In the last couple of days, you may have found some audio tracks missing from YouTube, including some songs by Adele, Green Day, and R.E.M.
This has happened due to the licensing dispute with the Society of European Stage Authors and Composers (SESAC). SESAC has chosen to not review its partnership with YouTube, which is expiring soon.
The partnership has not expired yet. However, YouTube has already started pulling music from the SESAC artists. Now, the platform is displaying an error message to users.
Here is the error message displayed by YouTube.
“This video contains content from SESAC. It is not available in your country.”
So, you may ask, why is YouTube cutting off SESAC artists’ music before the expiry of the partnership?
Well, Variety reports that this may be a move to negotiate with SEASC and strengthen its position.
Here is what Variety wrote in its article.
“SESAC is far smaller than [other performing rights associations] ASCAP and BMI – with approximately 30,000 members and 1.5 million compositions while ASCAP has nearly 800,000 members – but as the caliber of artists affected by the block shows, it represents a comparatively large percentage of the marketplace.”
It seems that YouTube is looking to get the jump on negotiations by removing the music preemptively. This will prompt artists to pressure the SESAC to work out a deal with YouTube.
And YouTube is confident that the deal will happen.
“We have held good faith negotiations with SESAC to renew our existing deal. Unfortunately, despite our best efforts, we were unable to reach an equitable agreement before its expiration. We are in active conversations with SESAC and are hoping to reach a new deal as soon as possible.”
In a similar fashion, TikTok carried on for months amid negotiations with Universal Music Group. Ultimately, they completed a deal with Universal to use their music on the platform.
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