of 42 million songs if most people could care less about at least 30 million of them? The other thing I'd like to see is exactly who these people are that are signing up for the service and where they're from.

Something tells me that there's these numbers are a little skewed, but as we all know about stats, they're always open to interpretation. After all, wasn't it just last March that MySpace lost 10 million users in a single month? It's really hard to add subscribers unless there's something worth their while, and there's been no sign of that so far.

What do you think - are we being hyped?

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Help support this blog. Any purchases made through our Amazon links help support this website with no cost to you.

You should follow me on Twitter for daily news and updates on production and the music business.

Check out my Big Picture blog for discussion on common music, engineering and production tips and tricks.

Another Day At The Music House

All facets of the music business are filled with people who shouldn't be there. You might've met them before. You know, the person who seems more interested in how every deal benefits themselves rather than the artist or company. This person usually has the insight of a lemming, following whatever trend that seems to be hot at the moment, usually against the better common sense of those around him.

Here's an animation that perfectly illustrates the point from the point of view of a music house (or library) being approached by an ad agency exec.

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Follow me on Twitter for daily news and updates on production and the music business.

Check out my Big Picture blog for discussion on common music, engineering and production tips and tricks.

Help support this blog. Any purchases made through our Amazon links help support this website with no cost to you.