Banned In the U.S.A.

My local supermarket sometimes plays classic rock on its P.A. system, and while I was shipping there today, I heard a song I hadn't heard before.  I listened carefully to the lyrics and memorized enough of them to Google them on my laptop.  It turned out to by "Keep Pushin'" by REO Speedwagon, released a few years before the Illinois band released Hi Infidelity, their nationwide commercial breakthrough.   Anyway, I punched up an audio-only video for the song on YouTube to hear it again, and I got a title card saying that the video was banned in my country because of an organization called SESAC.  I tried someone else's upload of "Keep Pushin'" and I got the same message.  What was going on here?  I then Googled SESAC and found out the awful truth.

SESAC is an acronym for the Society of European Stage Authors and Composers, a sister licensing organization of the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) and Broadcasters Music Incorporated (BMI), the groups that govern song rights.  YouTube was allowed to offer recordings of songs published under the auspices of SESAC until yesterday at 4 P.M., when a contract between SESAC and YouTube expired and negotiations to renew it had proven fruitless.  The result is that any songs written and/or recorded by music artists whose work is protected by SESAC are no longer available for hearing on YouTube.  Not just audio-only video clips, but also official promotional clips.  Not only is REO affected, so is R.E.M., as well as Nirvana, Green Day, Bob Dylan, Cheap Trick, and Adele.

And as you can see, you can say goodbye to Adele's "Hello."

The good news is that the ban on SESAC content is likely to be temporary. The bad news is that no one knows just how temporary it will be.  A YouTube spokeswoman  responded to requests for the state of affairs regarding SESAC-licensed artists.  

"We have held good faith negotiations with SESAC to renew our existing deal. Unfortunately, despite our best efforts, we were unable to reach an equitable agreement before its expiration," the spokeswoman said through a press release.  We take copyright very seriously and as a result, content represented by SESAC is no longer available on YouTube in the U.S. We are in active conversations with SESAC and are hoping to reach a new deal as soon as possible."

I don't know how much this is going to affect my Music Video Of the Week segment on this blog, but given that SESAC is smaller than its sister licensing groups, so it will probably be more of an annoyance than a major inconvenience.  Those who want to hear either of the two live Budokan albums from Bob Dylan or Cheap Trick might as well just buy them rather than hear them on YouTube (though you should just get the Cheap Trick album, because their 1978 Tokyo performance was as wonderful as Dylan's was horrid).  As for YouTube's efforts to regain the rights to uploading SESAC-licensed recordings . . . I hope they take REO's advice and keep pushin'.