At Rumblefish we help our artists monetize the use of their music on movies, TV shows, video games, advertisements and, of course, on social video sites like YouTube. We pay out millions of dollars in royalties to our artists. So far, over 5 million videos have used Rumblefish artists’ music as their soundtracks. We put a soundtrack counter on rumblefish.com (top right) to track and share the number openly. The use of music in traditional media, such as TV ads, films and games is very straightforward. The use of music as soundtracks for social media, however, is much more complicated. It is an emerging ecosystem with lots of players and moving parts.
On Friday afternoon, February 24th, the YouTube Content ID system misidentified a video as having a song from a Rumblefish artist in it. The video uploader, “eeplox,” disputed the claim and it was sent to our Content ID review team. The Rumblefish Content ID team reviews a significant number of claim disputes every day (remember the millions of videos mentioned above). It is our goal to review every disputed claim every day, and handle each dispute with care and attention to detail. We hold ourselves to the highest standard, but are human and occasionally make mistakes. A mistake is exactly what happened with this claim. The video in question did not have our music in it and one of our content ID representatives reinstated the claim on the video in error. The video uploader eeplox got very upset, understandably, and put a post up about it on Slashdot. We didn’t hear from him on Friday after we mistakenly reinstated the claim.
I was made aware of the error on Sunday afternoon and went to view the video myself. When I viewed the video, it was clear that we had made a mistake and we immediately released the claim of the video back to eeplox, this happened within a few hours. I then personally sent him an apology and set up an Ask Me Anything (AMA) on Reddit to answer questions from people who thought we were actually attempting to copyright the sound of birds singing, wholesale reinstating claims without reviewing them, etc.
As of this writing, my AMA has over 1,740 comments, so it seems people were interested in “discussing” the issue. Of course, some redditors we’re just being ridiculous and angry, but about 20-30% of the users were there to ask very valid questions, were genuinely curious about what happened and wanted to know what we planned to do about the situation. Also, many offered very interesting and compelling suggestions for us, which we’re considering.
Why isn’t Content ID perfect?
YouTube reviews an enormous amount of content. From what we understand, it’s over an hour of video every second. That’s not an easy task. The claims dispute process is designed to help video uploaders let content owners know that they believe a mistake has been made.
Many disputed claims fall into these categories:
- Musicians performing a work so well that it sounds like another recording of the same work. Think classical piano recital.
- Artists who have incorporated a sample of a song in a song that they have created as a soundtrack for their video.
- Bands that we represent using their own music in their own videos that they prefer not to have monetized or are unfamiliar with the claim dispute process.
- Any number of other miscellaneous reasons. Hence, having a claim dispute resolution team and process at Rumblefish.
What Rumblefish is going to do about this?
No process is perfect, but every process can be improved. We’re taking a hard look at how to further improve our claim dispute review process and potentially even introduce new tech tools to help achieve that goal. Although we have no control over the YouTube Content ID technology, I have to say that for most of the claim disputes, the YouTube technology and the processes work rather well. YouTube has been a great partner for several years and has helped Rumblefish, more importantly our artists, significantly. When you achieve scale in any process, cracks appear. It’s not about whether or not cracks will appear, it’s all about how swiftly and genuinely you attend to and fix them. We will continue to work closely with YouTube to make improvements to this process.
Eeplox, again my apologies to for our mistake. The last time I looked, your video had over 50,000 views, which I really hope helps to expand your audience and revenue.
It’s important at Rumblefish that we do right by all creators – the ones we represent and the ones we do not. You can always count on us to be innovative in our approach and responsive when we have missteps. We are, and will continue to be, on the cutting edge of what’s happening in the social video space and things are moving faster than ever. If there are ways that you think we can improve what we’re doing, a way that you can help us innovate, improve or move forward, hit us up and let us know. We’re all ears.
All the best,
Paul Anthony
Founder & CEO
Rumblefish
