I think that's because YT has a way of detecting a songs audio against a database..my daughter has tried to upload vids where the backing track has been a chart single and it's been immediately pulled, even though the song wasn't named.

One of my big concerns about digital media - both legal and illegal - is the lack of credits and information. 

You can buy a band's entire catalog, it's likely that w/o some research, you'll never know who worked on those records - who wrote the songs, the name of the engineer, guest musicians. A cover version may even not be identified as such. 
 
I spend hours of my youth reading the liner notes in records - that's how we used to find new bands, even before they hit the big time. 

Heck, we knew even the name of the guy who did the frickin' drawings for Maiden (Derek Riggs). Nowadays, we probably wouldn't even know the name of the guys in the band - unless they ended up in the news for doing something outrageous.


I guess it's all part of the disposable culture. But as an audio geek, it bothers me to no end. I like to know who worked on an album w/o having to hunt down the info, I like to see people credited.

jamesg1213


I think that's because YT has a way of detecting a songs audio against a database..my daughter has tried to upload vids where the backing track has been a chart single and it's been immediately pulled, even though the song wasn't named.

Yeah - the technology they have to detect copyrighted songs is really quite clever, although pitch adjustments can get round it. You can also get around copyrighted movie detection by having some kind of moving marquee at the bottom of the screen. I presume that how the algorithms work is that the music companies have scanned their entire catalog and created a quick "fingerprint" of each song based on measurements of waveform peaks taken at certain intervals. I'm guessing they wouldn't have to take many values in order to create a unique fingerprint. They do the same with movies, although the values will be taken from the picture instead of the audio (or maybe both). Then, when you upload a video to YouTube, it takes a fingerprint of it and checks it against the entire database of copyrighted fingerprints, using some super-fast search algorithm. Matches are found very quickly. 


I once uploaded a 5 second clip of Columbo to YouTube and it was immediately flagged as copyrighted content. 


The same technology is used in the phone app Shazam to determine track & artist names from the audio. It's amazing, when I hear a song I like in a store or coffee shop, I just open Shazam, press the button, wait a couple of seconds, and it tells me the track name, artist, album etc with link to buy it if I want. Once again, technology is amazing 

Excellent point Rain. I guess the sad fact is that both music and the graphic arts are now devalued currencies.

Rain


One of my big concerns about digital media - both legal and illegal - is the lack of credits and information. 

You can buy a band's entire catalog, it's likely that w/o some research, you'll never know who worked on those records - who wrote the songs, the name of the engineer, guest musicians. A cover version may even not be identified as such. 

I spend hours of my youth reading the liner notes in records - that's how we used to find new bands, even before they hit the big time. 

Heck, we knew even the name of the guy who did the frickin' drawings for Maiden (Derek Riggs). Nowadays, we probably wouldn't even know the name of the guys in the band - unless they ended up in the news for doing something outrageous.


I guess it's all part of the disposable culture. But as an audio geek, it bothers me to no end. I like to know who worked on an album w/o having to hunt down the info, I like to see people credited.

Isn't that information sometimes stored in the meta tags? 


It doesn't bother me so much....when I'm listening to music I usually have a browser handy nearby and I just Google for the info. In fact I'll often sit and read the band's website and Wikipedia page as I'm listening to a new album. 

jamesg1213


I think that's because YT has a way of detecting a songs audio against a database..my daughter has tried to upload vids where the backing track has been a chart single and it's been immediately pulled, even though the song wasn't named.

That is freaky. Imagine how much creating and maintaining that kind of tech costs. There really has to be a better way. :-/

Beepster

jamesg1213


I think that's because YT has a way of detecting a songs audio against a database..my daughter has tried to upload vids where the backing track has been a chart single and it's been immediately pulled, even though the song wasn't named.

That is freaky. Imagine how much creating and maintaining that kind of tech costs. There really has to be a better way. :-/

I think it's actually quite quick and cheap, using the method I mentioned above. Every record company has their entire collection digitized anyway, so it's a simple matter to scan the whole collection quickly to make a database of audio fingerprints. I guess they then make those fingerprints available to whomever needs to check against them, via a simple API. 

sharke

Rain


One of my big concerns about digital media - both legal and illegal - is the lack of credits and information. 

You can buy a band's entire catalog, it's likely that w/o some research, you'll never know who worked on those records - who wrote the songs, the name of the engineer, guest musicians. A cover version may even not be identified as such. 

I spend hours of my youth reading the liner notes in records - that's how we used to find new bands, even before they hit the big time. 

Heck, we knew even the name of the guy who did the frickin' drawings for Maiden (Derek Riggs). Nowadays, we probably wouldn't even know the name of the guys in the band - unless they ended up in the news for doing something outrageous.


I guess it's all part of the disposable culture. But as an audio geek, it bothers me to no end. I like to know who worked on an album w/o having to hunt down the info, I like to see people credited.

Isn't that information sometimes stored in the meta tags? 


It doesn't bother me so much....when I'm listening to music I usually have a browser handy nearby and I just Google for the info. In fact I'll often sit and read the band's website and Wikipedia page as I'm listening to a new album. 

Well, not always it seems. Quick example, I just checked the cover of Fox on the Run on the last Ace Frehley album. Not one bit of info. That's how kids end up thinking that Personal Jesus is a Marilyn Manson song.

Who wrote the song, who produced it, who was the engineer, who are the musicians? Why, Ace Frehley. (He's the Spaceman he can do anything... :s)


I take iTunes as an example because it's where I buy the majority of my stuff.



You know when you preview or rent a movie, the page displays the director, screenwriters, producers, main actors, the studio, and all that fun stuff. Each of these names you can click to access more movies by the same.


Music? Name of the band/artist, label, release date. You may or may not have access to the info if the album contains liner notes. Otherwise nothing.


Personally, when I shop for music, that's the kind of info I like to have access to upfront - musicians, engineer, guests, etc...

I feel the need to confess that I've been a music lover all my life, yet I rarely ever knew who the band members really were...  Same thing with lyrics, I usually didn't play attention to them either.  For me, it was more of a selfish audio pleasure and, quite frankly, for whatever reason, I found a lot of the artwork and lyrics embarrasing.  I'm sure it definitely had to do with how I was brought up (an only child by older parents - who were 34 & 36 when they had me - their morals and discipline were from an older generation).  I had, by far, the cleanest bedroom of anyone I knew yet my Mom would still come in when she thought it needed even more straightening up and say "I bet your friend's rooms don't look like this!"  Well, she was right, only not in the way she would imagine!

I say it's about time we get an IMDB (Internet Musician Data Base).