Hey Dummy, Where’s Your YouTube Channel?
Recently, my wife and I had lunch with a friend who told us all about a YouTube channel he watched about trees. It really sounded interesting because he described the channel’s creator as someone incredibly knowledgeable and passionate about trees and wood. Later, I tried to search for the channel, and was stunned to find that there must be about 2,000 YouTube channels dedicated to trees. Who knew? Why can’t I do something like that? I’d be really, really good at it, and would absolutely LOVE to do it. I’ve even had friends, family members, and colleagues tell me the same thing, and ask, “Hey dummy, where’s your YouTube channel?” Oh, yeah. I can’t do something like that because I’m passionate about the ONE THING that I can’t put on the internet – music.
My closest colleague, Brion McClanahan, is truly one of the world’s leading experts in American history, and he puts all kinds of stuff on the internet. Brion publishes books, articles, editorials, and tutorials about history. He posts videos about history, hosts a podcast about history, and manages his own online academy about … wait for it … history! He can go straight to the internet and read verbatim from copyrighted and published historical documents, and nobody says a thing. He can give a scholarly presentation at an academic conference, and take the video of his presentation and upload it immediately to the internet to reach a wider audience. He could point a camera at himself in the classroom and record ANY of his lectures and post them straight to YouTube. All of that is accepted, standard practice, and he rightfully exploits every nuance of it on the good old “information superhighway.”
Not me.
I can’t do a single one of those things because of the way music is treated differently on the internet. For academic purposes, music that isn’t original and freshly composed on the spot is essentially banned from the internet, and if you try to get away with it, you get lots of nice letters from platoons of nice lawyers.
In my classroom, I might show a student how to improvise a solo to a particular chord progression by playing recordings of Sonny Rollins and Jim Hall doing the same thing, and making comparisons. Even though both versions are copyrighted and published, I am granted academic freedom to use them in my classroom for scholarly purposes. It’s commonly referred to as the “Fair Use Doctrine” of copyright law, and is encoded as Section 107 of Title 17 of U.S. Law. Although some laws are head-scratchers, this one is straightforward and based on simple common sense. If you need to teach someone about a song, you’re allowed to use the song. It doesn’t get more basic than that. This law came about due to the hard work of a lady from Keokuk, Iowa named Frances Elliot Clark, who was a pioneering advocate for the use of the record player in the classroom to teach music. She correctly recognized that music instruction demands to be allowed the use of the most advanced technology available for instructional purposes. As technology progressed to give us tapes, CDs, and digital downloads, so did the law, which became the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
But this law only works if everyone involved acts reasonably. For example, if my Division Chair or Dean came to me and questioned the legality of me using copyrighted recordings in my online Music Appreciation class, I would quote the law to support my position. Then, my Division Chair or Dean would respond with, “Okay, thanks for telling me that. I see your point. Carry on.” The internet does NOT act reasonably. If I hosted a YouTube channel that exactly mirrored the totally legal Music Appreciation class mentioned above, within about 8 seconds of going public, I would get an email from YouTube telling me they’d taken down the videos because they included copyrighted material. Period. End of discussion.
I’m not allowed the opportunity to “explain my position,” because as far as the internet is concerned, I don’t get a position. All of the major music publishers in the U.S., such as Universal, Sony, Warner, etc., have the ONLY position on the matter, and that position is “take it down right now.” Oh, right – I am allowed to appeal YouTube’s decision to YouTube, in which case YouTube turns to Universal, Sony, Warner, etc., to be the arbiter in the appeal, and guess which way they’re going to rule? Shockingly, they rule 100% of the time in their own favor, and by losing an appeal, YouTube would give me “one strike” against my account. Three strikes, and you’re out.
Additionally, the actual musicians have no say in this process at all. Some musicians are totally fine with their copyrighted material being used educationally, but they don’t get to overrule their own publishing company. If Universal Music Group says it comes down, then it comes down. There are plenty of obscure or forgotten artists who would LOVE for someone to use their music educationally and give them exposure to a whole new generation of fans, but the music publishers don’t see it that way at all. Sadly, there are also plenty of artists who totally agree with the mercenary efforts of the publishing companies, and they are strong advocates of internet retribution. These artists are known in the music community as “Blockers,” because they go to extreme lengths to prevent their music from being used online, and include such groups as The Eagles, The Beatles, and AC/DC. For example, if I had a YouTube video blocked that included a song by Fleetwood Mac, I could record myself singing and playing the song on guitar, and everyone would be okay with that. It’s not ideal because it’s not the primary source of the actual Fleetwood Mac recording, but at least it’s the correct song, and I could make it work. That would be allowed in my video. However, I couldn’t pull this off without the proper recording equipment and the proper talent to perform the song in question. In other words, I’m not about to make a video of me playing Eddie Van Halen, unless it’s comedy.
And then there are the “Blockers.” They wouldn’t even allow the above example of me singing and playing their song on my own guitar to be put on YouTube. If I recorded myself playing the intro to Hotel California, The Eagles would block me faster than I could stab them with my steely knives. No explanation, no appeal. Blocked. I’ve seen some pretty comical videos where people recorded themselves playing Hotel California incorrectly on purpose just to sneak it past The Eagles, and they still got blocked because they inadvertently said the name of the song aloud in the video. That’s messed up.
Of course, the one and only motivation for this nonsense is money. The Eagles don’t want you making money off of their songs. YouTube pays their participants about 2 cents each time their video is viewed by someone, which adds up to a whopping $20 if a video is viewed 1,000 times. And yet, The Eagles believe you shouldn’t get that $20, so either take their song out of your video, take down the entire video, or hire a lawyer, because you’re going to court. But it’s not like you get to be an insurrectionist and defy everyone by posting that video in defiance of all the threats. YouTube simply takes it down for you (it is their platform, after all), and your treasonous act never even gets that far.
Here’s the part I don’t understand. If your video causes 1,000 people to go out and start buying music by The Eagles for the first time, isn’t that a net win for The Eagles “in the long run?” Shouldn’t they want a new generation of fans to appreciate (and consume) their music, and wouldn’t that be worth the damn $20 you get out of it? It’s not like the $20 is coming out of their pockets. According to The Eagles, no. It’s not worth it. You don’t get even 2 cents off their music, so there. Draw back a nub.
Ultimately, what all this means is that history people can post their documents on the internet, writers and painters can post novels and paintings on the internet, and even tree people can post their woodpile on the internet, but I can’t. You can easily find a graphic instructional video on YouTube about how to give or get a Brazilian wax (that’s what I’ve heard), but I can’t teach anybody how to play Thunderstruck or the alto break on A Night in Tunisia.
There was a time when I launched two different instructional “academies” for online music instruction. The first was called The Southern Academy of Music, and was hosted on an instructional site called Udemy. They stripped down almost all of my material immediately after launch. The only two videos of mine that they allowed to remain were two short videos teaching people how to tune a sour note on the piano without calling in a piano tuner. I did play the opening phrase of The Blue Danube Waltz on the piano in one of the videos, but Strauss’ estate must not have been paying attention. To this day, those two piano tuning videos are still on their platform, and they earn me less than $50 per year.
The second online instructional platform was the companion to the Substack that you’re reading right now, and was called The Academy of Southern Music. My idea was to launch both sites simultaneously, and use them to promote each other. Three years ago, I embedded discount coupons within the articles posted here on Substack to encourage enrollment at the other site, and started attracting a following. And then, of course, the host platform made me take everything down. I’m pretty sure they didn’t act out of a knowledge of the law. More correctly, they acted out of a fear of someone else acting against them. Dr. Daniel, we have no idea if what you’re doing is legal or not, but we’re taking everything down anyway just to avoid a fight. Have a nice day. Appeal? Oh, that’s a good one, Dr. Daniel. Do you know any Knock-Knock jokes as well?
A ton of work and time was put into creating and organizing all that material, recording it, editing it, and posting it. And yet, it was all taken down in an instant. As far as I know, my empty platform is still technically available out there somewhere, but it’s a ghost town because nothing is there.
I have heard a particular legal argument in defense of The Blockers by suggesting that since they wrote, copyrighted, and published the music in question, then of course they should be the only entity to profit from it. In other words, I should not get paid if I’m using their protected material to earn money for myself.
If that’s the correct position, then explain to me the basis of every single paycheck I’ve ever received as a classroom music teacher. I used other people’s copyrighted material to teach music for over 40 years and got paid for it. It’s the same thing, y’all. Same thing.