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Google Threatens to Remove All Danish Music From YouTube (musicbusinessworldwide.com) 83

Posted by EditorDavid from the stopping-the-music dept.
YouTube is "embroiled in a very public spat with songwriters and music publishers in Denmark," according to one music-industry news site. They cite Koda, the group that collects royalties and licensing fees for musicians, as saying that YouTube is now threatening to remove all music written by Danish songwriters: The cause of this threat is a disagreement between the two parties over the remuneration of songwriters and publishers in the market. YouTube and Koda's last multi-year licensing deal expired in April. Since then, the two parties have been operating under a temporary license agreement... In a statement to media Friday (July 31), Koda claims YouTube is insisting that — in order to extend its temporary deal in Denmark — Koda must now agree to a near-70% reduction in payments to composers and songwriters.

YouTube has fired back at this claim, suggesting that under its existing temporary deal with Koda (which expired Friday), the body "earned back less than half of the guarantee payments" handed over by the service.
Koda says it "cannot accept" YouTube's terms, according to the article, adding that Google and YouTube "have now unilaterally decided that Koda's members cannot have their content shown on YouTube".

The director of YouTube Music, EMEA counters that "They are asking for substantially more than what we pay our other partners," according to the article — which also shares this statement from YouTube. "We take copyright law very seriously."

"As our license expires today and since we have been unable to secure an agreement we will remove identified Koda content from the platform."
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Google Threatens to Remove All Danish Music From YouTube More

Google Threatens to Remove All Danish Music From YouTube

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  • Look (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 01, 2020 @02:51PM (#60355691)

    Koda says it "cannot accept" YouTube's terms, according to the article, adding that Google and YouTube "have now unilaterally decided that Koda's members cannot have their content shown on YouTube".

    Google may do all sorts horrible things but whether it's music licensing or news licensing, choosing not to include someone's content is a 100% acceptable alternative to paying to include it.

    • Re:Look (Score:4, Insightful)

      by lgw ( 121541 ) on Saturday August 01, 2020 @03:05PM (#60355725) Journal

      Google may do all sorts horrible things but whether it's music licensing or news licensing, choosing not to include someone's content is a 100% acceptable alternative to paying to include it.

      Well put. It's certainly a hardball negotiating tactic by Google, but it's also within their rights.

      In some areas, YouTube is a monopoly, but for music in particular they have lots of competition and are just one option among many. This isn't the usual BS between YouTube and content creators. For once, this is honest and open negotiation by YouTube, not some bot with secret rules. I actually have sympathy for them here.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Megol ( 3135005 )

        It's not within their rights - it's their responsibility! If they don't remove identified copyrighted material they don't have a right to broadcast they'd be criminals!

        • It's also their responsibility to be a profitable company for their shareholders. If they deal that Koda want means someone watching a music video costs Google more in licensing fees and other costs than they can get in advertising and other revenue with no prospect of that changing going forward or secondary income streams such as selling merchandising then they are practically obliged to turn down that deal.

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by guruevi ( 827432 )

          And that's exactly what they're doing, they're stopping it from broadcasting altogether. Koda wants it both, they want YouTube to stop copyright infringement AND pay a fine for every broadcasts that may or may not have happened.

      • It isn't "hardball" at all; it is copyright law that insists on this outcome without a license.

        Youtube is big. Denmark is small. They're not Exceptional People who deserve extra money; if they want to participate in this market, they have to accept the market rate. They can't dictate rates to an external market, that's nuts.

      • even if , then they're still not government or prohibiting someone from expressing themselves, they just put the bouncer at the door to their night club - its clearly abuse of power but well withing legalist limits and i have this hunch and itch somewhere no one actually needs to tell them that as they're doing it blatantly
        so spotify, youtube .. what happened to de-centralization ... k.im never got off the ground either , someone somewhere seems to have vested intrest in 'it' not happening

    • If Danish music is not available on youtube the those who want to hear that music will have to go elsewhere and probably pay a bit more. This may, or may not, result in Danish musicians earning more - if so, good for them. This may also result in Danish music fans developing other musical tastes; or listening to less music.

      It will be interesting to see how this plays out.

    • Eat me, I'm a Danish!

      (h/t Weird Al)

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Let's see here. Strong arm royalty arguments, no quotes or insights from actual content creators, and both sides are accusing the other of being surprisingly unreasonable. I estimate the chance that everyone involved is a worthless parasite is about, oh, let's say one hundred percent.

  • It's capitalism (Score:5, Interesting)

    by jonsmirl ( 114798 ) on Saturday August 01, 2020 @02:54PM (#60355701) Homepage

    Koda wants YouTube to pay the same royalties Spotify does for on-demand play. Of course Spotify is getting $10/mth from the users of that service. YouTube is only getting a few cents from the ads around the track. Can YouTube be profitable if they pay the on-demand royalty rates? Probably not. So Koda gets the boot. If YouTube agreed to pay Koda these higher rates and lose money on their tracks, you can be assured that every other music licensing agency would demand the same --- and that spells the end of YouTube.

    YouTube also appears to have prepaid royalties in the past based on the projected number of plays of Koda music. Those plays only materialized at half of the projected levels so YouTube wants to drop future payments to match the actual number of plays. Koda's interpretation of this is that Google actually agreed to a much higher royalty payment per play and they want those higher payments to continue in the future.

    So they need to agree or YouTube has no choice but to remove their music. If they didn't remove it, they'd violate copyright law.

    • Everyone should get the google boot, and so render youtube useless for music.
      Not a bad thing. Bring it on, Google.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by ELCouz ( 1338259 )

        Everyone should get the google boot, and so render youtube useless for music.

        Good luck with that!
        Google Play Music (mature service) is merging as we speak to become Youtube Music (inferior service)....BTW, a great way to piss off your customer base.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by guruevi ( 827432 )

        Great, I don't want mindless pop music being promoted in my feeds anyway. The only Danish content creators I care about are independent anyway.

        YouTube for most people isn't at all about music, there are other channels for that.

    • Re: (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Gimric ( 110667 )

      YouTube is only getting a few cents from the ads around the track. Can YouTube be profitable if they pay the on-demand royalty rates?

      That sounds like a You(tube) problem, not a me problem.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      YouTube Premium is $12/month and one of the advertised benefits if unlimited ad-free music.

      I'd happily pay for just ad-free and no music if they offered it for less than that, but it's all or nothing. So clearly YouTube feels that the music is a core part of their value proposition.

      • Google Play Music (soon enough to be YouTube Music) is somewhere in the vicinity of $15/mos for the Family Plan (6 users, 6 devices each) -- includes YouTube Premium.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          Holy crap. The family plan is £18/month, that's about 24 USD. For fucking YouTube Premium.

          For comparison Netflix is less than half that for a "family" plan with HD and 2 screens.

          • Well most of the music streaming services I looked at, were ~$10 per month per user (incl. Napster). So at the time a $15 Family Plan that included YouTube Red (now Premium) seemed like a no-brainer. We may have a grandfathered price at this point.

  • Just finance that with ads (Score:5, Funny)

    by Doub ( 784854 ) on Saturday August 01, 2020 @02:57PM (#60355711)
    Put 5 minutes of ads before every minute of Danish music. Worst case scenario the Danish music scene reinvents itself as the culture of 59 second songs.

  • They want to eat the cake and still have it. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by bumblebees ( 1262534 ) on Saturday August 01, 2020 @03:38PM (#60355787)
    The rights groups gets paid so many times over its ridicilous. Here i pay them with my tax( indirectly trough public service tax), My harddrive is taxed for them, and from my business space size (even if i did not really have any customers enjoying the great music im playing them these last months) and then Youtube should also pay them. So they get paid atleast 4 times just for me playing a crappy song from the internet. There must be a better way to do this.
    • Actually i dont pay them from my business space as i got a bunch of suitable music from Jamendo that is royalty free. But there was quite a uphill battle over 2 years and some 1000printed pages of release forms for every song i have in the library before they finally concided i dont need to pay. But still their rep. come a few times every year and try to extort money from my business. And every time i send them packing with no money.

      • Re: They want to eat the cake and still have it. (Score:5, Informative)

        by Husgaard ( 858362 ) on Saturday August 01, 2020 @06:31PM (#60356139)

        Yes, Koda has this "problem" that artists who have not signed over their soul to them can legally license their music to anybody. The way they fight this problem is to try to make it as expensive as possible for anybody not getting a license from Koda. They will even threaten to take you to court if you cannot prove you have a valid license (which is bogus, as the burden of proof is on them).

        These people do not care about right or wrong. For them it is all about making as much money as possible.

        Until a few years ago Koda was one of the largest supporters of lawyer Johan Schlüter and his law firm which ran the anti-piracy group of Denmark. This was about speculative invoicing: Writing people accusing them of illegal copying and threatening with an expensive lawsuit if the accused does not pay an amount slightly smaller than what it would cost the accused to get a lawyer. This racket ran for years and brought in millions. But it got known that people were not sued if they just ignored the amounts. So eventually they had to bring a few cases to court. And they lost big time. Higher courts agreed, so they had to stop.

        But Johan Schlûter lost the support of Koda a few years ago. This was when he was indicted on fraud charges regarding copyright licensing fees. He and two of the other partners in his law firm were eventually convicted to long jail times because of aggravated fraud for an eight-digit amount. One of the largest fraud cases in my country for many years.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Vastad ( 1299101 )

          This sounds suspiciously similar to GEMA [wikipedia.org] in Germany. Curious what deal they made with YouTube now....

    • Re:They want to eat the cake and still have it. (Score:4, Informative)

      by Husgaard ( 858362 ) on Saturday August 01, 2020 @05:59PM (#60356063)

      Koda is basically a monopoly that is abusing it's power in a bad way.

      They will - for a fee - license any composition or song text to anybody. And they can legally do this even if the composer or song writer whose copyright they license does not want this.

      And danish composers and songwriters may never see a dime of the licensing money Koda collects. If you are not a member of Koda you get nothing of the money they collect from licensing your works. Nothing at all. And you can only become a member of Koda by signing an irrevocable statement giving Koda the exclusive right to license rights for public performances of all your works, including any works you might create in the future.

      So as a Danish artist you are either fucked or doomed by Koda: If you don't join them they will sell licenses to your works all over in competition with you, and you get absolutely nothing of what they earn on your works. If you join them you have to sign over your soul and your first-born baby, but you get around 85 percent of the licensing fees they collect from your copyrighted material.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by guruevi ( 827432 )

        Why does a private company get to own the fruits of your labor without any agreement?

        • It's sort of like ASCAP of the USA... they're specifically mentioned in law, giving them the right to collect and attempt to forward the royalties at the standard rates.

  • 'The director of YouTube Music, EMEA counters that "They are asking for substantially more than what we pay our other partners," according to the article'

    The actual question, though, is whether the other partners have simply knuckled under and accepted a compensation rate that's not really sustainable, or if Koda is asking for an unreasonable amount. Google must've found Koda's rate acceptable in the past; so it seems obvious they are trying to turn the screws - and Google has all the power in this relation

    • From what I have read, Google licensed the music expecting X number of plays over the time period. What happened is they get only half the plays that were expected. This means Google payed double what they were expecting per play. Now, what's happening is Koda is now expecting Google to pay this double rate for the music they're legally allowed to license and Google is saying they need to half the payments to bring them in line with what they were expecting to pay in the beginning and what they pay every

  • We're about to see a fight of two spoiled, entitled brats that are way too used to getting their way if they just yell loud enough.

    However this pans out, it should be entertaining.

  • > the group that collects royalties and licensing fees for musicians

    This never ever sounds good...

  • Sounds like Koda is some forced legal monopoly in Denmark. Google should be standing up against monopolies.
  • what about Creative Commons songs? Those are pretty explicitly licensed for use on things like YouTube.

  • They negotiate. The music is pulled if they can't reach a deal. The music stays if they do reach a deal.

    It seems like this works exactly as the music industry has litigated.

  • A huge number of people listen to music on YouTube, which is weird because the audio quality is not great. Even so, very few artists get paid because advertisers pay Google first, then depending on the byzantine YouTube policy the copyright holder might get paid, and from that fraction of a fraction, musicians might get paid and usually don't. I suspect YouTube works as a business because it collects advertising payments every time, but it avoids splitting that with the copyright holder frequently.

    • So where can I get high quality, free, on demand music? I am interested in obscure, late Sixty's bands as well as popular bands like Rush..Thanx.

  • Glad to hear it... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by ndykman ( 659315 )

    Given how badly streaming treats artists right now (you know, the people that provide 100% of the actual music content) and given that YouTube (and therefore Alphabet) has it's own music service and is almost 100% dependent on independent content to place ads in, I'm glad somebody is at least trying to negotiate better terms.

    Now, I don't feel bad for major labels in the USA and elsewhere, but Denmark and other EU countries actually have a great model that allows talented and dedicated musicians to make a re

  • Google from my search providers.

    Saw Google in the headline and I realized I could delete Google as a search provider. Then realized I did that a few weeks ago. Had not even thought about it.

    The hold Apple, Amazon, Google, Facebook, Instgram, Twitter and the rest have on US, is in our minds.

  • First it's Trump foaming off "wE mUzT bAn tIk t0K!!1!one!", then it's Apple vs Amazon over an ad, and now this

    Fuck off assholes. Really, I am tired of these rich snowflakes who use Benjies to wipe their asses fucking around with the rest of us.

    The gloves are off. It's time to subvert, pirate, and do everything we can to tell these little tinpots that their behavior is unacceptable.

    • But to pirate, you must own a ship!

      Or did you mean steal from artists and not give anything in return? Because for that you must have a media corporation!

      Just use file sharing like a normal, cocaine-free human without prostiture cosmetics all over him.

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Except that videos might get shitbanned because videos have a few bars of Danish la-dee-dahs playing in the background.

      I've seen videos of various real life events who's uploaders had to mute because there was music audiable in the footage (and they put up text saying why).

      Dumbass Google needs to realize that people are not going to 'pirate' music from some crappy transistor radio playing in the background of footage of a tornado.

      Dumbass Google also has to fix their search engine so it does not suck more an

  • "As our license expires today and since we have been unable to secure an agreement we will remove identified Koda content from the platform" Or change one bit in the database that prevents Koda results from being seen in YouTube searches, and wait for Koda to cave in.

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