YouTube’s bringing your favourite music back

Nirvana, Adele and other big names were temporarily removed from the streaming service, but now they're coming back

YouTube on a Mac
(Image credit: Alexey Boldin / Shutterstock.com)
Carrie Marshall
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Quick Summary

Music by artists such as Adele and Nirvana were removed from YouTube over the last few days. The removals were due to a copyright agreement that was due to expire; it's now been renewed and the music is returning.

Over the weekend, videos by some of music's biggest stars started disappearing from YouTube. Artists ranging from Adele to Bob Dylan, Green Day and Nirvana were all removed. In some cases the disappearances were really dramatic, so for example almost every video was removed from the official Nirvana channel overnight. The good news is that they're coming back.

The videos were removed because of copyright. In order to legally stream music, YouTube needs to pay various licensing bodies in various parts of the world. The body in this particular story is SESAC, the Society of European Stage Authors and Composers, which represents over 15,000 songwriters, composers and music publishers. 

YouTube and SESAC had an agreement that was coming to an end, and when negotiations over a new deal apparently stalled it looks awfully like Google threw its toys out of the pram. However, the two organisations have reached a deal and the videos will be restored.

Why did music videos disappear from YouTube?

According to SESAC, YouTube "unilaterally removed" the videos even though the existing agreement hadn't ended. 

In an email to The Verge, SESAC performing rights president Scott Jungmihel said that "during our negotiations with YouTube, our affilates' works were unilaterally removed by YouTube ahead of the contract end date of October 1, 2024." However, "YouTube has begun the process of reinstating videos featuring these songs." YouTube has confimed this, posting on its Team YouTube page that "Content (that was previously blocked) will be restored across YouTube services over the next day or two."

It's good that the licensing agreement has been sorted, but it's another example of the perils of relying on streaming: music (and other media, such as TV shows or movies) are often only available on the best streaming services for a set period of time, and can be removed or blocked when licensing agreements expire – or, as seems to be the case here, when negotiations for licence renewals aren't going well. If you love an artist's music, it's wise to buy it rather than hope it'll be available to stream forever.

Carrie Marshall
Carrie Marshall

Writer, musician and broadcaster Carrie Marshall has been covering technology since 1998 and is particularly interested in how tech can help us live our best lives. Her CV is a who’s who of magazines, newspapers, websites and radio programmes ranging from T3, Techradar and MacFormat to the BBC, Sunday Post and People’s Friend. Carrie has written more than a dozen books, ghost-wrote two more and co-wrote seven more books and a Radio 2 documentary series; her memoir, Carrie Kills A Man, was shortlisted for the British Book Awards. When she’s not scribbling, Carrie is the singer in Glaswegian rock band Unquiet Mind (unquietmindmusic).

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