Yesterday evening, I received a message regarding one of the blogs I feature on my weekly blogroll. In J. Eric Smith’s review of his favorite Cure songs, apparently several of them were suddenly blocked due to this message.
And this block isn’t just limited to songs by The Cure. In fact, much of Green Day’s catalog is currently blocked on YouTube, as are songs by Adele, Nirvana and Fleetwood Mac.
Follow along with me on this. I’ve seen this story before, and the only ones who lose out are you and me.
SESAC (the Society of European Stage Acts and Composers) is a performance-rights organization, similar to ASCAP and BMI. Their job is to make sure that if songs get played somewhere, either on the radio or on television or on a streaming platform, SESAC gets paid – and in return, the artists SESAC represents gets paid.
Heck, back in the day, when I was in college and worked at the college radio station, we had fees in our station budget for license payments to ASCAP, BMI and SESAC so that we wouldn’t run afoul of those organizations when we played music.
From what I understand, YouTube and SESAC were negotiating new rates, and yesterday was the deadline for finalization of those talks. Terms weren’t reached, so SESAC immediately blocked all of the songs and artists under their purview from YouTube.
Now at some point in time, YouTube and SESAC will do their behind-the-curtain negotiations, the songs will reappear on YouTube, and all will be right with the world. But until then, be prepared for that usual tactic where both sides do the “We can’t show you these songs because the other party is such a doody-head, you need to write them and demand your songs be heard,” like they’re using us as their bargaining chips. They’ll use us to guilt the other party into negotiating a deal, and in the end, we’re paying more for the content – either in advertisements or in subscription fees.
Trust me, I put up with this eleven years ago, when Spectrum’s predecessor Time Warner Gable got into a pissing match with CBS over rights fees, and Time Warner simply blocked CBS (and a couple of other CBS-owned cable channels) from appearing on my cable system. And after months of behind-the-curtain negotiations, both parties finally agreed to terms – while I missed a few months of dramas like Under The Dome. Ugh.
Apparently this is not an unusual situation between various conglomerates. Supposedly earlier this year, Universal Music Group got into a pissing match with TikTok, and songs owned by UMG were blocked on that platform for a few months.
So what do we do from here? Not much. We just wait. And wait. And at some point in time, SESAC and YouTube will reach a deal.
But until then …
The next time I do a K-Chuck Radio post … It might be SESAC-free. If I can help it.
Chuck The Writer 
Welcome to Canada, where ALL news sites are blocked from Facebook either in or out. It’s so helpful when the organizations who are in business solely to make sure they stay in business do things like this. It’s like how labour unions represent the unions and not the members. Or likr our government that represents the political parties and not the people who elect them – the ones who ultimately pay all the bills.
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JES has added a list of those songs on Spotify.
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