[djthorpe]

In my vague understanding, there are five parties:

1. The viewer or listener of the music, you might or might not get the right to listen to music in your "territory" or country, and often the music is monetised which means you get ads, or a portion of your subscription revenue is apportioned to the "view";

2. YouTube itself, whom decides on the viewers' right to listen to the music based on their complicated set of algorithms or "claims" on the music track. They also have a complicated database of rights which includes not only rights holder relationships, but the much of the music catalogue itself;

3. A publisher of a piece of music. This copyright is for the composition (sheet music), and often YouTube may be able to work out the publishing right in a territory based on the melody match. So when you say "Content ID algo finds similarity in a dozen different recordings" this is in fact by design. Their melody matching system is in play as often publishers get paid on the composition;

4. The performance copyright of the music. This copyright is for the actual performance - whether it be live, on CD or MP3. Usually this is the record company, they will often upload or provide the music to YouTube and expect to get paid for performances. Content ID will then "claim" any third party copies of the performance and monetize them too (or sometimes block, depending on the territory of viewer, and what the publisher and performance owner wants to do for that territory);

5. Most countries also have music societies who collect on behalf of artists. So GEMA in Germany or PRS in the UK will collect money per view and by some complicated reporting will pay artists directly some small pittance every year if they are lucky. Some countries don't have societies which means YouTube doesn't need to pay. Where YouTube does not have an agreement in a country (less and less now) the music will not be monetized or may be blocked.

There are huge data reports which move around to keep this system going - and the collecting societies themselves work together to ensure that the money for a view of "Never Gonna Give Up" is passed to PRS who then occasionally will pay Rick Astley. It's a nice earner for a minority of musicians to have this income when all the cover versions and MP3 sales have dried up.

YouTube does have a lot of agreements with all the other parties and it's a constant job to renew and renegotiate these contracts constantly. You can see that in the rights notice you mention, this includes all the territories in which there are rights established: it's mind-boggling. No-one wants to lose control of this system and I imagine that makes it brittle and very difficult to disrupt...it's lawyers all the way down.

I hope that is not all too misleading!

[DrJokepu]

Don't forget about sub-publishers and admins, who represent the original publisher in certain territories!