The original article is from here: http://doandroidsdance.com/features/soundcloud-boldly-releases-new-app-allows-universal-flag-account-quietly-announces-data-mining-one-month/ June 27
The part that really gets me is that Universal isn't even trying to help people "do the right thing". In the email from Greg Morris he states:
"The problem I'm having is the ambiguity of the feedback. For example, on the first strike you just said "Universal Music" said I used one of their tunes. The set started with an Ellie Golding song which I thought was the problem. So I removed that and re-uploaded. It was then taken down again. You're not even telling me which songs are infringing."
That is infuriating. He is trying to oblige to the request to remove a copyrighted song, but Universal isn't even telling him how he is in violation.
Oh boo hoo. He's promoting his own internet radio show, it's up to him to work out clearances. He asks what basis they have for doing it, like choice of law etc., well read the ToS, that's why it's there. 'Other people do it too!' is about the most juvenile argument there is, and the fact that they haven't experienced problems yet is neither here nor there. Maybe Universal hasn't got around to yanking stuff from them yet, maybe they have proper clearances or pay ASCAP feees, or maybe Universal/Soundcloud is enforcing their copyright arbitrarily...which they're perfectly entitled to do as a private entity. Equal treatment under law only applies to the government, unless you can show you're being discriminated against as a member of a protected class.
So his problem is he doesn't know which song(s) is/are infringing? Take your tracklisting and check it against discogs.com or some other music publishing database, and see which songs were published by Universal Music. Maybe 30 minutes of work for a 1 hour show, tops. The responsibility to check clearances does lie with the person who wants to use a copyrighted work.
Edit: I realize this is an unpopular view, but if you're downvoting I invite you to spell out what you think is wrong about it. Every magazine/website/course aimed at budding record producers/DJs/musicians provides coverage of copyright and licensing issues, to help their readership collect what is owed to them as much as to avoid infringement. There is no way you can be an aspiring or actual professional in the music industry for any significant length of time and not be aware of your basic obligations in this area.
I have just had this very issue directly as an electronic music producer.
Was flagged for my own original music NOT on a remix or anything that contained samples but an original jam I made with some classic Roland hardware; Roland SH-101, TR-909, and TR-606! Seems the algorithm they use to flag has many flaws and is automated with no one at the wheel to look at individual cases.
Not sure where soundcloud is going with this, because I pay for the service and replied to them to fix and have heard nothing in over a month.
Moved my song over to mixcloud. I am creating a music app for musicians called Memory Echo if anyone is interested in working together on something different but similar for musicians that are not signed.
That's a much more legit complaint than the one in the source article, and as an electronic musician myself I can see how that would happen. Sadly Mixcloud has problems of its own, eg this, which I posted here the other day: http://support.mixcloud.com/customer/portal/articles/1595564...
Same thing happened to us, but with a couple of official remixes released on a sub-label of universal. The issue is that the content gets removed before you're able to verify it's yours.
I feel like they would have avoided a lot of negativity if they gave users a time window to verify before removal.
It's been really interesting over the last 24 hours or so to watch the reaction from Joe Kay[0], whose label/collective Soulection[1] has shared hundreds of hours of mixes and dozens of original tracks and remixes on Soundcloud[2], and to an extent (at least initially) built their following on the site (not to take anything away from the impact performances, etc. have had on their growing popularity), but were always at high risk of this sort of takedown due to remixes of popular rap/r&b tracks.
One of my initial takeaways from this development is that while Soulection may not have come to exist without Soundcloud, the "next Soulection" will almost certainly take root anywhere but Soundcloud.
So SoundCloud users had a good run, but now the popularity of the service reached critical mass and raised the ire of the labels so they're knuckling under like every other provider. SoundCloud (sensibly) doesn't want the burden of dealing with the massive copyright infringement by it's users and outsources the job to the owners of the tracks.
Now I get that it sucks that you don't get explicit explanations of what infringed, and I worry hugely about their power to supress content that they actually do not own, but:
1. Stop pretending that you should get a free ride because you're promoting the artist. If you actually give a shit, discover and promote new music from awesome bands that are not beholden to the labels. That's the only way to break the stranglehold.
2. Don't rage at the service that provides a great product to producers of real, original content, just because you've repurposed the platform to promote your infringing mix.
You're completely right: artists who make mixes and use samples should probably do it above-board and follow all applicable copyright laws.
However, the problems are three-fold:
1) Lack of information. It looks like the new automated process provides no clues on what the infringing content was/is.
2) Lack of appeals process.
3) The fact that previously rolled out systems that have allowed major labels this sort of access to services (primarily YouTube) have been subject to abuse by the labels, taking down content that was original, and there has been no indication given that this won't happen here.
> If you actually give a shit, discover and promote new music from awesome bands that are not beholden to the labels. That's the only way to break the stranglehold.
This. If you get a promo from an artist, ask them, "Is this under copyright with a label? Sorry, in that case I can't play it."
Yes,it really was. I am an old, classic, get off my lawn style person who never signed up for twitter or Facebook and still uses a dumbphone. But somehow I got onto SC and discovered a lot of great music there, which has led to a few hundred dollars of amazon purchases.
So it is something special, and I hate to see them mucking around with it ...
I run a record label (Records On Ribs) and to be fair, SoundCloud have always scanned files for potential copyright infringement and taken files down when they have found it to be the case. The difference is that normally there is an appeals process with a nice backend. It is a little frustrating though because the automated service flags music we own the copyright for (as well as being Creative Commons) and we have to go through the whole process again. The lack of appeals here is the really worrying development.
Why have we, as a society, become OK with handing over policing power to corporations unrestrained by due process? For example, by using sites like Soundcloud. Is it the lack of civics education in high school?
I'd point out that it is one corporation giving another corporation policing powers. A natural result of extending the rights and power of corporations in our society is that they replace our other existing social institutions.
> Why have we, as a society, become OK with handing over policing power to corporations unrestrained by due process?
These companies do not care about due process, they care about the bottom line of making a dollar at the end of the day. Soundcloud determined it is much less expensive for them to go this route than be sued by Universal. Every company follows this practice as for they are serving their best interest.
As a consumer your hope is that their best interest and your best interest share the inside of a Venn diagram.
First, that is a low blow linking to others doing it. They know, or haven't got to them yet. Websites like Etsy do the same on license content. Two, they choose you be set an example. Three, I always thought of Soundcloud the Vimeo of music. If it is an artisans music website, upload your own creations.
Unfortunately for soundcloud, aren't they killing their main userbase? DJ's mixing mainstream songs.
> First, that is a low blow linking to others doing it.
I thought the same thing at first, but the users that are linked to are all big, big names that get millions of plays on Soundcloud that will never get takedowns, whether they have clearances or not. It's more like saying "why are you hassling me for my $10 unpaid fine when you don't care about these corporations' $100,000 unpaid fines" than it is about narcing on the competition.
No, it's not a low blow. It's exactly what happens all over the world: the little kid has to play by the rules while the big guys do whatever they please, get special deals and sometimes even a get-out-of-jail card for free.
I learned that the hard way in 2001 when the IFPI went after my links (yes, only links) to then popular sites like mp3board.com and others - while the biggest news portal in the country had exactly the same links and weren't prosecuted at all.
The one looming question is, does Universal have access to spectrum analysis products of tracks, or the actual sounds themselves? If they have access to the actual sounds, they'll be able to harvest song ideas from private tracks. No bueno.
Also their interface for tracking plays has gotten significantly worse. And you have to pay extra to get most of the same information you get for free from youtube.
>And you have to pay extra to get most of the same information you get for free from youtube.
Well Youtube has advertisements, and soundcloud doesn't. Someone is still paying for you to get that information, it's just not you, on youtube. I do agree that their interface has gotten worse, though. Especially for tracking.
Citing the Terms of Soundcloud: "SoundCloud may assign its rights and (where permissible by law) its obligations under this Agreement, in whole or in part, to any third party at any time without notice, including without limitation, to any person or entity acquiring all or substantially all of the assets or business of SoundCloud."
This is embarassing. I use a number of payed accounts, with original content only, but sometimes you should rethink whom you give your money, and if you still can trust them. I don't want any major label - and nobody - to shoot me in the back out of nowhere.
I'm German, the SC offices are two streets from where I sit now. I have some doubt if their Terms apply to German law in all the details. Unfortunately, I'm no lawyer.
I'm actually working on a service which sits on top of SoundCloud. It's still in its infancy, but I'd love to hear what people think of the concept; the service aims to help musicians and photographers expose their content to a wider audience, and on the flip side, allows you to sit back and listen to a playlist of music whilst enjoying a beautiful photo slide show. The playlists are tailored to a user's mood, and you're able to filter the music based on genre. The website's voliyo.com, and if anyone's interested in signing up to the beta as a photographer or musician, feel free to message me for an invite code!
Somewhat offtopic, but why is there an obsession with music discovery services? Soundcloud has its own niche in terms of sharing and usage, but other services like 8tracks and Slacker seem rather unnecessary. Is it that hard to discover new music on one's own?
Depends on how you want to find music. As a DJ, I actively dig for new music a lot. It is nice to be able to throw on some service that gives me a "radio" to passively find new tracks as well. I also suspect for most people "fresh direct" consumption of music fits into their view of how new music is found.
Well if soundcloud was not around it just wouldn't be possible to keep up with the 600+ people I follow and even then a solid 50% of what is on their page is just stuff they like as well which introduces me to more people.
The first part of this post is rather lame. In his complaining about putative tracking, he quotes their new policy. This policy says that they're collecting non-identifying info that can be opted out of, and if you sign in with Facebook or Google, they'll take note of your gender.
None of these things they're declaring gives them the ability to track who you are, or correlate it to what you're doing.
How are mixes subject to take-downs? Shouldn't they be protected since they are pre-recorded and thus protected by exceptions to public performance rights?
Sounds to me like Universal has blanket permission to harass anyone, regardless how "underground" they are. Universal doesn't like your brand of competition? They'll just flag you for infringement.
[+] [-] amckenna|11 years ago|reply
"The problem I'm having is the ambiguity of the feedback. For example, on the first strike you just said "Universal Music" said I used one of their tunes. The set started with an Ellie Golding song which I thought was the problem. So I removed that and re-uploaded. It was then taken down again. You're not even telling me which songs are infringing."
That is infuriating. He is trying to oblige to the request to remove a copyrighted song, but Universal isn't even telling him how he is in violation.
[+] [-] anigbrowl|11 years ago|reply
So his problem is he doesn't know which song(s) is/are infringing? Take your tracklisting and check it against discogs.com or some other music publishing database, and see which songs were published by Universal Music. Maybe 30 minutes of work for a 1 hour show, tops. The responsibility to check clearances does lie with the person who wants to use a copyrighted work.
Edit: I realize this is an unpopular view, but if you're downvoting I invite you to spell out what you think is wrong about it. Every magazine/website/course aimed at budding record producers/DJs/musicians provides coverage of copyright and licensing issues, to help their readership collect what is owed to them as much as to avoid infringement. There is no way you can be an aspiring or actual professional in the music industry for any significant length of time and not be aware of your basic obligations in this area.
[+] [-] ElectronicSleep|11 years ago|reply
Was flagged for my own original music NOT on a remix or anything that contained samples but an original jam I made with some classic Roland hardware; Roland SH-101, TR-909, and TR-606! Seems the algorithm they use to flag has many flaws and is automated with no one at the wheel to look at individual cases.
Not sure where soundcloud is going with this, because I pay for the service and replied to them to fix and have heard nothing in over a month.
Moved my song over to mixcloud. I am creating a music app for musicians called Memory Echo if anyone is interested in working together on something different but similar for musicians that are not signed.
Knew this day would come just didn't know when.
Cheers! Electronic Sleep
[+] [-] anigbrowl|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] afro88|11 years ago|reply
I feel like they would have avoided a lot of negativity if they gave users a time window to verify before removal.
[+] [-] Ryanmf|11 years ago|reply
One of my initial takeaways from this development is that while Soulection may not have come to exist without Soundcloud, the "next Soulection" will almost certainly take root anywhere but Soundcloud.
It's a shame.
[0] https://twitter.com/J0EKAY
[1] http://soulection.com
[2] https://soundcloud.com/soulection
[+] [-] kefs|11 years ago|reply
http://www.mixcloud.com/soulection/
..if any HNers enjoy these tunes, the live show is every Saturday at 10am pst on rinse.fm.
[+] [-] polemic|11 years ago|reply
Now I get that it sucks that you don't get explicit explanations of what infringed, and I worry hugely about their power to supress content that they actually do not own, but:
1. Stop pretending that you should get a free ride because you're promoting the artist. If you actually give a shit, discover and promote new music from awesome bands that are not beholden to the labels. That's the only way to break the stranglehold.
2. Don't rage at the service that provides a great product to producers of real, original content, just because you've repurposed the platform to promote your infringing mix.
[+] [-] ilyanep|11 years ago|reply
However, the problems are three-fold:
1) Lack of information. It looks like the new automated process provides no clues on what the infringing content was/is.
2) Lack of appeals process.
3) The fact that previously rolled out systems that have allowed major labels this sort of access to services (primarily YouTube) have been subject to abuse by the labels, taking down content that was original, and there has been no indication given that this won't happen here.
[+] [-] yarrel|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|11 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] kalleboo|11 years ago|reply
This. If you get a promo from an artist, ask them, "Is this under copyright with a label? Sorry, in that case I can't play it."
[+] [-] dublinben|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rsync|11 years ago|reply
So it is something special, and I hate to see them mucking around with it ...
[+] [-] freshhawk|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] conatus|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] politician|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wavefunction|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ProAm|11 years ago|reply
These companies do not care about due process, they care about the bottom line of making a dollar at the end of the day. Soundcloud determined it is much less expensive for them to go this route than be sued by Universal. Every company follows this practice as for they are serving their best interest.
As a consumer your hope is that their best interest and your best interest share the inside of a Venn diagram.
[+] [-] prawn|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] torbit|11 years ago|reply
Unfortunately for soundcloud, aren't they killing their main userbase? DJ's mixing mainstream songs.
[+] [-] thedaniel|11 years ago|reply
I thought the same thing at first, but the users that are linked to are all big, big names that get millions of plays on Soundcloud that will never get takedowns, whether they have clearances or not. It's more like saying "why are you hassling me for my $10 unpaid fine when you don't care about these corporations' $100,000 unpaid fines" than it is about narcing on the competition.
[+] [-] spacefight|11 years ago|reply
I learned that the hard way in 2001 when the IFPI went after my links (yes, only links) to then popular sites like mp3board.com and others - while the biggest news portal in the country had exactly the same links and weren't prosecuted at all.
[+] [-] abuddy|11 years ago|reply
It is possible that it was an "offer you can't refuse" type thing. I doubt they'd do it voluntarily.
[+] [-] ChrisAntaki|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] conatus|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] joshdance|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ahaefner|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] squeaky-clean|11 years ago|reply
Well Youtube has advertisements, and soundcloud doesn't. Someone is still paying for you to get that information, it's just not you, on youtube. I do agree that their interface has gotten worse, though. Especially for tracking.
[+] [-] feronull|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ScUnlimitedUser|11 years ago|reply
This is embarassing. I use a number of payed accounts, with original content only, but sometimes you should rethink whom you give your money, and if you still can trust them. I don't want any major label - and nobody - to shoot me in the back out of nowhere.
I'm German, the SC offices are two streets from where I sit now. I have some doubt if their Terms apply to German law in all the details. Unfortunately, I'm no lawyer.
[+] [-] tom3k|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] return0|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknownian|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lbotos|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kingnight|11 years ago|reply
Slacker is internet radio I think and more run of the mill so not sure for that one.
[+] [-] doubt_me|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kalleboo|11 years ago|reply
Yes, it is.
[+] [-] CWuestefeld|11 years ago|reply
None of these things they're declaring gives them the ability to track who you are, or correlate it to what you're doing.
[+] [-] snake_plissken|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] paromi|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kodisha|11 years ago|reply
Kappa.
[+] [-] delinka|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] serge2k|11 years ago|reply