I would have registered with AdRev at this point even if I hadn’t had the experience of someone fraudulently registering my music. That certainly adds to the desire to register my music, but it wasn’t the leading factor.
For the past two years I had been feeling like sometime in 2015 I would register my music with AdRev. So I’m just moving along at that schedule. I waited this long because I wanted to avoid some of the growing pains that buyers likely have experienced during the early months/years of Content ID and AdRev claims. Now that AdRev has been around a while I’m more comfortable with the process and I hope most YouTubers are as well.
My experience so far has been smooth. A few emails have come in from buyers needing assistance. No one has been angry or frustrated. I think most people understand the situation.
whoops hehe. this is what i get for typing a long post on my iphone. i meant to say, “i am NOT sure this means adrev is continuing to monetize them…” as in, yes, i am suspicious and wondering what is up. i am QUITE sure, though, that even if it turned out to be the case, a lawsuit for $10 would not be worth it. the only person that could benefit if it’s a widespread problem is some lawyer bringing a class action.
@prestashopthemes, that’s a great a idea. i will try uploading a test to quell any suspicions i may have.
i guess the overall point i was trying to make was that although i use adrev, it is far from perfect and i wish it didn’t affect buyers the way it does. people seem to staunchly take one side or the other (and are quick to get angry!) but it falls firmly in the grey for me. it will be interesting to see how things go for you guys, @TimMcMorris and @pinkzebra. hopefully you help it along further to becoming an accepted (albeit annoying) industry standard.
I guess I`ll have to go with the Monkey and join the grey zone here
I have been testing out the AdRev waters with a few tracks for a while. I was also kind of talked into it after the long and heated AdRev thread on these forums about a year ago. Have not run into any issues regarding buyers. But there are still a few things with the AdRev business model I am not too happy with.
I am also not so sure this does not effect AJ sales. I have too few tracks registered and sell to little on AJ to come to any conclusions. But if you look at the best selling tracks here. Both weekly top sellers and top new files, the majority of them are not registered with AdRev. Im no Einstein myself but it seems to me like buyers dont want to be too involved with AdRev if they can avoid it. And to be honest, I can`t blame them.
So for now, I guess I`ll stay in the grey with @StudioMonkey . Using AdRev now and then but not a big fan.
I like to look at it this way: by getting our property digital fingerprinted, us composers are really just getting around to filling in a copyright loophole on YouTube that’s been in existence since it’s inception.
Just because YouTube users have enjoyed a few years of using Royalty Free music on their monetized productions without copyright scrutiny on it’s content or having to present their License, doesn’t automatically mean that’s right. Things have changed and time to get used to it.
Yes, to those buyers that got used to that and hadn’t imagined it any other way, I could imagine it being initially irritating to pony up their purchased License Certificate for a flipping cat video, but that’s what our business is all about - selling Licenses Certificates to prove it’s our property and users have the necessary right to use it, even for their own monetary gain .
Personally I think Envato have recently been removing AdRev registered tracks from high visibility and promotion on AJ (including priority in search). One of my AdRev registered tracks enjoyed consistently being on the top sellers for a couple of years, until very recently and vanished without trace.
I’m also aware of another consistently high selling AdRev registered track here by another author that suffered the same fate - almost over night, like a switch was pulled. I just think Envato don’t want to build a reputation with it’s buyers of being “that music site that causes problems on YouTube”. Suppose this is one way off brushing the issue under the carpet.
I think there are a few important flaws with Adrev’s business model that I don’t want to get into details but if people want to get around it and use your music for free they’ll do it. In fact, Adrev even makes it easier through audioswap, whitelisting a channel for life, etc. It’s not like a database check is performed for each license.
Another thing is, a great deal of the money you earn through Adrev might be undeserved money from legitimate customers because they didn’t notice the warnings or didn’t know how to respond to it. Does Adrev return the money earned from legitimate customers’ videos until they clear the claims? If not, you are taking money out of your legitimate customers’ pocket.
At the end of the day, it comes down to punishing your legitimate customers because people stealing your music will definitely find a way to get around it.
I’m sorry but that’s a strong accusation. I’m not out to punish anyone. I’m not in the business of punishing people.
I just want to monetize and track illegitimate uses of my music on YouTube, whilst wishing for legitimate License holders to use the License they purchased from me in order to get clearance when using my property on YouTube. Bring on the day when this is absolutely standard and I’m not being accused of “punishing” people.
Agree. This is the very point of having a license. All AdRev is asking is for users to provide proof that they licensed the music. It is by no means a tall order.
Yes it’s unfortunate that we see so many instances of composers pandering to the desires of today’s entitlement generation.
Both have built up this belief in their heads that buying RF music automatically entitles them to zero copyright scrutiny. That’s never been the case with royalty free music. That’s what Creative Commons music is for.
Yeah, punishment might be a strong word but you are creating a burden for the legit custumors and, if i’m not wrong, you are taking non-refundable money out of their pockets until they prove they have a license whereas people with bad intentions can easily get around it.
If Adrev’s business was just an innocent copyright scrutiny, you would make only pennies out of it because anybody can quickly clear the claim with a $19 license instead of handing over all of their ad revenue. The real money is probably coming from the innocent people who didn’t notice the claim or didn’t know how to resolve it.
Entitlement generation is not something outside of ourselves. If you think you are entitled to all the ad revenue of someone’s cat’s video because they used your music, you are a part of it too. Doesn’t the cat deserve any credit?
Of course everybody is entitled to their opinion but for me Adrev is flawed on so many levels that it is far from being an industry standard right now.
Just take a look to my adrev´s report, as you can see there are 7406 videos using my music but I sold 2363 licenses, ¿So, where are the others 5043 licenses? …
I´m only around 18 months in this business and less than a year on Adrev, so I can´t imagine how the results can be for authors with more years in the business and biggest portfolios.
For the clients is very easy to clear a claim from Adrev and also they can have their videos unlisted until they fill the adrev´s form and the claim is deleted. In all this time I had just one angry customer for use adrev, and sometimes I get emails from clients asking for whitlisted his channels or his videos, but that´s all. For customers it begins to be something normal and natural in their processes to upload videos to youtube.
I’m not saying there aren’t illegitimate users on Youtube, there are. The question is does Adrev really protect you from piracy or is it more like scaring people into handing over their ad revenue? How do you know who has a legitimate license? Does Adrev has API connections to all the marketplaces to check whether a provided license is valid or not?
With the current system a person with bad intentions can provide you a mad-up or borrowed license info and get their video cleared, some of them can get their channels whitelisted and use your music in a ton of videos with a single license, some of them could totally avoid detection.
On the other hand, a legitimate user could fail to clear the claims due to various reasons including having no idea what Adrev is, not noticing the claim until it is too late, not knowing what to do, being too afraid to dispute a claim coming from a big corporation, etc.
Anyway, time will tell if Adrev will be a success or not. I don’t think it is a success right now. Most of the authors who register with Adrev seem to experience a considerable drop in sales. If it worked as intended, people would experience increased licensing sales.
Just take a look to my adrev´s report, as you can see there are 7406
videos using my music but I sold 2363 licenses, ¿So, where are the
others 5043 licenses?
As you said, where are those 5043 licenses? You used Adrev to force them buying a license, they still didn’t. Does your Adrev revenue cover your losses from legitimate users who decided not to buy from you in the future because of this?
If you think it does, I have nothing against it. Everybody has their own business strategy.
Yes, I know that adrev is not perfect, but in the moment I think is the best option for all the authors that want to protect their music or obtain some money back for music not properly licensed.
With the new polices on audiojungle about Adrev I think that buyers have absolutely clear how it works, the tracks with adrev are marked and most of the author using adrev put links to the official post on Envato Market about how to remove claims and also add pdf files into the purchase .zip
This is only an assumption and at least is not my case. One of my tracks register on Adrev was feature on Audiojungle and have more than 900 sales, so I don´t see the relation between Adrev and sales.
I don´t use Adrev for force people to buy my music. In my short experience on Internet I learn that this persons are never going to pay for music, but now with Adrev I can have some money back or I can decide, for example, flagged a video with youtube for copyright (Sometimes I do it with videos with unlicensed music.) and taking down.
Anyway, as you said everybody has their own business strategy and I´m satisfied with have all my portfolio fingerprinted by Adrev.
