Big labels are still bashing online start-ups
NewsMessage from a frustrated reader:
Dear Mr Lebrecht,
I recently created a small concert series with my sister, Harriet Mackenzie (https://harrietmackenzie.com/) presenting some legendary pieces of classical repertoire. In order to promote our series we created a facebook page (Music at Surround Sound) and have posted some clips of our past and current performances. These clips, which are of pieces such as Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, Corelli Christmas Concerto and Mozart Oboe Quartet, have all been flagged by facebook as violating copyright and have had audio silenced. UMG, Warner and Sony all claim to hold copyright over these pieces, even though my sister and I are playing music that is out of copyright, from original parts and are performing ourselves. We have so far not managed to lift these bans.
I thought you might be interested to know how big record companies are using their power, and presumably AI, to search out and deliberate impact small performers.
I attach a couple of screenshots.
With all best wishes,
Alexandra Mackenzie
OMG, that is just so awful.
There is a facebook group dedicated to this phenomenon.
Musicians Exasperated by Baseless, Automated Copyright Claims (MEBACC)
It’s an ongoing problem with absolutely zero help from Facebook. They steal the copyright of classical musicians, deplatform their music, and take away all funding. Classical musicians get hammered by the algorithm and can’t get their music out there. They also can face bans from Facebook for even posting the “copyrighted” music. There is absolutely zero repercussions for the big brands, UMG, Sony and Warner from automatically claiming false copyrights and it’s up to the individual to file rejection claims that can take months to process, far beyond the useful life for most social media posts.
There really needs to be a class action lawsuit against these companies for falsely automatically claiming copyright.
Well said.
MEBACC needs to retain a top copyright lawyer in New York or London and then crowdfund the class action.
Perhaps Norman can use his platform to help the crowdfunding. I for one will happily contribute.
No point in taking this up with the labels. You will need to file a counter notification to the appropriate platform in order to get your video’s flag or mute removed. It might be that AI links your performances of music that is out of copyright (as print medium) to recordings of these works, e.g. CDs, that are actually copyrighted (as third party performance exploitation rights).
Your hypothesis — that AI mistakenly associates any performance (of uncopyrighted repertoire) with a recent (copyrighted) recording, even when the performing artists are clearly different — is very likely correct. The scandal is that there has been no effort to make correcting the error easy.
Just yesterday, I watched a youtube video in which Sebastien Dupuis examines early recordings of Liszt made by several of his pupils, contrasting their approach to that of today’s pianists. He plays only snippets of each work, saying that he doesn’t want to risk being shut down by copyright allegations — even when both the works and the recordings in question are well out of copyright!
It’s inane, possibly insane. Worse, there’s no incentive to correct the mistake: none of the corporations suffer any consequence, only the presenting artists such as the Mackenzies or M. Dupuis.
So what is specifically happening here is that copyright claims are being made by the owners of commercial audio recordings: CDs etc.
The algorithm thinks that a live performance of a piece of classical music “sounds a bit like” whatever commercial recording they have of the same piece (whether that music is by a long-dead public-domain composer like Bach, or by a still living composer, it doesn’t matter – the copyright state of the music is irrelevant, the algorithm thinks you are using their CD as background music in your video, and makes a claim and mutes it.)
This process is LARGELY targeted at pop music: both for the direct “abuse” of copyright, where someone has used a commercial CD track in their Facebook video without the consent of the copyright owner; and for indirect: believe it or not, if you take a video of your child opening birthday presents, and in the background is playing a song by Coldplay, then that is an illegal use of the copyrighted audio track. The algorithm will catch you, and mute your video.
The difficulty for classical music is that the algorithm isn’t that good. It’s pretty good at recognising the clear, repetitive signatures of a particular piece of pop music; but when it comes to classical music, one persons performance of a Beethoven Violin Sonata sounds pretty much the same as anyone else’s, as far as the algorithm is concerned.
Church and Cathesral choirs are constantly battling this – live streaming of services is a wonderful thing to have come out of COVID. But the algorithm doesn’t distinguish. And whilst it’s very flattering to have your relatively amateur choir be confused with a CD recording of King’s College, Cambridge – it’s also extremely irritating when it happens for the six-hundredth time.
It’s a deeply frustrating situation – but for artists as detailed in Norman’s post, it is actually affecting careers: publicity, marketing, ticket sales, income etc getting spoiled by an over zealous algorithm that just can’t tell the difference, and is instructed to assume guilt.
It is becoming increasingly difficult to dispute these claims: clearly so many have been disputed that Facebook is using too many man-hours on dealing with this: simple solution – make it harder to dispute.
A seriously losing situation for musicians everywhere.
If these labels are behind it, it’s a ridiculous, criminal act: these pieces are entirely free from any copyright.
I think you are missing the point…
Music recognition software is wrongly “ recognising “ this as a specific performance from a different artist belonging to Universal Mercury…rather than one belonging to the new creator…. It happens a lot.
The big labels could probably say it’s AI’s fault.
This has been going on for over a decade and there is next to zero recourse. Corporations have gotten bigger and we’ve become smaller.
Not only is there a lot of this about but some artists have even had their own work of which they own the copyright treated in this way!
There are people on YouTube getting copyright strikes against their videos of them playing their own compositions.
WMG will post copyright strikes against channels covering, analysing and teaching music they own, even when the video maker has agreed to split revenue with them. They want all the revenue, not just their cut.
It’s honestly disgusting.
Nearly every recording I put up to Instagram of WTC gets a copyright by Sony BMG. At first I was flattered but it is very annoying and I feel completely powerless.
This seems outrageous.
But I’m puzzled: in the first screenshot, there is a long list of countries in which the video in question is “fully available”. That list is alphabetical and includes France, Germany and (the United Kingdom of) Great Britain and Northern Ireland. The screenshot is cropped such that it’s impossible to know if USA is on the list.
In which countries has the video been muted?
They have done similar to folk musicians performing traditional tunes and, in some cases, tunes they have written and own themselves.
This would be a worthy subject for a serious Slipped Disc campaign, instead of fixating on Emma Stenning and the CBSO. Get out your sword and take on the dragons!
All rights of the producer are reserved on a world-wide basis. Reject baseless claims and get your music re-instated. Threaten them.
I used to manage the social media accounts for a (all-volunteer) community orchestra in Texas, and we got these fraudulent claims against our concert videos all the time. We submitted formal disputes to Facebook (this never happened on YouTube) and always won our case after the claimants reviewed the videos. But here’s a laundry list of the time segments claimed by Sony and Naxos on the same concert in 2022, which featured a couple of high school competition winners playing Mozart’s Violin Concert No. 4 and Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 3…
SONY
The following copyrighted content was found in your video:
Violin Concerto No. 4 in D Major, K. 218: I. Allegro (Remastered)
Jascha Heifetz, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
13:48 – 14:38
Concerto No. 4 in D Major for Violin and Orchestra, K.218: I. Allegro
Raymond Leppard, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
15:22 – 15:47
Violin Concerto No. 4 in D Major, K. 218: I. Allegro
Pinchas Zukerman, The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
15:27 – 15:53
Concerto No. 4 in D Major, K. 218: I. Allegro
Daniel Barenboim, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
16:28 – 16:49, 19:26 – 19:51
Piano Concerto No. 3 in D Minor, Op. 30: III. Finale. Alla breve
Kun-Woo Paik, Sergei Rachmaninoff
29:35 – 30:07
Piano Concerto No. 3 in D Minor, Op. 30: III. Finale. Alla breve
Eugene Ormandy, Sergei Rachmaninoff
29:40 – 30:27
Piano Concerto No. 3 in D Minor, Op. 30: III. Finale. Alla breve
Vladimir Feltsman, Sergei Rachmaninoff
30:00 – 30:28
Piano Concerto No. 3 in D Minor, Op. 30: III. Finale. Alla breve
André Watts, Sergei Rachmaninoff
33:07 – 33:27
Piano Concerto No. 3 in D Minor, Op. 30: III. Finale – Alla breve
Byron Janis, Sergei Rachmaninoff
38:55 – 39:14, 40:05 – 40:24
Piano Concerto No. 3 in D Minor, Op. 30: III. Finale. Alla breve
Yefim Bronfman, Sergei Rachmaninoff
39:06 – 39:33
NAXOS
The following copyrighted content was found in your video:
Violin Concerto No. 4 in D Major, K. 218: I. Allegro
Franco Gulli
13:51 – 14:13, 18:57 – 19:33
Violin Concerto No. 4 in D Major, K. 218: I. Allegro
Jascha Heifetz
13:57 – 14:19
Violin Concerto No. 4 in D Major, K. 218: I. Allegro
Walter Barylli
14:10 – 14:34, 18:32 – 18:51
Violin Concerto No. 4 in D Major, K. 218: I. Allegro (Live)
Michael Rabin
15:10 – 15:52
Violin Concerto No. 4 in D Major, K. 218: I. Allegro (Remastered)
David Oistrakh, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
16:08 – 16:31, 23:47 – 24:04
Violin Concerto No. 4 in D Major, K. 218: I. Allegro
Fritz Kreisler
16:21 – 16:54, 18:03 – 18:42, 18:17 – 18:44, 18:20 – 18:44, 19:51 – 20:09
Violin Concerto No. 4 in D Major, K. 218: I. Allegro
Suyoen Kim
16:59 – 17:17, 19:35 – 20:01
Violin Concerto No. 4 in D Major, K. 218: I. Allegro
György Pauk
19:10 – 19:47
Piano Concerto No. 3 in D Minor, Op. 30: III. Finale. Alla breve
Yevgeny Sudbin
29:40 – 30:32
Piano Concerto No. 3 in D Minor, Op. 30: III. Finale. Alla breve
Boris Bloch
39:16 – 39:45