{"id":5232,"date":"2017-09-18T00:00:56","date_gmt":"2017-09-18T04:00:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ncjolt.org\/?p=5232"},"modified":"2020-06-04T20:52:53","modified_gmt":"2020-06-04T20:52:53","slug":"hookd-music-youtubes-new-music-licensing-app-game-changer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/blogs\/hookd-music-youtubes-new-music-licensing-app-game-changer\/","title":{"rendered":"Hookd on the Music: How YouTube's New Music Licensing App is a Game Changer"},"content":{"rendered":"

For most Internet users, YouTube is a ubiquitous platform that is a \u201cgo-to\u201d for content.\u00a0 Whether it be for entertainment, educational purposes, news, or to watch the world\u2019s most talented dog perform tricks, YouTube is a platform that has a little bit of something for everyone.\u00a0 In an estimated month, the site is said to have as many as 1 billion<\/a> active users, making YouTube one of the most high-trafficked sites<\/a> in the world.\u00a0 Although there have been some legitimate grumblings<\/a> about YouTube\u2019s\u00a0sheer online dominance, the company\u2019s market-consolidation has allowed for average individuals from around the globe to create and promote their own original content on a single, easily accessible medium. This has led to numerous success stories along the way, with YouTube providing a platform for success for stars including Jamie Oliver, Justin Bieber, Carly Rae Jepsen, and companies such as Vice and Vice News. \u00a0While the aforementioned content\u00a0creators\u00a0are\u00a0among the lucky few\u00a0able to\u00a0achieve\u00a0breakout success, the vast majority of YouTube\u2019s most popular content creators rely on mixing innovative ideas\u00a0and creative “original content”\u00a0with current culture trends in order to attract the broadest audience possible.
\nOne\u00a0of the easiest ways for content creators to achieve this balance is to feature\u00a0popular music within their videos in order to peek\u00a0the\u00a0interest of potential viewers. \u00a0To the common eye, this would seem to be a fairly straightforward technique. \u00a0However, music licensing is one of YouTube’s\u00a0largest pieces of business, with the company having paid upwards of $3 billion<\/a> for publishing and licensing rights since its inception. \u00a0As such,\u00a0YouTube has stringent content\u00a0regulation rules<\/a> regarding the usage\u00a0of commercial music in its user’s videos. \u00a0In the past, if such rules were\u00a0violated, remedies could\u00a0include the removal of the\u00a0video, reallocation of a creator’s\u00a0ad revenues,<\/a> and even dissolution of a creator\u2019s account. Additionally, YouTube employs a Content-ID rule<\/a> that virtually blocks a large majority of music from being used in most content that appears on YouTube.
\nThis has caused great ire for many content creators. Most notably, some argue that YouTube\u2019s current Content-Id licensing system is overly robust, and as a result limits a content creator\u2019s creative freedoms in choosing how they market their platform. Thus, the need for a change in policy was reasoned on the fact that if YouTube was still going to be a professional launch pad for\u00a0content creators, then it needed to allow users the flexibility to create what they wanted without fear of being reprimanded.<\/p>\n

In an effort to address this issue, YouTube announced this past week that they will be implementing a new music licensing platform called Hookd, which is described as<\/a>\u00a0\u201cthe world\u2019s first pre-cleared, commercial music licensing solution for online video creators.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Hookd, the creation of former music executive Paul Sampson, aims to provide fair compensation to artists for the use of their compositions, while “enabl[ing] users to license commercial tracks legally to use within their [original]\u00a0content.<\/a>\u201d \u00a0Hookd will use a ‘pay-per-license’<\/a> system, charging “\u00a37 to \u00a3150 per track” depending on the content creator’s\u00a0average viewership per video on their page. This extra revenue will be split amongst artists, music publishers, and YouTubers, thus allowing content creators to use commercialized work without fear of \u201chaving their ad-revenue blocked<\/a>\u201d or their pages terminated. Notably, Hookd will also provide a service<\/a> that will delete music that has not been cleared out of content creators current videos and replace them with songs out of the new Hookd catalogue. Currently, there are several thousand<\/a> pre-cleared songs available, with tens of thousands to be added in the coming months. \u00a0When all is said and done, YouTube and the creators of Hookd hope that this new service will be a step forward for both content creators and artists, allowing for a more streamlined and reliable service to fill in the notable gaps in YouTube’s Content-ID system. \u00a0Only time will tell whether this service will be a success, however it cannot be denied that the potential for creating a new precedent is great with Hookd.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For most Internet users, YouTube is a ubiquitous platform that is a \u201cgo-to\u201d for content.\u00a0 Whether it be for entertainment, educational purposes, news, or to watch the world\u2019s most talented dog perform tricks, YouTube is a platform that has a little bit of something for everyone.\u00a0 In an estimated month, the site is said to …<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5233,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[51],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5232"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5232"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5232\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7059,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5232\/revisions\/7059"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5233"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5232"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5232"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5232"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}