Trent signs RIAA supported petition.

[allegro]

Trent didnt mind youtube when he threw up the Tension film on there to promote his tour....how many clicks did he get on that video? couple hundred thousand? he didnt mind youtube when he threw up the CBH video to promote his new album...

It's different when the artist is using it to promote his/herself, although YouTube is still making money off the ads after a certain hit level and has agreed to funnel the money to the artist. But when the artist has no control, YouTube's ads generate a shitload of profit for YouTube and UMG or whomever and the artist isn't getting any of it. And that profit, in itself, explicitly violates Federal copyright laws and goes beyond the scope of fair use.

Speaking to the above concept by @HurtinMinorKey , if artists create art so that anybody other than the artist can wildly profit from by doing absolutely nothing, artists might as well not even continue making art. Sharing art without profit to anybody (e.g. taping sections at Pearl Jam concerts and sharing them without payment) is not the same as YouTube getting revenue for ads and hits by doing absolutely nothing other than providing a sharing platform. Take away any YouTube revenue, and that's different.

You learn the basics in IP classes, like this:

In summary, some important points to remember:

* The authority to establish Copyright Law comes from the US Constitution, Article 1, Section 8.

* One major purpose of Copyright Law is to “promote the progress of the sciences and useful arts”, in other words knowledge.

* Copyright law is an attempt to balance public interest with the rights of the individual author/creator.

And it's not "forever" but the time limited was extended per the "Disney Extension," for sure.

Note that this shit affects average users, too.

[Khrz]

Copyright law is inherently different than the example you provide (wallet stealing)...

Fair enough, I'm not versed enough in US copyright laws to actually argue that. Thanks for your response btw.

But an artist has a right to control how his art is being distributed, and at what cost ? You can't just reproduce a piece of work infinitely and argue that, because it only hurts the artist's revenue on this piece, the common good takes precedence ? Illustrators who see their art reproduced on tshirts, musicians who see their music spread on Youtube (at least they tend to get credited), all the artists being ripped off while somebody else is making money off of it, it's not a minor harm ? Artists might just jump off a bridge at that point, why would they create anything ?

Google isn't free, there is no utopia here ? We get music, they get ad revenue, creators get bupkes ? How is that fair ?

Edit : Thank you @allegro for making my point way more concisely and clearly than I could.

[HurtinMinorKey]

Speaking to the above concept by @HurtinMinorKey, if artists create art so that anybody other than the artist can wildly profit from by doing absolutely nothing, artists might as well not even continue making art. Sharing art without profit to anybody (e.g. taping sections at Pearl Jam concerts and sharing them without payment) is not the same as YouTube getting revenue for ads and hits by doing absolutely nothing other than providing a sharing platform. Take away any YouTube revenue, and that's different.

I believe i addressed almost all the issues you raise in my posts above, so i won't repeat them. But just to be clear, you need to consider the specifics of costs and benefits of the situation (with respect to to social welfare). In other words, i would say you statement that "if artists create art so that anybody other than the artist can wildly profit from by doing absolutely nothing, artists might as well not even continue making art." is almost a non-sequitor with respect to YouTube. i.e, if YouTube was preventing artists from profiting at all from their works (which is clearly not the case), then perhaps the social costs would outweigh the gains. But that is clearly not the case. The welfare gains to society generated by YouTube outweigh any harm suffered by businesses and a small subset of "artists". This fact is independent from the issue of whether or not it's fair for YouTube to be benefiting from others work. In the same way I would argue that it's not fair that Uber displaced cabs in the way that it did, but that society is better off with Uber.

[Jinsai]

I don't know why Youtube has remained the dominant outlet for streaming video and music videos. It's user interface is so unbelievably shitty. It's a bloated disorganized mess... reminds me kind of what iTunes has devolved into.

[hellospaceboy]

Someone not caring whether you steal from them because they're already well-off doesn't change the fact that they regard it as stealing. Azoff et al. carefully worded the petition to specifically highlight the fact that the next generation of artists can't survive with their rightful wages stolen.

I would argue that YouTube makes it possible for the next generation of artists to thrive more than anything. Yes, the OLD channels of money making are closing, and the bands that started in the good ol' studio system with the advances and million dollar recording budgets have a hard time now... But new bands have youtube as a platform to jump off of. More than any other platform. Without question.

The big thing is this: it's not only the content that's on youtube, but the audience is there as well. It reminded me of my friend who had a hard time jumping from myspace to facebook all those years ago, but he had to. You can't do a social network alone, you have to go where your friends are. Youtube is the place where people go to explore music. Not apple music, not myspace music. You can try to design those sites nice and shiny, but if they don't click with the audience that you're out of luck.

And just for the record, I see (and agree) with both sides of the argument. I don't think there is an easy answer here. I resent the "for exposure" mentality, when an artist is asked to do work just for the reward of having their work used. It's bullshit. So the issue of artist compensation is real, but we already learned that content control on the internet is fruitless. The world we live in is such that all music will always be available for free, simply because technology allows it. However, people still buy music, and bands do survive. And yes, musicians might have to find new ways to make money, which sucks, but there's no closing this digital content door.

[Dr Channard]

He has seemed to change his thoughts on this general matter over the past several years.

“I can give you free music, and in my opinion that may contribute to more people showing up to the show. And when I say I give you free music it’s not really up to me to give you free music, it’s free anyway. For anybody that wants to admit it, pretty much any piece of music you want is free on the internet anyway.” -Trent Reznor (Digg Interview)

“As an artist, there’s a part of me that wants as many people to hear what I do as possible, without the hurdle of having to pay for it.” -Trent Reznor (Digg Interview)

And more recently,

“I’m not saying offering things for free or pay-what-you-can is wrong. I’m saying my personal feeling is that my album’s not a dime. It’s not a buck. I made it as well as I could, and it costs 10 bucks, or go fuck yourself.” -Trent Reznor (SPIN Interview)

And now the YouTube thing. I have no problem at all with paying for music, preferring a physical collection anyway. But there does seem to be in recent years a notable change in Trent’s tone on the matter.

[botley]

Yes, the OLD channels of money making are closing, and the bands that started in the good ol' studio system with the advances and million dollar recording budgets have a hard time now... But new bands have youtube as a platform to jump off of. More than any other platform. Without question.

Jump off into what, exactly? It's not just the legacy artists having a hard time, it's EVERYONE.

I resent the "for exposure" mentality, when an artist is asked to do work just for the reward of having their work used. It's bullshit. So the issue of artist compensation is real, but we already learned that content control on the internet is fruitless. The world we live in is such that all music will always be available for free, simply because technology allows it. However, people still buy music, and bands do survive. And yes, musicians might have to find new ways to make money, which sucks, but there's no closing this digital content door.

So maybe the... legislation should be tweaked to change with this new reality? Like, by reforming the copyright laws?

[Harry Seaward]

I feel that the opinion of these artists is noble but mostly pointless. They know they can't change the internet. They need to adapt. If they want to make money from their art, they need to tour and sell merch. This subject isn't a matter of right and wrong, that doesn't matter at this point. It's a matter of what can feasibly be done to change things. Regulating the internet is not an option, not matter how 'right' it is.

[hellospaceboy]

So maybe the... legislation should be tweaked to change with this new reality? Like, by reforming the copyright laws?

There is most definitely need to reform copyright laws! As a culture we completely fucked up on what intellectual property means, and mostly to the benefit of big corporations like Disney...

But the point is that this door won't be closed, music is, and will for the foreseeable future be freely available online, and making money from selling the music itself will be less profitable. That's reality. People are more and more comfortable buying digitally, so that's good news, all is not lost...

It's just like with the economy. People are waiting for it to get back to where it was before 2008, but that was a bubble and it wasn't sustainable and wasn't real. So yes, musicians might never again will be able to afford to trash hotel rooms and have private planes (like they did in the 80s-90s) but it doesn't mean they won't be making a living. The "how"will be figured out for this new digital age too.

[hellospaceboy]

Jump off into what, exactly? It's not just the legacy artists having a hard time, it's EVERYONE.

On that question: not sure. Not sure how newbie musicians can make money, but I do know that without youtube it would be much harder for them to reach an audience. So if you just take this platform away, where the AUDIENCE is, and try reaching them.

Any new band can experiment with this, by the way. Stay off youtube. If you're new, nobody is putting your songs up without your knowledge, so you have nothing to worry about. You won't be ripped off by youtube. Good luck.

[allegro]

There is most definitely need to reform copyright laws! As a culture we completely fucked up on what intellectual property means, and mostly to the benefit of big corporations like Disney...

Right up until the time that you need the benefits of copyright laws.

Look, it's one thing when a guy puts up a YouTube video of himself doing an instructional video of himself playing "Stairway to Heaven" on his guitar, "instructional" being the very definition of fair use, but YouTube removes it for violating copyright laws because YouTube is generating profit from it and Led Zeppelin's record company won't allow it, or whatever.

It's another thing that some kid sitting behind his computer is uploading every single Nine Inch Nails album he owns to YouTube so his friends (and the world) can hear them for free and YouTube's search mechanisms can't find them.

I kinda realized this when we were doing "30 Days of Bowie" in the music thread after Bowie died and we could find nearly every Bowie album on YouTube for free.

I can find most , weird.

And then Prince died, and we tried doing the same thing and Prince had his material locked down so tight that we couldn't find SHIT on YouTube for weeks, not even his own music videos, until his "people" were no longer being paid by Prince to send out nasty letters or whatever and now you can again find all kinds of Prince videos (but not whole albums, to my knowledge).

And I thought to myself, why would I buy a Bowie album when i can just stream a YouTube video that somebody uploaded to YouTube through my computer into my home stereo system or TV for free? Sure, I already own some of them, but many DON'T.

The music videos for songs, that's one thing; they're publicity, and not having those on YouTube = stupid.

But entire albums on YouTube? That's entirely different. . On YouTube. And all that has to be done is YouTube has to pay the artist. Period.

[botley]

So if you just take this platform away, where the AUDIENCE is, and try reaching them.

Again, no one is suggesting closing down YouTube or policing the Internet or hunting you in your bed for using BitTorrent (okay, maybe Lars Ulrich still is). The suggestion is: fix the safe harbour legislation to make it less easy for highly fucking valuable businesses to evade paying the artists from whose art they are making a commercial profit.

[Conan The Barbarian]

I can agree on full album uploads thats not cool. But besides that whats uploaded? Rare things not for sale. Fan footage. Live festival streams.

As fans we lose out on that shit.

And what about vevo? That's the only place you can see videos, isnt that ran by labels?

Didnt google come out and say they paid a huge amount of royalties?

[allegro]

I don't think artists care all that much about fans sharing live footage, even though that live performance is technically copyrighted. Live footage shot via non-pro equipment like smartphones is incentive to sell more tickets. But, again, the problem arises when YouTube (Big Corporation) is not always held accountable when those videos are embedded on their own pay site, or pay sites like Facebook get a shitload of money from ad revenue. YouTube should be paying ASCAP fees for what you just posted from the Cure concert, which some other guy just embedded on Facebook and then Facebook should be paying, too.

When you have a jukebox playing music in a bar with patrons, you pay ASCAP far that.

If this was all not-for-profit, there would not be an issue. But Google YouTube is 100% there for profit. As is Facebook, which is profiting from these videos.

Yeah, the happy medium is "whole albums" or "songs" = bad, "live stuff" and really old rare stuff and music videos and "instructional" and covers = not bad.

[m15a]

I guess I can see what you're all saying. Its true. Where would we hear music if Napster gets shut down? Napster is a reality that's here to stay and Napster is for the fans, so artists should do what they can to ensure Napster is a successful company.

Shoot. My iPhone keeps autocorrecting Napster to say Napster.

[Presideo]

If you buy something and multiply its availability for free, you devalue it. That's how it works.

That's kinda the crux of the situation when you talk about art in the digital age. Does the van Gogh estate receive money every time ‘Starry Night’ is searched on Google Images? Is the piece of art devalued amongst art critics because a HQ version of it can be accessed in a matter of seconds? It seems crazy that one type of art can be seen as free for all, while another type of art gets turned into a consumable good that must be rightfully purchased at all times.

To my knowledge Trent still owes Interscope two songs to put on a compilation album, yet he also put out a few ‘Best of’ compilations for free via ThePirateBay (which, unlike other torrent sites like KAT, doesn’t adhere to takedown requests for copyrighted material.) It's very disingenuous for Trent to give the middle-finger to Interscope when they try to literally cash in on NIN’s success, while at the same time expecting to be fairly compensated himself. Who do you think bankrolled The Fragile’s creation, only to find out years later that the end-result would be a unmarketable mess? Interscope.

FYI, I’m no legal nerd, but it's asinine to think that strengthening the legal liability of file/video-sharing sites when copyrighted material is posted will actually matter in a court of law. When Trent is legally able to sue YouTube because ’dingleberry666’ uploaded low-quality stream vids of Hesitation Marks, who actually wins in that situation? Nobody - YouTube will always have the legal out that ‘dingeberry666’ doesn’t work for YouTube, nor did YouTube actually get money from the illegal stream (they get money from advertising, not the content itself.) Trent would also get the Metallica/Napster treatment from both fans and critics if he ever tried that bullshit.

And just where would it end? Could I possibly get sued by Eddie Murphy for quoting one of his jokes from ‘Raw’ on Twitter? Comedians are considered artists too, right? It seems that even small message boards like ETS could potentially get fucked legally if every artist could easily sue because of possible copyright infringement. HBO could potentially sue every time a stupid Game of Thrones GIF gets posted. "WE OWN EVERY FUCKING FRAME OF GAME OF THRONES, HOW DARE YOU USE OUR CONTENT FOR YOUR OWN PERSONAL ENJOYMENT WITHOUT OUR FUCKING CONSENT"

[katara]

Personal opinions aside, it would be great if Trent could do a lengthy interview explaining this whole mess. Why he's doing what he's been doing, why his opinion is so different from what it was just a few years ago, and why he's now one of the suited businessmen he previously decried. It'd also be interesting to know why the fucking hell he's set up camp with Apple.

And what the status of new NIN is. That'd be nice, too.

[elevenism]

In your example, you bought an object, the object gets broken or lost, but somehow you're entitled to the commodity of the object and that's what you fundamentally purchased, to you. Which means somehow that you can go to a store and just grab one and walk out, because you already bought one in the past.

Oh no, dude, with Year Zero, i HADN'T already bought it. Trent should have been more clear that he was only referring to Australians

But you make an interesting point and i've never thought about it that way, with the sandwich metaphor.

[allegro]

That's kinda the crux of the situation when you talk about art in the digital age. Does the van Gogh estate receive money every time ‘Starry Night’ is searched on Google Images?

No, his copyright expired.

When Trent is legally able to sue YouTube because ’dingleberry666’

Wait, nobody on that petition is citing the uploaders; that is the purpose of the Act and has been determined in caselaw to be a non-issue re YouTube. The petitioners have an issue with the Corporation, YouTube, getting ad revenue based on the traffic generated from the uploads, and/or the ads inserted before said upload after the video generates a certain number of hits.

[elevenism]

i haven't gone through the ins and outs of this legal wrangling, but i sure do like using youtube to listen to the occasional pop song.

[allegro]

i haven't gone through the ins and outs of this legal wrangling, but i sure do like using youtube to listen to the occasional pop song.

As do I; and the solution isn't necessarily to get rid of YouTube but for YouTube to pay the artists. Pandora, Spotify, and other similar streaming services pay a fair share. YouTube does not.

SEE THIS.

SEE ALSO THIS.

[elevenism]

Yeah, the days of free music, even ILLEGAL free music, will be over soon and something we tell the next generation about.
I am a hypocrite when it comes to piracy in many forms in that i am against it, but i do it.
This includes youtube, torrents, and actual ARRRGHHH, MATEY high seas piracy (and soon they may even put a paywall on THAT!)

[wizfan]

I'm from a country that has almost gone bankrupt so many times, so it's very hard for us to support artists. We have Spotify, iTunes and Google Play, and they're relatively successful, annd, um... YouTube. That's it. Music stores? Psh. Nobody cares about physical shit anymore, and the little guys are being swallowed by the malls anyway. Indie record labels are dying as well, so struggling musicians here have to promote the shit out of themselves via Facebook groups just to get a dime from their Bandcamp profiles.

If Trent and co. manage to do something about the wasteland that is YouTube, sign me up. We don't need streaming service wars (Tidal vs Spotify vs Apple...), since that's even stupider than video game console wars. People listen to YouTube 99.9% percent of the time anyway, and people post their favorite VEVO links to Facebook so they can get all the likes. I can imagine all of this being a pain in the ass for the musicians who signed the letter. The way I see it, they don't try to force people to stop YouTubing and go buy their shit off of iTunes or whatever. They just want something back from the millions of listens people get for free. And YouTube just doesn't do that.

As for Trent "changing" and becoming a "corporate douchebag" or whatever, I just don't see it. Trent's goal has been the same since day one: justice for musicians. He simply changed the way he did it. He learned from all of his mistakes. Let's look at all of Trent's past attempts to combat this situation from the day NIN became a "free agent" and he was all "D347H 70 R3C0RD L4B3L5"...

1) NiggyTardust. Don't get me wrong, I love that album to death. But did Trent really expect people to pay $5 for FLAC files of a weird-ass experimental album? Yes, that model was ahead of its time (though Radiohead just went for the pay-what-you-want MP3 option, and they're a bigger band, so they won), and people now get FLACs from Bandcamp and Qobuz and whatever. But Trent's plan failed at the time, and he lashed out on nin.com shortly after. Saul called him "king of emo".

2) Trying to release remix.nin.com on the same day as the Interscope-released Y34RZ3R0R3M1X3D, but failing due to Universal filing lawsuits against YouTube and MySpace (holy shit, nothing has changed). And remix.nin.com has always been a terribly designed website.

3) Ghosts I-IV and The Slip: 36 ambient tracks and a quickly produced album made as a gift to the fans. His endorsement of Creative Commons was cool, the release options for both albums were also very cool, the Ghosts film festival and the fact that many amateur filmmakers could use the tracks freely was super-cool, and Trent was praised for "releasing albums like blog posts". But, like Trent said, it wasn't an overwhelming success to him. After all, Year Zero didn't have the impact he wished would have, and neither did those two albums. He got tired of preaching to the choir.

4) Allowing fans to film live performances was a great choice. The Gift he gave to ThisOneIsOnUs was cool as hell, yet he chose to push the edit of The Gift rather than the Las Vegas edit, which the fans painstakingly filmed and edited themselves. But, I digress. Thanks to this rule, fans managed to make The Downward Spiral live when Trent himself couldn't film it. Unfortunately, he could only do that to US concerts, and I don't see many artists carrying the torch nowadays. Bummer. Thankfully, smartphone cameras have improved since then, so people are not trying to hide video cameras inside their pockets anymore.

5) His direct interaction with fans with social media led to awful drama and misunderstandings. He had become a laughing stock for sites like Pitchfork and Spin. I know people who still hold a grudge against Trent for that.

So, after starting a family and trying different things (switching to the film industry and trying to appeal to the Tumblr outburst with HtDA), he started seeing things differently. I think his Tunecore and David Byrne interviews in 2012 were the turning point for him. He signed to Columbia, since he needed the exposure and management that he failed to bring to himself (just like Amanda Palmer's Kickstarter was a failure, and she's now a Patreon queen). He tried connecting with fans a few more times with Reddit and Twitter, trusted Indaba Music (big mistake) and released a HtDA and a NIN album which, though well-received, again failed to become as successful as he planned. He lost money after the Tension tour, causing him to fire Rebel Waltz.

So, can you REALLY blame him for delving deep inside the industry, seeing how things work on the other side, and trying to put his decades of expertise as a musician and his experiments with online self-promotion to good use?

[allegro]

Yeah, the days of free music will be over soon and something we tell the next generation about.

Not if YouTube gives up some of its MASSIVE profits to the artists; then YouTube can STILL continue to exist and users will STILL have "free" content. Nobody on that Petition is saying "TAKE DOWN YOUTUBE!" and YouTube is NOT going to have to file Chapter 11 after paying the artists.

This is kinda like if your band is hired to play a bar on a 4th of July weekend night. You are a pretty popular local band doing all original material. The bar is PACKED with people who drink THOUSANDS of dollars of beer and booze, and the bar's front door staff collects $3 per person and that nets the bar over $750 for the night. And then the bar owner tells you and the band, "hey, have a great night" and kicks you out and doesn't pay you one cent. The bar made money, the patrons had fun, and you guys got fucked.

[elevenism]

i have a funny feeling that youtube is headed towards a pay to play model anyway

[Khrz]

i have a funny feeling that youtube is headed towards a pay to play model anyway

That would only be smart as a move against other streaming sites à la Netflix IF they proposed heftier, professional content and catalogue.
The problem with Google is that they have the means to pull it off, but they tend to lack focus. For instance they're proposing Google Play Music, Google Films on the PlayStore, yet announced Youtube Red which is... Something ? That's on the way ? Sometimes soon maybe ? They have two mail clients, multiple IM agents (do they even know how many ?) that are more or less in a state of constant prototyping, a social network connecting everything yet serving no purpose...
If Apple is a cyclop with a very focused yet narrow FOV, Google is a Hydra that doesn't quite seem to know where each head is at. I'm not holding my breath with Google projects anymore, that thing has serious ADD issues.

[elevenism]

@Khrz i feel you on the hydra simelie.
edit: i meant metaphor
The reason that i'm scared of youtube heading in that direction is that i watch an obscene amount of youtube daily.
And some weeks ago, there were no ads for several days (at least on the roku app.)
I was just waiting for a screen that said "hope you enjoyed your trial of the new youtube! Subscribe for blah blah blah you get the idea.
But maybe it was just a glitch.

Whatever youtube red is, it looks like it will start off with some kind of half baked show featuring youtubers trying to do...something...to other youtubers, and jesus, it looks bad. I think YTR is going to be like top youtubers creating content behind a paywall and splitting the profits with youtube, and if the top youtubers choose NOT to participate, they will be punished somehow. At any rate, (i sincerely hope that) not enough people will be willing to pay actual money to see this for it to work.

[HurtinMinorKey]

As do I; and the solution isn't necessarily to get rid of YouTube but for YouTube to pay the artists. Pandora, Spotify, and other similar streaming services pay a fair share. YouTube does not.

SEE THIS.

SEE ALSO THIS.

YouTube does pay "artists". The "artists" just want to increase their bargaining power to demand a higher payments and better payment rates by strengthening copyright law. It's all in the articles you cited.

My guess is that Apple and Spotify are pushing this with the RIAA in an effort to foreclose on competition with lower costs (YouTube's). In other words, Apple may be saying "i'll pay you more to you (record companies), but only if you get YouTube, our competitor to pay more, and cut down on the piracy".

Again, this is all just a corporate turf war, on both sides. This has very little to do with artists.

[allegro]

I was just waiting for a screen that said "hope you enjoyed your trial of the new youtube! Subscribe for blah blah blah you get the idea.
But maybe it was just a glitch.

Whatever you were watching wasn't generating enough hits to generate ads.

Here, lookee see How to Make Money on YouTube. And then you can do this.

SEE ALSO THIS.

I know a few people who do this and web sites with ads as SECOND JOBS.

[allegro]

YouTube does pay "artists". The "artists" just want to increase their bargaining power to demand a higher payments and better payment rates by strengthening copyright law. It's all in the articles you cited.

Yes, I mean "pay" as in "pay them a fair share" which obviously the artists do not feel they are getting. And the majority of people who have signed that Petition are artists.