As a keen amateur musician I love performing covers of various songs. I have written some of my own, but I don't have enough to play for long. I've been participating in the Open Mic contests on Steemit and a lot of my entries have been covers. I've never had much issue with putting songs on Youtube. I did once get warned about one I did a while back where I used a backing track and their content detection recognised it. In that case it restricted some options (e.g. no downloads) and I think I wouldn't have been able to earn from it, not that I ever get any money from Youtube.
This week I did a Supertramp song for Open Mic. I had some good comments, but the next day I had an email to say it had been taken down as a company called Evergreen Social Media Associates had made a copyright takedown request. It seems they go after any Supertramp songs. In my case I assume it was due to the video title, but the Youtube systems can recognise audio and I expect that company monitor for certain songs.
When I went back to Youtube it said my account was restricted until I had been to 'copyright school'. That consisted of a cartoon to watch and a few questions that I could answer anyway.
I do appreciate why copyright exists. People are ripping off music all the time and the artists are losing out. Youtube itself is full of copied videos and even who albums. I would hope the people who put those up are not getting paid for them, but the videos are not being taken down.
You will find millions of cover song videos up there. I expect these are generally tolerated. If they do get popular enough to make some money then deals may get done. It is possible to pay for a licence to perform and record a song, but I've never bothered with that so far as I assumed I was below the radar.
Putting such videos on Steemit does change things a bit as you are very likely to earn something. What's the legal status of that? I know laws vary across countries. In the UK if you play cover songs in a pub the venue should have a licence from the Performing Rights Society. That money gets distributed to the artists somehow, but they are not noting down every song played. What could happen here is that you could allocate part of the rewards to go to the artist, if they were using Steemit. This facility to share rewards is available on Steem Whales.
I have to consider what songs I'm going to upload in future. I don't want to risk getting banned, but I'm probably safe with most songs. Maybe I just need to write more of my own songs.
Any thoughts?
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