Screw WMG (Warner Music Group)

<rant>
Youtube just blocked the audio of three more of my videos, literally months after I uploaded them, because they feature music by artists that are affiliated by WMG. One of which had about 20 seconds of a song, played over the end credits of the video, about 6 minutes in. Of course, Youtube blocked ALL the audio...

What I don't get, is that most of these are songs that get radio play, which is obviously free...yet posting a piece of a WMG song in a FFXI video is going to hurt their profits enough that they need to block the audio in my video? What, is someone going to confuse my FFXI video with an "official" WMG release? Or not buy a legitamate release because they could listen to part of the chorus in one of MY videos?? Get real...

Youtube is pissing me off, too. Under the old system, at least they would block the vid immediately after the upload, allowing me to recut the vid with different audio. This whole "waiting 3+ months to block it" ***is getting old fast. They have the technology to automatically identify copyrighted works, but can't block that audio indepenently of the other audio? Audioswap is a big piece of ***, too...especially considering the music that it features for swapping is so terrible that there's no wonder it's free.

Other labels, upon detecting that I had used a certain music track ("Stuck" by Limp Bizkit, for example) put links to download the song on iTunes and Amazon...an awesome solution, in my opinion. It gives the company the ability to make FREE money off of me using the song in my video, while my use of it is pretty much free advertising (not any huge amount obviously, but greater than zero). So to whoever that label is, you get a huge thumbs up from me. Please, go talk to Warner...

I'm not necessarily looking for any replies, and flaming me about the intricacies of Copyright Law and Intellectual Property is going to fall on deaf ears, so if that's your intention don't waste your time. I just needed to vent for a moment at how HELP I AM TRAPPED IN 2006 PLEASE SEND A TIME MACHINE WMG is getting in it's pursuit of the OMG PIRATES out there.

Warner Music Group...you suck. Hard.

Guess it's time to figure out how to host and embed my own videos online...
</rant>

REM had all of their songs under their REMHQ group name on Youtube. Every video they put up had been taken down as of a few weeks ago.

I know if I were an artist who uploaded my own songs to a site, I'd be highly pissed if the company who distributed my music claimed some sort of copyright.

It's ridiculous, isn't it? I made three playlists on Youtube a while back...a Rock/Metal mix, Rap/Hip-Hop mix, and a "Nostalgia" mix (stuff that was huge when I was in High School back in the mid-90's). I checked my playlists after I got the notification that Youtube blocked my audio, and wouldn't you know it, but 1/3 to 1/2 of the videos in my playlists are "No Longer Available"...

These were mostly legitimate professional videos, done by the artists themselves. They showed on MTV for free, although admittedly for about 3.6 seconds since MTV doesn't even play music videos anymore, and never plays a vid for more then 3 days before retiring it. There's no where else in the world to view these videos, but goddamn it they'd better keep them off of youtube. Better to rot in a vault somewhere then actually get any exposure at all, right?

The big music labels need to die a slow and painful death. They've been ripping off the public, and even the artists themselves that make them their fortunes, for years.

Could be holding them to release music video DVDs or better yet, waiting for blu-ray to be more prolific. so they can VH-1 the videos with ***loads of extras...

Still the point remains, we want to watch those videos now, so why is it such a big deal to watch them in some crappy low res format for free?

tl;dr but I don't think you should blame youtube for it. I'm sure the creators of youtube were pissed too. I mean this could eventually spell the downfall of youtube. I know a lot of people only use it to watch music, and now that 90% of it is blocked, they'll find other sources.

I partially blame Youtube because they obviously have software that allows them to identify music without any oversight (how else could a video be blocked with 0 views?), yet it's too stupid to make any kind of intelligent cuts to the audio. 20 seconds of "Everything Dies" by Type O Negative at the end of a video got the other 7 minutes of audio cut, which consisted of generic Jungle music and a tiny clip of a Super Mario Brothers sound effect. If they can identify it exactly, they should be able to cut it exactly, too.

its all kinds of pants on your head HELP I AM TRAPPED IN 2006 PLEASE SEND A TIME MACHINE that they think this will help stop all the downloadin

Then you'll always have someone get in the conversation, saying that we must buy the CD to support the artist. Not me though. If I really want to show my support to an artist, I'll send them a check for 20$. Not spend 20$ buying their CD, knowing that they'll get 15.8 cents out of it because the greedy, unsatisfiable recording company kept the rest.

Don't know if you know, but decades ago, the film industry tried to make recording capabilities in VCRs illegal, and the videogame industry tried to make it illegal for rental companies and resellers to make people pay for used videogames. Guess what, the public said "*** no" and the companies lost their cases in federal court, pretty much all around the planet. The same happened with blank CD-R, burners and MP3 players. (Pretty ironic that Sony is making billions selling blanks + playing/recording devices and then Sony Music goes on to sue the people using them.)

The music industry is no different, they have this big lobby, putting pressure on the government so they'll make laws to make MP3 sharing illegal. They use propaganda to achieve their means and we have the right to disagree. There's really nothing wrong with sharing MP3s, besides the fact it was made illegal, and anything could be illegal, if we let the government decide so, without voicing our opinion as citizens. In this case, it is already a bit too late but...

At all cost, we must NEVER let this subject become a taboo, because if it does, it will mean the recording companies' propaganda really did work, and the consumers lost a big battle, without ever knowing it was taking place. So don't be ashamed to support your favorite artists by sharing their music with new potential fans AND going to their shows AND sending them whatever amount of money you think their music is worth. Oh, and you can buy their CDs too... >.>

I'll probably get flamed, called crazy and everything else under the sun but I for one take pride in owning the original copy of whatever albums an artist releases on CD. It's unfortunate the artist receives less than a fraction of what the CD costs (probably as much as it cost to make it), but knowing I have the album, in it's entirety at maximum quality with given credits and album artwork and bonuses almost justifies the effort and money needed to get it.

Sure I could always torrent everything for free and get things months before they're actually released but seeing my love for music in a folder on my HD just doesn't do justice for me. I'll probably end up like John Cusak's character in High Fidelity with the walls and floors surrounded and towering filled with CDs and vinyl records, but until I can find a way to have compacted dedication and original works put together for my enjoyment, I'll keep buying CDs for archival, sentimental and aesthetic purposes.

Sorry if my post made it seem like I disagree with this, I was just putting emphasis on a different point. I own the albums that I like the most (imho, few albums are good enough to justify buying, but they do exist), and the games too. I take care of my old game manuals, etc. But I certainly don't feel that I'm supporting any musician by doing so, that would be pretty naive I think.

What we're heading towards, if Bill Gates is right, is no more physical media. Just paid downloads. He thinks Bluray won't last very long because it is financially hazardous to produce/distribute and that people will download 25GB movies through broadband only a few years from now. This would mean no more jewel cases and beautiful artwork, no more collecting... :(

Let's hope he's wrong, because then, the artists will probably be getting screwed even more, not counting you and me.

Edit: Heck, even the new FF XI expansions are going to be available only through download... ;)

I hope he's wrong too, because if he's right we're going to be facing a very serious problem.

Edit: I know the video is long, but it's definately worth watching and thinking about, even for you casual web browsers.

That was an awesome post, Arte...a friend of mine that has Comcast is seeing this right now through the bandwidth limitations they are imposing. The claim is that it will ease network congestion, but I wonder how much this will effect P2P networks when the average end user gets a maximum of 5 GB a month, with charges for going over much like a cell phone. Then, of course, there's the fact that certain sites won't count towards your limit...in effect, steering traffic to sites that the ISP deems worthy (i.e., has deals with). Comcast does this now (maybe only in certain markets, but I'm pretty sure it's implemented currently, if not soon)...my ISP, Charter, is going to be rolling this out as well...if they don't declare bankruptcy first.

If it doesn't get contested (and I hope it does), expect ALL U.S. ISP's to jump on this as well. It's just a sneaky way to get around Net Nuetrality in my opinion.

I just watched the video, thanks for sharing. Reminds me of the internet browser on a cellphone... What if the actual internet was like this, with just a few limited choices and almost no way to create individual content. You load the browser, and all you get is a simple menu... not mentioning the crazy costs/regulations over what you can put up on there, if you even CAN upload content.

Do you remember AOL's view of the internet back in the 90s? They had their own browser and they got really popular simply because what they were offering was easy and limited, it actually appealed to a lot of people. Come to think of it, if AOL had been able to catch up with broadband and kept its grasp over the market, maybe this would already be true today.

Scary. I hope the internet doesn't ever become one-way.

I enjoy collecting CD's, Vinyls, etc... wish they'd implement something for youtube like a 1 time code in a sort to allow the use of the song in a video in non profit manner as long as you own the original cd. I made a video of both my girls when they were born & now we cant watch it & i have no other copy cuz the copy was on a desktop that got the blue screen of death. I tried to recover but HD was too fried.
Video was done to my 3 year olds favorite song from the movie meet the robinsons, I have to change the song now which sucks cuz i made the video using the lyrics as a sort of layout for the video. Now i got to look for a way to get the video redone, or extracted off of youtube. Any suggestions?

Here is a soon to be removed video I made....
My LS mates & I fighting Roc to BFMV

Any help on how to extract the video I made for my daughters would be so much appreciated!

You can use a program like DVDVideoSoft to download audio or video from youtube.