I Interviewed Undertale's Music Publisher

a while back I made a video discussing the copyright problems that undertale's music was currently going through to put it simply that video did extremely well and many people wanted a response from undertale's music publishing company Materia music considering all the drama was based off of their handling and the CEO handling of the game's music well materal music actually personally reached out to me and asked me to do an interview with a representative from the company now it's a lot for a person to ask every single question that's in everyone's Minds so I took the social media to ask the undertale community to give me questions to ask for the interview I did end up reading every last question that was asked and yes I mean over 400 of them but obviously I couldn't fit them all into one video most questions asked were joke questions or questions repeating the same thing as other questions so I just took the first one I saw and also this entire drama was started because people wanted to voice their support towards undertale fan games so if you're a fan game enjoyer and want to see some awesome undertale fan games I'll be hosting a charity live stream next Saturday on April 7 to play as many undertale fan games as possible as long as people keep donating to it it'll be for the Trevor Project charity which raises money for lgbtq people and there's even going to be developer commentary for Delta traveler in TS unders swap our goal is to make it to the end of June but we can only make it that far if enough people donate so if that's something you're into make sure to subscribe so you don't miss it but other than that I hope you enjoy this interview uh hello YouTube uh my name is Jamie I am the label director at Materia uh so my role it's like a little bit of many different things I handle like team operations so I make sure that everyone is like working together meeting deadlines stuff like that um I also do a little bit of an anr which stands for artists in repertoire um basically that involves like reaching out to new people new partners new companies you know expanding opportunities for the company meeting new composers etc etc and then like a little bit of everything else you know wherever like an extra hand is needed I'll I'll jump in and do whatever it's a it's a pretty small team so so you know we all kind of help each other out where we need to yeah generally that's the gist of my role all right question number one is it actually true that there is no way for YouTube content ID detections on undertale music to ignore claims as is Toby stated wish instead of automatically demonetizing the video and requiring a manual dispute from the Creator to remove unfortunately no the YouTube content ID system doesn't allow that for certain types of works and that includes musical Works uh the content ID system just sort of does what it does you know we we can't turn that off and actually one interesting thing that I should mention that I think a lot of people don't know is you know how when you get a claim on YouTube it says like this video has been claimed by X that's technically true but also technically not true what I mean by that is that is not an instance of like your video being manually claimed for example you know I know undertale yellow is kind of the topic of the minute none of the undertale yellow videos were manually claimed by anyone at Materia those were all done automatically by the content ID system but because the claim is being in like instituted on your behalf as the rights holder it says that you're the one claiming the video even if you're not actually manually going in there and doing it but as far as like an ignored and hope it goes away policy unfortunately the existing system right now music industry wide is that we can't do that how come you go after undertale yellow music and not any other fan game I've played and watched countless fan games that use melodies or even whole songs from original undertale anduin but none of those have caused such as disturbance like undertale yellow for example I know TS unders swap uses Megalania for instance perfect question to kind of segue into that area you know this is this is kind of a silly answer but it is um what it is sometimes things just don't get noticed like sometimes smaller projects will just slip under the radar and you know the content dies system won't ding them you know to be clear Materia tries to leave everything alone as much as humanly possible Toby has made it his wish that we take as much of a hands-off approach to his catalog as we can and we try to honor that as much as is possible you know we are not going to sit there and like go out of our way to ding every YouTube video that uses undertale as a bgm or whatever sometimes when videos get big enough and they command enough attention the content ID system will ding them and then we have no choice but to do something undertale yellow was big enough that like the system caught it perhaps even more importantly there's another issue with the way the music was originally distributed the undertale yellow team originally wound up uploading the music of that game directly to YouTube and then to platforms like spottify ify and stuff without having the license in place first and the thing is that once that's done you basically have opened Pandora's Box now you have to deal with YouTube's system trying to treat your remix as if it's an original composition you uploaded it directly to YouTube and YouTube doesn't have the backend stuff going on that a proper licenser would have done to say oh this song is a remix of that song this video should not be content claimed using The Melody of the original song and by the way the way Content ID typically works is it's like matching the melody like it hears The Melody of the song you upload and says oh that's the same Melodies as other tracks like that's how it figures it out if you just upload straight to Youtube Youtube is saying oh this contains the melody of that which is why we copyright claim it sometimes it doesn't work quite right just for the record I'm not like super 100% backend detailed as to the content ID like mechanics that's Google sometimes YouTube will think that a song is an original composition if it's uploaded directly to the platform and now you bump into some issues so for example let's say that with the way things were done a third person uploaded a remix of an undertale song the possibility does exist where the third person would actually get a copyright claim and the claim would say oh your remix of let's say it's Megalania is copyright claimed by the undertale yellow teeth because YouTube's system might accidentally think that undertale yellow soundtrack is original and match the Melody of that extra remix to undertale yellow and not directly to Toy Fox basically creates a possibility of confusion in the YouTube platform back end where a track might be accidentally matched to the wrong composition and the issue with that then is that we don't have the power to resolve that claim typically speaking if an undertale claim comes across our desk and it's like uh you know this YouTuber used megalovania as background music in their video we'll just let it go we'll just dismiss the claim and they get to have their video and it's not a problem but if that content claim actually goes to a different party you know if it was the undertale yellow team stated to be the claimant on a new remix we have no ability to control that and so that takes control of letting People's music go away from us and away from Toby if music is uploaded directly to YouTube and other platforms without going through the proper licensing channels it removes the ability of the original composer to control what happens to their music what the reasoning slm motives behind Sebastian's wolf sudden backlash towards creators and even Toby himself after the copyright drama following the release of undertale yellow so Sebastian is sometimes I'm going to say this as like nicely as I can not the best communicator but he does have good intentions what he's trying to do get conversations going about copyright in music and like get more people to understand it because if we have a a broader ecosystem of creators who understand the basics of how copyright works we can alleviate a lot of these issues before they ever happen so when you go and you look at his Twitter threads and stuff like that yeah a lot of the way he talks is like very tur and sort of lawyer brain but he's trying to get a conversation going around that topic yeah I definitely think that a lot of that Twitter threat could have been handled way better Sebastian's intention is absolutely never to backlash against creators I know that's hard to believe his intention is to educate even if that means sometimes he comes from like an unfortunately condescending place which I have admonished him a few times over will Sebastian wolf apologize for unprofessional handling of the undertale yellow situation I don't know I definitely don't want to speak to like what he's going to do or not do you know he's talked to Toby a lot in private about the whole thing and he definitely regrets a lot of the way the Twitter thread went down but like you know I can't I can't tell you whether or not he's going to like issue a statement that's exclusively kind of on his place what is the best way to use undertale and delter music in videos and to avoid getting automatically copyright claimed if you're using undertale yellow's music as like bgm right you're just you're making an unrelated video or whatever and you're just playing the original soundtrack in the background don't worry about it it will get copyright dinged but then we will release the claim we always do that K's made that very clear we honor that you know if we get a Content ID claim that says hey this person is using undertale megalovania as bgm for something we'll let it go that's just a little bit of a process you can also email us and you could say like hey you know I've uploaded this video I have it set to private I use this composition would you mind like preemptively whitelisting the video to use this composition and we'll get that work done for you the situation is a little different if we're talking about remixes and covers I'm going to disclaim this with like I'm not a lawyer I can't give you legal advice but I can talk about the ways that we do music distribution and how to make that work the simplest answer is go through a music distributor that will get you the license and let them upload it everywhere on your behalf don't upload the remix directly to YouTube yourself don't upload the remix to Spotify and apple and those other platforms yourself go through a distribution platform like a DIY distributor that will get the license in place and then they'll deliver it to you and that will prevent your issue there there could be a hiccup where Content ID digs it anyway but then we'll check that the license is in place and let it go so I assume that's why different f games get claimed because they use remixes and they don't publish the music through like the distribution companies or uh anything like that precisely it's because the yeah so so fan games will put out a remix upload it directly to YouTube themselves if you do that the license isn't in place and then it becomes a claim issue so you upload like a video essay containing That Remix that doesn't have anything to do with undertale but that still have the same problem as as a as a fan game yes absolutely any anytime you're doing any thing where you're like remixing or covering someone else's musical composition that will apply it's not just us so and this is actually a great point this policy is not a Materia music policy this is a music industry policy this is the way copyright is administered throughout America I want to I want to be clear actually I speak from the perspective of an American company under American law different territories have different laws as far as America goes and as far as we go like this isn't something Materia decided to implement this is just the way the music inistry works I don't know if you've ever seen those signs around your city that say like call before you dig talking about like don't just dig in your backyard and find pipes underground it's it's like that it's like license before you post don't like upload your remix to YouTube and hope for the best go out of your way to make sure you have the license in place through a distributor and then let them upload it for you and you won't have to worry about problems during the undertale yellow copyright situation the frequently ask question sections was changed to specifically prohibit the usage of music from undertale fan games and YouTube videos do you have anything against fan game specifically even though they don't profit off of The Works of Toby Fox additionally are there plans to make these guidelines more reliable as in giving content creators the ability to follow those rules without worrying that they may suddenly be changed in the future no we definitely do not have anything against fan games as a matter of fact we love fan games if people are making cool undertale fan games or whatever then that's awesome we have no issue with that as long as people take the steps to make sure the music is licensed properly before it gets uploaded have a blast one of the big things on Materia sort of overall um like like road map right now is a much more robust sort of Education initiative teach more people about you know copyrights and how those relate to music and what to do with them like a more robust and specific FAQ on like how do I put my remix on YouTube and not get copyright claim how do I you know use my music in a fan game and and do that correctly so yeah we absolutely intend to help make things a little more clear for everybody notice that some people who have their claims be reviewed in the disputes get denied for example my recent live stream you know copyright claimed on Twitter you guys said this is not our claim but then that claim got released Anyway by you all so how come it got denied initially how come you said it wasn't your claim and then how come you were able to remove it if it wasn't your claim so I'll I'll confess that like I don't I'm not specifically the the guy at the company who goes through claims and stuff so like I wouldn't be able to just like Snap My Fingers and give you that Insight in this call hey everyone future Jamie here we were actually looking over the video footage prior to publication and my team gave me a little more info about the previous question that I thought I would help uh you know elus aate a bit and give you some more context I'm going to read this off like a script so please bear with me if my reading is a little dry music exists in a worldwide ecosystem with hundreds of international agencies that exclusively control certain rights for example Latin aor is a music society that is nonprofit in Uruguay that helps collect certain types of royalties playing by Latin aor means that a copyrighted Mel was identified and Latin notor will collect royalties in that territory and make sure that composers and Publishers are paid these royalties the reason videos make it claimed by them is because YouTube will prioritize the most aggressive or assertive monetization and claim policy and some of these agencies are more thorough and detailed than others it is also generally not their policy to allow disputes on what they're considering to be valid claims which they have the right to do our publishing division which is Materia music publishing is one of very few video game music rights companies with the direct access to Content ID while we may not Place initial Melody claims or matches we sometimes have the ability to override them we try to avoid doing that because technically Latino Tor and the other collection societies are 100% in their right to do so by whatever laws exist in their territories and we don't want to cause International incidents sorry if that's not like the perfect answer everybody wanted but it is the information that we have hopefully that clears up the previous question a little bit when we said that's not our claim the actual intent behind that was probably what I said the beginning of the interview where like it's not our claim as in we did not manually go in and claim your live stream the automatic robots did the system did can undertale and delter music be used in non undertale related videos yes absolutely can copyright claims not be released on undertale and deltran videos featuring modded gameplay so the the content of the video isn't specifically relevant it's the music if the music is the original music of undertale and it's just being used as like DGM and it's not a specific monetization of that so you're not uploading the undertale soundtrack to try to make money off theel soundtrack what is the best way for Content creators to easily reach out to Materia to get situations sorted if it's like YouTube copyright claim stuff there's our publishing inbox info@ materium musicpop docomo hit me up on Twitter I'm on Twitter at jamcore Materia and that's it for the interview YouTube thinks you'll like this video so why not see if they're right thanks for watching

Channel: CiblesGD

Views: 87,676

Keywords: undertale, deltarune, undertale music, undertale ost, undertale soundtrack, ost, soundtrack, music, copyright, copyright claim, toby fox, sans, papyrus, undertale yellow, video essay

Id: BpXjmFlZh54

Length: 15min 29sec (929 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 23 2024