i have to concur that i am not a fan of adrev’s business model. i was involved in that drawn-out argument/discussion almost a year ago in the forum and had started firmly on the no-adrev side of the fence. by the end of it, it was the one fact that someone else could so easily grab your music and claim it as their own and that adrev did absolutely nothing to confirm if it were true that led me to join and register most of my tracks. i now register tracks on a case-by-case basis only once i know they are staying for a good length of time in my aj portfolio. while there’s still a chance i may move them somewhere else (especially if to a library that deals with PRO or adrev itself), i don’t register and here’s why: when i contacted them about removing tracks from my portfolio, they very quickly wrote back saying, no problem, they’ve been removed. however, i log in and ALL the tracks are still there - i’m just not getting paid for them. i am sure this means adrev is continuing to monetize them, just not giving me my share anymore. if (or when) some of these tracks start generating money from other places and those places want to collect the adrev, things will surely get interesting and messy.
now i understand that adrev is in business to make money, as we all are, but their business model does not look out for the good of the author or the clients licensing our material. the argument repeated over and over by adrev supporters is that they are very fast about clearing claims, but they are more than happy (in fact, motivated) to collect every penny before the claim is disputed by indiscriminately slapping ads on any detection, legal or not. if they would track usages and give us authors the option to pursue monetization or not, or if there were a system (as @SteelSound suggests) where the client could provide proof of their legitimate license upon upload, all the headaches would disappear for both sides. however, so would probably hundreds of thousands of dollars of revenue that adrev collects in not the most scrupulous way (those pennies ad up!), so i’m sure they hope this practice will never change. and why would google implement it? they are also in the ad monetization business and want clients to use their “free” music so they can make the money. any pursuit of legality is trumped by their desire for revenue. they’ve already helped kill the record business by turning a blind eye to pirate sites, so i expect more of the same…
on the brighter (less dark?) side, i only received confused clients’ emails in the beginning. seems people are getting used to how it works, so maybe there will be less complaints and problems. i guess until something better comes along, protecting your work with adrev is better than risking theft. but it sure doesn’t feel right.