Over the past few days, you may have noticed that some audio tracks are missing from YouTube clips, including music by Adele, Green Day, REM, and more.
This is due to a licensing dispute with the European Society of Stage Writers and Composers (SESAC), which has not renewed its partnership with YouTube which is about to expire.
However, it has not yet expired. Still, YouTube is already grabbing music from SESAC artists and showing users an error message.
So why would YouTube pre-emptively remove SESAC musicians?
According to Variety, the move could be a negotiating tactic to strengthen YouTube’s position.
According to Variety:
โSESAC is [other performing rights associations] ASCAP and BMI have approximately 30,000 members and 1.5 million songs, while ASCAP has approximately 800,000 members, but the market comparisons show that the ability of artists affected by this block is It accounts for a large proportion of the population. โ
So by removing the music, YouTube may be trying to gain an advantage in negotiations and put pressure on SESAC’s artists to finalize the deal.
YouTube is confident that the following will happen:
“We have been negotiating in good faith with SESAC to renew our existing contract. Unfortunately, despite our best efforts, we were unable to reach a fair agreement before it expired. We are in active discussions with SESAC and hope to reach a new agreement as soon as possible.”
To be clear, publishers have more power in the music industry, and it is the publishing groups that are likely to put pressure on SESAC as a result of this dismissal. So, in reality, this could be a brilliant tactical move by YouTube to get the deal it wants, and select artists will only disappear from the app for a short period of time, and this issue will soon be resolved. It is hoped that it will be resolved.
But it could drag on, just as Universal’s removal of music from TikTok lasted for months amid tense negotiations.
I doubt SESAC has the same level of power in this regard, but right now the US app is missing music from several major artists.