The men in hoodies and crocs

January 29, 2015 10:57 AM

"I want to decide what to do when. That is a major reason why I decided in 2005 to self-publish rather than chase after a record deal. I am independent because I didn’t want a bunch of men in suits deciding how I should release my music. For 10 years I have managed to bushwhack a circuitous path around them, but now I’ve got to find a way around the men in hoodies and crocs."

Cellist Zoë Keating (previously) on the new Youtube music services agreement.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick (45 comments total)

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss except he dresses like a slob.
posted by entropicamericana at 11:09 AM on January 29, 2015 [13 favorites]

She posted a follow-up with with transcripts of her conversation.
posted by muddgirl at 11:13 AM on January 29, 2015 [5 favorites]

Dear Zoë Keating: Tell YouTube to Take a Hike
posted by 1970s Antihero at 11:13 AM on January 29, 2015 [2 favorites]

Also, on a more personal note I'm really sorry to hear about her husband's illness. The last thing she needs right is to be forced to make a 5-year agreement on anything, much less something that currently brings in a non-zero amount of revenue for her. Damn.
posted by muddgirl at 11:24 AM on January 29, 2015 [9 favorites]

If anything, Keating is amazingly measured in her assessment of the situation here -- she's clearly quite willing to take a generously pro-consumer approach of being permissive and friendly with situations that would normally require sync licenses, making almost everything available freely, and playing with streaming services (which is almost the same thing as releasing things for free), even though there are deep problems with the general movement towards reducing or even eliminating the role of recording revenues.

And she's generous in her assessment of Google:

A lot of people in the music industry talk about Google as evil. I don’t think they are evil. I think they, like other tech companies, are just idealistic in a way that works best for them. I think this because I used to be one of them (*4). The people who work at Google, Facebook, etc can’t imagine how everything they make is not, like, totally awesome. If it’s not awesome for you it’s because you just don’t understand it yet and you’ll come around. They can’t imagine scenarios outside their reality and that is how they inadvertently unleash things like the algorithmic cruelty of Facebook’s yearly review (which showed me a picture I had posted after a doctor told me my husband had 6-8 weeks to live).

I'm a little more aggressive and negative in my opinions about people who say, on one hand, that "It's impossible to devalue music" while actively working to make creative and technical investment in it a more shaky economic proposition, but having also spent a long time working in tech, I think it's possible her view is just as correct and a better place from which to start solving problems.
posted by weston at 11:29 AM on January 29, 2015 [5 favorites]

Oh god, that follow up. "It's like, y'know, totally harsh!" Could it be less coherent?
posted by happyroach at 11:33 AM on January 29, 2015

I don’t think they are evil. I think they, like other tech companies, are just idealistic in a way that works best for them. I think this because I used to be one of them (*4). The people who work at Google, Facebook, etc can’t imagine how everything they make is not, like, totally awesome. If it’s not awesome for you it’s because you just don’t understand it yet and you’ll come around.

That sort of patronizing attitude may not be evil in a Snidely Whiplash kind of way, but brushing aside the pains of others as "just not getting it, man" certainly fits by my own "banality of" definition.
posted by Steely-eyed Missile Man at 11:33 AM on January 29, 2015 [12 favorites]

jwz notes: "I think you can expect to see a lot of old videos on Youtube getting blocked in the near future because of this."
posted by We had a deal, Kyle at 11:34 AM on January 29, 2015 [1 favorite]

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss except he dresses like a slob.

Meet the old boss just using different jargon and dressed differently. Old boss wants a contract that benefits him exclusively and screws the content provider over royally. That will always be the same old boss.

It does not matter if he opens a letter with "Dear Mr. Jones" or "hey there" -- it is the same old boss getting you dependent on his services and then moving the goal posts without negotiating a deal.

This is tyranny. The same robber baron tyranny we had before. Nothing has changed. It is the same old boss who will shed the costume just as the people he is lording over get wise and put their foot down, and hopes the misdirection will get them to trust him again...
posted by Alexandra Kitty at 11:36 AM on January 29, 2015 [8 favorites]

Countdown to Youtube throwing Keating's representative under the bus. "Oh she just didn't state it properly, blah blah blah. We're terribly sorry, what can we say to make this all go away?"
posted by muddgirl at 11:38 AM on January 29, 2015 [2 favorites]

This whole deal is the same reason why I've been reluctant to take self-publishing as a writer for granted. I've seen several bits about the earnings of genuine big-named authors and thought, "Wow, I make much better money than that on my own," but that doesn't make me feel like I've got it made. Instead, I wonder when the big companies with people in suits are going to figure out how to beat down & quash the self-publishing system.

It helps that self-pubbing is so strongly supported by a mammoth corporation (Amazon), but still...yeah. I keep thinking that at some point, The Man will figure out how to get control of all this again and it'll be back to Big Business As Usual.
posted by scaryblackdeath at 11:41 AM on January 29, 2015 [6 favorites]

happyroach: "Oh god, that follow up. "It's like, y'know, totally harsh!" Could it be less coherent?"

How do you not know what a transcript is?
posted by boo_radley at 11:44 AM on January 29, 2015 [8 favorites]

The Register weighs in with updates, including:

* an email conversation between a YouTube rep, journalist, & Keating
* a pointer to an apparent transcript of the YouTube/Keating discussion
posted by weston at 11:52 AM on January 29, 2015 [3 favorites]

The internet is just a mess right now for anyone trying to work in it spontaneously/more immediately as a creative communication medium, like people use to do more often in the early days. Limits on organic reach and algorithmic selection of content mean you don't have as much direct control over the timing and reach of your content as you did in the early days of online promotion. It's much harder now to predict how/when your content will actually reach your audience. Even if you pay for the reach, it's not the simple first come, first served, everyone-sees-your-post-in-the order-you-posted-it sort of dynamic there used to be to social media in the 90s. There's a whole pseudo science around social media PR now that only even makes sense in the context of artificially limited organic reach. It's been frustrating to me just realizing the tools and underlying assumptions of the medium have changed so drastically so quickly. It used to be much, much easier to guarantee a certain number of eyeballs on content and achieve a predictable level of engagement, on a smaller scale, if you knew your network; not so much anymore. You can't guarantee a post will reach your own mother outside a two-week cone of uncertainty, but you can get a hundred thousand "followers" in a week on Twitter for ten bucks and some change.

I had a nervous feeling about it when these YouTube changes were originally announced, so it's interesting to see how it's all starting to play out now. Thanks for the post.
posted by saulgoodman at 11:52 AM on January 29, 2015 [15 favorites]

these kind of canny business decisions are why google+ is the premier social network...
posted by ennui.bz at 11:53 AM on January 29, 2015 [15 favorites]

I think it's interesting that they're not threatening to block her music - just the music that she uploads from her own account and makes money from. If somebody uploads her work from a separate account, they'll just "apply a track policy" to it (whatever that means) and cut her out of any ad profits.

the content that you directly upload from accounts that you own under the content owner attached to the agreement, we’ll have to block that content. but anything that comes up that we’re able to scan and match through content ID we could just apply a track policy but the commercial terms no longer apply so there’s not going to be any revenue generated.


Agree to our non-negotiable terms, or we'll continue to distribute your work without cutting you in on the profits.
posted by Reversible Diamond-Encrusted Ermine Codpiece at 11:56 AM on January 29, 2015 [6 favorites]

Does anyone actually plan on signing up for this new Youtube thing? $10 a month to not see ads on YouTube music videos?
posted by smackfu at 11:56 AM on January 29, 2015 [1 favorite]

* an email conversation between a YouTube rep, journalist, & Keating

[Update: Sat. morning: After discovering that Keating was taking detailed notes of her conversation with a YouTube representative, YouTube appears to be re-grouping to clarify their policies and figure out exactly what artists are being told. They have also not clearly explained why they are demanding a retraction from Digital Music News. More as it develops.]

Called it.
posted by muddgirl at 11:59 AM on January 29, 2015 [16 favorites]

We had a deal, Kyle: jwz notes: "I think you can expect to see a lot of old videos on Youtube getting blocked in the near future because of this."

I wonder if Google Video Search stop playing nice with other video hosts. For example Prince's "Purple Rain" isn't on YouTube, but it is elsewhere.
posted by filthy light thief at 11:59 AM on January 29, 2015

(Well, I "called it" in that all this happened several days ago, and I'm just hearing about it now, but still.)
posted by muddgirl at 12:01 PM on January 29, 2015 [5 favorites]

Billboard interview with Keating (pretty in-depth). Then a follow up with Youtube.
posted by muddgirl at 12:18 PM on January 29, 2015 [2 favorites]

How do you not know what a transcript is?

Still no excuse for being so incoherent.
posted by happyroach at 12:19 PM on January 29, 2015

(who would get the soundtrack share of the revenue I wonder?)

To me, this is the big question. The terms of the music services agreement seem pretty lousy for the musician. So what happens if they opt out and someone else then uploads their music to YouTube? She says "I will no longer be able to monetize (how I hate that word) 3rd party videos through ContentID." There is still a copyright on the music - is it then up to the musicians to find each violation and notify YouTube?

On preview (seeing the follow up with YouTube piece), YouTube says: "She will still retain control over her Content ID account, and can allow or block her music as she likes." So the musician can have it blocked, but if it stays up, only YouTube will benefit from the ad revenue.
posted by exogenous at 12:22 PM on January 29, 2015

Does anyone actually plan on signing up for this new Youtube thing? $10 a month to not see ads on YouTube music videos?

I don't know! I think the eventual answer is "no" but the new approach to advertising does make YouTube super annoying for watching anything longer than a music video. The alternative might have to be no more youtube rather than "just suck it up and watch the ads."

Because here's the thing. I'm sure I'm not a typical user, but most of what I use YouTube for, other than the occasional Psy video or Jimmy Fallon excerpt, is to put on long videos of DJ sets or similar instrumental music so I can zone out and write. The way YouTube is inserting ads in this type of content is clearly just algorithmic without any human attention to what's going on in the video, and there is also no fadeout or other transition, it's just BAM! Now you are listening to a commercial. It's very jarring. In many ways it's worse than TV (which is horrible) because at least that content is designed with ads in mind and they put in little 5-second transitions to let you know it's coming.

Also this is a little off topic, but as I've been exposed to more YouTube ads than ever before, it's become clear that there are like no standards for what you can submit as an ad. If you stick to Vevo channels and such, you get the premium ads like Budweiser and car companies, but if you wait until the 4th ad break on some video with 50k views, you will see some amazing crap. Think "we buy gold" scams and advertisements for conspiracy theory "documentaries," many of them with cable access-level production. And long! A single extremely poorly produced, very tedious ad could be like 7 minutes long. It's... really something. Maybe I should start a "shitty YouTube commercials" YouTube channel.

Yes I know you can skip the long ones after 5 seconds, but how long do you think that will last?
posted by Joey Buttafoucault at 12:23 PM on January 29, 2015 [6 favorites]

Everything made sense to me until the very last couple of sentences in the update "Clarity" post, which were in italics and so presumably the Youtube rep addressing Keating:

But what you could do is basically unlink your channel from the content owner that is associated with the deal, so that when the deal terminates on that content owner, your channel will be separated from the deal and you can enter into a regular youtube partner commercial terms which allows you to monetize the content. The content owner account will no longer have commercial terms but it will have the content ID agreement terms which means you can continue to track

If switching to a regular partner account would still allow her to monetize the stuff the Content ID system finds, why isn't that accomplishing what she wants? I probably just missed something.
posted by XMLicious at 12:31 PM on January 29, 2015

1) All of my catalog must be included in both the free and premium music service. Even if I don’t deliver all my music, because I’m a music partner, anything that a 3rd party uploads with my info in the description will be automatically included in the music service too.
...
3) I will be required to release new music on Youtube at the same time I release it anywhere else. So no more releasing to my core fans first on Bandcamp and then on iTunes.

On Hacker News there was what I thought was a clever idea: She creates a separate entity ( Zoë's Music On YouTube, LLC or whatever) that posts her music on YouTube. This way Zoë can pre-release music, but YouTube still gets first crack at the full catalog of music from ZMOY.
posted by Nonsteroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drug at 12:38 PM on January 29, 2015 [1 favorite]

Interesting post. I can totally see Keating's point of view, and I think she's fairly understanding about google's situation. Ultimately, it's their service, and it's impossible for a company as big as google to design terms that are going to work for everyone while keeping youtube profitable. In principle, it's understandable.

The thing about their new terms that seems a bit unreasonable to me is the restriction that you have to release everything on youtube that has been released anywhere else. It seems like that restriction will make monetization via youtube unprofitable for certain segments of the market. It's also just kind of a dick move.

This is tyranny. The same robber baron tyranny we had before.

Tyranny? Holy hyperbole! There are arguments to be made here that youtube has a certain responsibility here as de facto gatekeepers. But there's also an argument to be made that it's their service, thus it's their service. My resolution of that is, like I said, that it's understandable that they are a business and they can't offer a business model that suits everyone, but this requirement to publish on youtube what's published elsewhere is wrong.
posted by Edgewise at 12:40 PM on January 29, 2015 [1 favorite]

If switching to a regular partner account would still allow her to monetize the stuff the Content ID system finds, why isn't that accomplishing what she wants? I probably just missed something.

Under the "loophole" she won't be able to continue to monetize stuff on Content ID. That's what the rep is saying. She'd have two accounts - her "Zoe Keating" commercial account, where she only uploads videos that she wants to monetize; and her "Zoe Keating" content owner account that has access to Content ID but wouldn't get any money from videos that it finds.
posted by muddgirl at 12:40 PM on January 29, 2015 [3 favorites]

A lot of people in the music industry talk about Google as evil. I don’t think they are evil. I think they, like other tech companies, are just idealistic in a way that works best for them.

The people who make these decisions are not close to the same socioeconomic class. This is basic Class Struggle 101 here.
posted by bukvich at 1:11 PM on January 29, 2015 [2 favorites]

But there's also an argument to be made that it's their service, thus it's their service.

There are also arguments that it is her music. And there are arguments that oligopolies can and should be regulated so that they serve the public interest. Especially when they destroy the previous marketplace for her music.
posted by sebastienbailard at 1:14 PM on January 29, 2015 [15 favorites]

muddgirl: "Countdown to Youtube throwing Keating's representative under the bus. "Oh she just didn't state it properly, blah blah blah. We're terribly sorry, what can we say to make this all go away?""

You think there's a human on the other end? You think they care?
posted by symbioid at 1:25 PM on January 29, 2015

She should pull her Music from YouTube, then host and monetize it on her own site, and DMCA any one that puts it on YouTube.
posted by blue_beetle at 1:41 PM on January 29, 2015

I think they care about bad press for their fledgling Music Key service, yes. I probably overestimated them by think they'd apologize, but so far their strategy has been pretty much what I predicted. First, claiming it's all a lie, then when Keating showed that she had documentation, claiming that it's simply a misunderstanding on the part of a representative and Keating.

then host and monetize it on her own site, and DMCA any one that puts it on YouTube.

She recognizes that she gets a LOT of exposure from third-party videos that use her music as a soundtrack on Youtube. It doesn't hurt Youtube at all - it only hurts her.
posted by muddgirl at 1:44 PM on January 29, 2015 [3 favorites]

Youtube ads - Yes I know you can skip the long ones after 5 seconds, but how long do you think that will last?

Actually that's not always true. I believe the option is up to the channel/video owner, but you will sometimes find unskippable ads. It might be up to the ad runner, actually. Personally I think the skipping is smart business for everyone - apparently skipped ads don't charge the ad provider, so people who don't care about your shit don't cost you money as an advertiser and it motivates advertisers to make better ads. But I have for sure clicked through to things that insisted on the full 30 second roll.
posted by phearlez at 2:30 PM on January 29, 2015 [1 favorite]

The Register weighs in with updates, including:

Wow, the "+Comment" section at the bottom of that article is remarkably shitty and dishonest. They write:

SOPA was a clumsy and imperfect attempt to take out foreign piracy sites, which distort the market significantly. And you know what happened there. The consequences wash up eventually, and Zoë Keating is on the receiving end today.

As Silicon Valley has been very successful in persuading the public to throw away their strong legal protections, Google may well get away with it. How's your SOPA protest looking today?

First of all, what ridiculous bullshit. They say SOPA was an attempt to take out foreign piracy sites. Keating's getting bullied by Google/YouTube, which is notably not a foreign piracy site. Yet somehow the treatment she's "on the receiving end" of is a "consequence" of SOPA's legislative failure? WTF?

Moreover, SOPA wouldn't have given her any kind of recourse. The unwanted provisions of that bill would have allowed content owners to report sites, similar to the DMCA content notice and takedown process, but as a consequence have the reported sites cut off from US-based payment processors, advertisers, and search engines, and to force DNS name servers to de-list their domain names or redirect them to a different IP. So say the protests weren't successful, and SOPA passed. Is the Register author saying that Keating would have been able to get YouTube's domain seized and redirected because they'd be streaming music of hers without sharing ad revenue? Should she be able to force Google to de-list YouTube pages in its search results? Prevent Google's ad network from placing ads on YouTube pages or videos?

How fucking ridiculous
posted by cobra_high_tigers at 2:35 PM on January 29, 2015 [3 favorites]

I've never seen those youtube ads, which I guess mean that adblock is good at stopping them. And my facebook experience improved vastly when I installed FB Purity and set it to always display "most recent" instead of "top stories," regardless of how much Facebook wants to change my settings back to show me only the things it wants to show.

Which is all fine and well until the day major corporations stop providing services to anything but locked-down mobile phones. Which, given the continually accelerating rate of fuckery we're experiencing, is likely going to be sometime in August or September of this year
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 2:41 PM on January 29, 2015 [3 favorites]

She should pull her Music from YouTube, then host and monetize it on her own site, and DMCA any one that puts it on YouTube.

This would disallow the permissive/participatory approach she's chosen to take with fans and other derivative users.

And apparently if she doesn't tell Google all her catalog are belong to them, they'll effectively do the same thing for her.
posted by weston at 2:42 PM on January 29, 2015 [1 favorite]

(And yeah, that SOPA tangent from The Register is incredibly weird. YouTube's power comes from a weakness in copyright? An artist like Keating that actively uploads some of her stuff to The Pirate Bay would/should have felt hurt about piracy to support SOPA? )
posted by weston at 2:50 PM on January 29, 2015 [2 favorites]

Keating's always been very straightforward and transparent in the financial end of her musical dealings. I'm not surprised she's the one throwing a spanner in the works where Google's quietly doing something to the disadvantage of independent musicians.
posted by immlass at 4:04 PM on January 29, 2015

Billboard interview with Keating (pretty in-depth). Then a follow up with Youtube.

The end of that follow-up is pretty enraging. "Hopefully Google's terms are less confusing for Keating now!" (not an exact quote because BB site won't let me select text). I really don't think Keating was ever confused in the slightest about what was going on here. Patiently waiting for someone to clarify inconsistencies in their own remarks does not constitute confusion.

Also in the first article the analogy is so clearly backwards Keating should be the immovable object and YouTube the unstoppable force I miss editors
posted by No-sword at 4:05 PM on January 29, 2015 [3 favorites]

Yeah, I almost hesitated posting it, but I think it's being tongue-in-cheek. Especially since they included this rather cutting quote from Keating:

This was news to Keating, who responded that she was "very happy to hear Youtube has changed that language in the contract, and I look forward to seeing it, since mine does not say that."

posted by muddgirl at 4:45 PM on January 29, 2015 [2 favorites]

Yeah, this bit here:

Keating told Billboard that she came away from her many talks with YouTube representatives ... with the understanding that, regardless of whether or not she signed the Music Key contract, her music would end up on Music Key, via users uploading their own videos featuring her music. This, YouTube tells Billboard, is not true.

It's also not what I got from reading Keating's description, in the important distinction that there is no "Music Key contract" as such. There is a "Youtube and also Music Key contract." Which is kind of the problem. They're taking the Youtube arrangement she was happy with and adding this Music Key stuff which she is less happy with. And that they are bundling the two together makes me think they know offering the Music Key deal on its own it's not very enticing.

Essentially, as YouTube now explains it ... Keating has a relatively simple choice. She can sign the contract and allow YouTube and Music Key access to her entire catalog, along with the contract's other provisions, allowing her to make money from its presence on the site. Or she can refuse the contract and leave her music unmonetized on YouTube. She will still retain control over her Content ID account, and can allow or block her music as she likes, YouTube explained.

Which is EXACTLY what I already knew from Keating's description. She was NOT confused about any of that.
posted by RobotHero at 4:48 PM on January 29, 2015

RobotHero: " as YouTube now explains it ... Keating has a relatively simple choice."

And I'm going to harp on this phrasing right here again because this is bothering me. At no point did Keating write, "Oh my goodness, I don't know which of my plethora of options to choose from." What makes it a difficult decision for her is that it's a dilemma.
posted by RobotHero at 6:09 PM on January 29, 2015 [1 favorite]

Man, remember the good old days when we all liked Google? Those were innocent times, my friends. Innocent times.
posted by dejah420 at 6:54 PM on January 29, 2015 [1 favorite]

It's always amazing to me that YouTube is the lone streaming service that seems to be chock full of unauthorized, ad-supported copyrighted content, particularly in regard to music.

what happens if they opt out and someone else then uploads their music to YouTube? She says "I will no longer be able to monetize (how I hate that word) 3rd party videos through ContentID." There is still a copyright on the music - is it then up to the musicians to find each violation and notify YouTube?

Exactly. And I'm sure YouTube is super quick to take down videos that get tons of views.

the new approach to advertising does make YouTube super annoying for watching anything longer than a music video.

What is the new approach? My kids have been watching the entire Rocky and Bullwinkle series on YouTube. Each ~22m episode has a 15 second pre-roll or a 30-second pre-roll that can be skipped after 5 seconds.

We don't get any ads in those 20-minute episodes ... maybe AdBlock stops them?

Man, remember the good old days when we all liked Google?

I still like YouTube, but only b/c it's more reliable than torrents. Also, b/c it was the only "streaming music service" that had Morrissey's new album.
posted by mrgrimm at 10:08 PM on January 29, 2015 [1 favorite]