Guitar Lessons, You Tube, Copyrights & The Crux Of The Biscuit

Martin Moon sent me this NPR link about a couple of guys, David Taub and Justin Sandercoe, who have been offering free guitar lessons on YouTube.

Thousands of guitar students lost a valuable resource last week. The most popular guitar teacher on YouTube saw his more than 100 videos yanked from the site. The reason: a music company accused him of copyright infringement for an instructional video on how to play a Rolling Stones song.

Now, Taub was giving lessons for free and using them to promote his own site, The Next Level Guitar, which is a pay site. Sandercoe also has his own site, justinguitar.com, which offers free lessons. He does, however, have some products for sale.

Taub was notified that he was infringing on a copyright by showing people how to play “Brown Sugar”. The NPR story says that the reason he was singled out was the fact that he was promoting his for profit site and that Justin was not because the lessons on his own site are free.

The NPR quote above is a little misleading. It makes it sound as if a music industry entity made Taub take down the videos when, in fact, he was contacted about one song and then YouTube closed his account. YouTube has removed Sandercoes account now as well. So, this is a case of YouTube getting nervous over copyrighted material.

I have written a lot about copyrights here and on other sites as well. Every time I do, I hear from people who say that art has no “intrinsic value” and that all copyrights should be eliminated. The NPR piece points out specific examples of people who can’t afford guitar lessons and say that these YouTube videos are their only hope. We’ve all heard stories about the evil music industry trying to sue some 12-year-old for loading up his MP3 player with pirated music.

It almost seems as if there is a well-organized P.R. campaign against the notion of copyrights.

Now, in the past, I have made a living as a guitar teacher. I know that one of the most effective ways to get a student interested is to teach them a song they like. It gives the student a natural incentive to learn and, every song learned opens up many avenues to learn more. If a teacher did not have that tool, it would be a lot more difficult to get students interested.

I do not think that the music industry could possibly be negatively effected by guys like David Taub and Jason Sandercoe using well-known riffs as a teaching aid. On the contrary, some of these YouTube viewers might even go out and buy the Stones record if they’ve made a little progress in learning the song. Who knows, they might even learn “Wild Horses” on their own next. They might even be so jazzed that they go grab a copy of “Goats Head Soup” for further exploration.

On the other hand, if a company bought the right to use “Brown Sugar” in a guitar instruction video, they have a legitimate gripe. In that case, they are going to see it as a competitor taking money out of their pockets.

Also, if a publishing company/record label owns a song and they just don’t want any part of it being used; they have the right to shut it down.

Even though a lot of people object, copyrights are not going to go away. The landscape has changed though, and it continues to evolve.

NPR got it wrong here. This story is not about a couple of good guys giving guitar lessons for free versus the evil music industry. The story is about the new media giant YouTube.

Both Taub and Sandercoe have posted hundreds of videos; many of them using copyrighted material. This mess started over one song. The music industry didn’t take down all of the other videos, YouTube did. The fact that a simple guitar lesson can be and has been accessed by millions of people is a new dynamic. My guess is that the legal folks at YouTube are taking a long look at this new dynamic and, at this point, possibly overcompensating. They don’t want to kill a future golden goose.

Now, as Frank Zappa would say, we are getting to the crux of the biscuit. Will YouTube become the golden goose if it’s focus is user generated content. Much of the content now is only partially “user” generated. These guitar lessons are a prime example as they are using copyrighted content at the core of the presentation. I could see a scenario where guys like Taub and Sandercoe, who have demonstrated the ability to get people to look, are put on the payroll of the content owner to do the same thing they are doing now and using YouTube as a platform to generate business.

YouTube is walking a thin line and they are hedging their bets. They don’t want users to feel that it is going to be one more huge corporate entity. The users want to feel that it is theirs. At the same time, you got to feed the bulldog, and YouTube does not want to upset the corporate content owners that are the key to future profit.

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Tags: David Taub, Justin Sandercoe, N.P.R., YouTube