YouTube loses license to over 1.5 million songs, what happened?
People all over the world are saying on social media and forums that official music videos for some artists are missing from YouTube. The same issue happens with certain songs used in videos, showing an error that says “Video not available. This video contains SESAC content. It is not available in your country,” which means it won’t play.
What’s happening? Why is this happening? We will explain later, but we can tell you now that YouTube has lost some popular music that you can’t play anymore on the site.
YouTube failed to renew licenses with SESAC and lost music from Nirvana, Adele, Ariana Grande and many more artists
TikTok did not renew its contract with Universal Music Group earlier this year, and now YouTube has also lost some songs from its service for the same reason.
YouTube recently lost music rights from the Society of European Theatre Authors and Composers (SESAC) and has not been able to renew the agreement.
SESAC represents many artists, including big names like Adele, Ariana Grande, Nirvana, REM, and Kesha. It has over 1.5 million songs that YouTube can no longer use because they do not have a licensing agreement.
What happens when you try to find SESAC music on YouTube or YouTube Music? Here are some things that might happen:
You might not be able to find official videos or songs, even though they are still in the search results.
Videos like remixes or shorts that have SESAC music will show an error message saying “This video contains SESAC content” and won’t play. You have information until October 2023.
The YouTube team talked to our friends at 9to5Google about a problem. Here’s what they said:
“We have tried to renew our deal with SESAC, but we could not agree before it ended. We take copyright seriously, so music from SESAC is not available on YouTube in the US and other places. We are still talking with SESAC and hope to make a new deal soon.”
This is similar to what happened with TikTok, where both sides couldn’t agree on a new contract. Because of this, YouTube can’t use the music without breaking copyright laws.
Will they agree later? We don’t know, but we hope so. This could affect YouTube, users, and artists.