Have You Noticed Certain Music Videos Disappearing from Your Facebook Feed? Here’s Why.
Cover videos are really popular on YouTube. People set up a camera and recorded themselves singing and performing a favourite tune or two. It’s a cheap and easy way to get your stuff out to the world (whether anyone watches these videos is another matter).
At first, labels and music publishers went after YouTube with takedown notices, saying that these videos were unauthorized. But then it twigged on them: these fan-made videos actually promoted the real thing for free and led to more views, streams, legal downloads and CD sales of the original. Just ask Drake how well this worked with “Hotline Bling” or anything Adele ever released. Now cover videos are tolerated on YouTube, if not encouraged.
But now at least one publisher is going after Facebook for the very same thing. It is issuing takedown notices for cover videos. From Digital Music News:
Clearly never. Universal Music Publishing Group (among others) are now aggressively issuing takedown notices to Facebook for cover videos of their songs. Facebook complies with these DMCA notices and removes the videos immediately with a scary notice to the offending party stating “it is our policy to terminate the accounts of repeat infringers when appropriate.”
Let me get this straight, these exact tactics the major publishers and labels pulled in 2007 – 2011 on YouTube, which completely backfired, they now think are a good idea for Facebook? Hell, why stop there? Why don’t you start suing music fans again like you did back in the early 2000s? That worked so well. Go start suing grandmas and tweens for illegally downloading music again. Great strategy.
Read more here. This could get interesting.
Another thing I’ve seen on You Tube is that the copyright owner can monetize the infringing content instead of removing it even if the you tube account owner does not turn on monetization. I think this is a good idea for anyone who does a decent cover or interpretation of an original. Perhaps part of the issue here is that Facebook does not share revenue with content owners when they get unique views.