Facebook Livestream Controversy

So what's up, everybody? How are you doing? Doing alright. Good. Let's dive into it.

So Facebook is starting to crack down on live streams and everybody kinda knows that at this point, nothing new to report here, the whole music community immediately erupted when they released that press statement saying they were going to crack down on all of these people playing copyrighted material online through their platform, and also I did a video a few months ago on Facebook signing a licensing agreement that was slightly more favorable... Van, a YouTube licensing agreement with the pros and the labels and that sort of stuff, just to sort of incentivize people to start releasing original content on their platforms, and in their latest statement, they sort of made reference to that as far as that they had struck a deal on their licensing agreement nd that they were also not going to disclose all of those details because their details are confidential. Makes me wonder how many pennies on the dollar everyone was sold for, but anyway, the whole idea here is that they're cracking down on these live streams, and they don't want people playing music that they don't own on their platform.

And once they sign this licensing agreement, I'm sure they were like, Well, if you wanna get into this game, you gotta play by the rules, and I'm pretty sure they didn't wanna pay a bazillion dollars in lawyer fees to essentially allow this to continue. So making this slight adjustment to their platform, from Facebook side of things, they're basically just passing the buck along because they don't wanna help be held liable, and so now they're gonna start policing your live streams and seeing what kind of material you're playing and what you're doing what kind of concerts you’re throwing. 

I'm interested to see how well Facebook actually polices it.

Threatening to ban your page, the threatening to strike you down and all that kind of stuff. But I'm really curious to see what they do and how they're able to do it. And sort of... Are they gonna give you a three strikes and you're out kind of rule like YouTube, 'cause there's not been a ton of information shared about all of that other than they're just threatening to strike down your page and delete you. But the fact the matter is, is that Facebook is not your platform, it's a free platform, and they gather your information and sell that to advertisers, that's what it is.

It's a fun platform, play on, it's one of the best platforms in the world, if not the best platform in the world, 80% of the world is on Facebook. So if you're advertising a product or doing anything like that, it's one of these platforms that just literally is the best there is. It's the best bang for your buck. And sometimes we get very controlling about, This is my space, this is not to actually use the social term MySpace, but this is like my cyber space, but it's not... It's Facebook, and so they make the rules. You're living in a Facebook world and Instagram. You're living in an Instagram world, which is also owned by Facebook for those who don't know. So the moral of the story here is if it's not your music, you shouldn't be playing it, or you should be doing it behind a pay wall, that will make it a little harder for people to find you and police you. 

So just off the top of my head, if you have a small group, maybe you don't have a lot of followers and you really rely on Facebook for like just people stumbling into your page and then wanting to give you money, this is gonna become a little harder for you to do this, for sure. And that kind of sucks. But again, it's not your material. 

Whenever you go into a club and you play music, that club is paying a blanket license fee for you to go in there and play those covers, if you ever go play, say like Eddie’s Attic, a great club here in Atlanta, if you play a cover song at their show, they are going to charge you... Per song that you play, it's on their spreadsheet whenever you play. Then you get handed the pay out at the end of the night that you were deducted $5 or whatever it was for that one song that you played that was not your own. So it's kind of one of those situations where you just gotta play by the rules and the rules are catching up to the technology advance here, and Facebook is starting to probably feel the heat after signing that licensing agreement. 

My advice, if you were to ask me, I wanna play covers. That's what I do. I play covers. People like it, people pay me, they tip me. I don't know, I'd be interested to see how well they do monetize videos or if they're gonna do anything like that on YouTube, if you upload a cover song, they'll demonetize it because you don't... If it gets above a certain reviews and it kinda gets into their spectrum, they'll find you, they'll strike that down, and they'll say, Hey, that's not yours.

Also that depends on how aggressive the band management or... They are like... For instance, the Eagles are like notorious for finding you, Don Henley, we'll find you and stick the lawyers, he's got 20 people on staff that literally just scoured the internet looking for people reproducing their content to strike them down, to monetize them, etcetera.

So that's sort of best of the game we're playing now, since this is a cyber space and not a club, somebody has to pay those royalties. And being that Facebook is so expensive, I just can't imagine that the bill would be worth it to them, you know, so I'm sure that's the reason why they've come to this place where they're just not interested in anybody playing covered or copyrighted material on their platform and being held accountable to the fire, I don't blame them. 

It sucks for us musicians, but that's the way it's gonna be. So if I were you... We have to October 1st. October 1st, they started getting real. So you've got like 15 days or so. If you really wanna fast forward and generate an audience right now that could maybe follow you to a platform that could then hear your cover songs behind a pay wall, say like a Patreon, for example, although I'm very interested to see how Patreon is gonna react with this also because at some point, I'm sure they're gonna come along and they're just gonna say, Hey, we know what's going on behind that paywall, I'm very interested to see how that evolves, but for now, that might be a good lateral move for you.

All of this technology is just totally revolutionizing the industry so fast that it's almost impossible for us to keep up.

So quick recap, you have to October 1st, then they start striking your videos down and / or suspending your pages or giving you warnings, I don't exactly know all of that information quite yet, I've seen varying articles online talking about things, but the one thing is for sure they are going to track down your page if you keep doing it, and they keep seeing you... They are prioritizing smaller clips, so they don't want you to be online, I don't think from when I was able to gather from this article that I will tag below when I find it again, they want you to do smaller clips, they don't wanna be a long form... Type of thing. So maybe a song at a time, if you're going to do a live stream or something, which again, that sort of defeats the purpose of getting everybody there and keeping them around for a while to make money, but they want to prior to smaller clips. Not the longer form. That has been said. So if you want to continue live streaming, find an alternative platform, people are saying Twitch is the new thing, and everybody's gonna move to Twitch now, but which is gonna have the same problems eventually, if they're not already feeling it.

So all of these moves are just lateral moves, I would be more interested if I were you and trying to find something that was more permanent, so you didn't have to keep moving your audience from platform to platform, Now follow me here so that you can watch me here, that sort of move gets old after a while.

I guess that's something I need to investigate what platforms are out there where you can just be yourself and you can just live in that space, and it's a private forum. It just makes it harder. It's not gonna be as easy anymore, and I believe in the statement also Facebook was really trying to encourage creativity and original content, no matter if you're a guitarist or drummer or whatever it is, coming up with original content is gonna be your best way of doing things they just don't want to pay these fees, and I'm sure the bill is huge, so... That's why we're here.

Comment below! Tell me if you think it's not fair, tell me what you think you're gonna do, what are your solutions to the problem, like what options do you think we have? Creative thought wins here. So that's the point. So anyway, until next time, I'm Sweet Deat and I love you, and I hope you're doing great out there and let's connect. Alright, take care.