Music Vs. YouTube

The other day, I logged on to Facebook, and at the top of my home page, was an interesting news item. My cousin had changed her profile status to say that she F*****G HATES YOUTUBE! Included in that status line was the URL of a video she posted on YouTube. I have an extension in Firefox which turns URLs into clickable links, and it did the job flawlessly in this case. I clicked the link to see what was up. It was a video tribute to a high school friend of hers, and the audio was SILENCED!

The other day, I received an e-mail from YouTube. Basically, a company I never heard of in a place I've never been to has "claim" as the e-mail puts it to "some of the audio content." However, they have allowed the video to remain on YouTube, but with advertisments on the watch page in Ireland and the United Kingdom.

Now, I've never heard of the Claimant (VidZone) until I received this e-mail, and at this point, there is no option on YouTube to restrict access to the video to any specific country or countries. Because of this, I've made it private, with an empty contact list. However, what's going on here is part of a disturbing trend.

With the proliferation of affordable video editing tools, regular everyday people are creating videos and posting them on sites like YouTube. Many of these videos are video and photo montages. And what goes great with a montage? Music! Especially if it's a photo montage, which would have no other audio content included. And what better music to put into a montage than some popular music, especially if the selection fits the time period in which the photos are taken, or the theme of the montage. “Womanizer” by Britney Spears or “Here It Goes Again” by OK Go and a photo montage of scenes from New York City during the late 19th century certainly do not go together. Neither would Duke Ellington's “Take the A Train” go with a photo montage of scenes from the Chicago “L” or BART.

Therein lies the problem. It seems that all of the good music is controlled by the corporate fat cats of the music industry, whose methodologies were the same ones used in the 20th century, before sites like YouTube were ever conceived. The first decade of the 21st century is almost over, and you have these fools still thinking it's the early half of the last decade of the 20th century!

The music industry is missing the boat on the possibilities this could bring to them. Picture this. A movie maker makes a movie, and uses an obscure song from an obscure artist, whose album has been released for quite some time now, but has not seen much in sales, both of physical media, and in digital downloads. Anyway, the video becomes wildly popular and is soon on YouTube's list of Featured Videos. It is watched millions of times within the first month or two. Most of them hear the song used in the video and like it. They begin to ask, "What song is that?" Once they learn what song that is, they go to places like iTunes, Amazon, and their local stores, all in search of that song. People buy the song and/or the album on which it's contained. It finds its way onto the CHR-format radio stations. The song, the album, and the artist all receive increased exposure. Many more people listen to it, like it, and buy it. The song becomes a chart topper. The album goes gold, then platinum. It becomes an award-winning mega hit.

Sure, that may be the best case scenario, but even if the song that is used has been out for a few years, that doesn't mean there isn't the potential for a sale because someone uses the song in a video. I have contributed in this way. Someone uploaded a video. A time-lapse video taken on a night run on New Jersey Transit's North Jersey Coast line, from Hoboken to Bay Head. The song used in the video is Aphex Twin's “IZ-US.” After watching the video a few times, the song grew on me. So much so that I bought the song from iTunes. Someone uploaded a music video of a song I haven't heard in years. I remembered how awesome the song is. I bought that one, too.

There you go. Two real-life examples of how music on YouTube could lead to sales. However, Big Music (including unknowns like VidZone) is trying to halt this process, citing copyrights and such. While copyrights do have their purpose, it shouldn't keep everyday people from using them in their videos. If a video maker uses a song in his video, it's like he's saying to the world, "Hey everyone! I like this song! If you like it, go out and buy it!" It's essentially free advertising for music. Big Music sees sales at no cost to them.

In closing, the silencing of YouTube videos because they have music in them is wrong. Big Music should be lenient to video makers who use their music in the videos, and should work on promoting the artists whose music appears in the videos. They should also not remove a video just because it has music in it. Besides, music makes te world go around. Who wants a silent YouTube? Nobody!