YouTube blocks songs by Adele, Bob Dylan and Green Day in SESAC dispute

Songs like Adele’s “Someone Like You,” Green Day’s “Boulevard of Broken Dreams,” Bob Dylan’s “I Want You,” and REM’s “Losing My Religion” were banned by YouTube in a legal battle with SESAC, a performance rights organization. blocked with copyright issues for artists and publishers.

Other musicians affected by the lockdown include Alice in Chains, Burna Boy and Fleetwood Mac. However, some of the artists’ songs display a black screen that says “Video unavailable” with the subheading “This video contains content from SESAC.” It is not available in your country.” — Not all titles are affected.

SESAC is among several companies that help songwriters protect their original works and collect royalties. Just like Universal Music Group’s dispute with TikTok earlier this year, which resulted in four million songs from artists including Taylor Swift, Bad Bunny and Adele being removed from the social media platform for months, SESAC and YouTube have not reached an agreement over the contract extension achieves conditions. Thus, it is within SESAC’s jurisdiction to block public performances of music, from streaming to radio play, although this is often difficult to enforce.

Numerous Reddit threads began popping up with users expressing their frustration at not being able to stream their favorite songs, with the problem apparently starting today. Although YouTube has not yet released a statement on the matter, its “For this reason, we have blocked content on YouTube in the US that is known to be associated with SESAC – in accordance with copyright law.”

The account added in a later response: “We understand this is a difficult situation and our teams continue to work to reach an extension agreement.” In a separate comment, Team YouTube wrote that discussions with SESAC were “continuing,” although there are “no exact dates for future updates yet”.

Suspensions like this often occur when copyright companies and distribution platforms cannot agree on a licensing agreement. The duration of such legal disputes can range from several days to months, such as when the giant Warner Music Group removed music videos from YouTube for almost a year from 2008 to 2009.