Talk:Just Dance 2018/@comment-32966579-20171217131235/@comment-1465604-20171220054759

I highly doubt AthurVideoSong has any explicit deals with any record companies, just implicit and widely used deals. As someone who's spent the past 5 years uploading gameplay videos from various games overdubbed with pop music, I have a lot of experience in how that works on Youtube.

The vast majority of record companies will no longer issue you a copyright strike unless you're just reuploading their content wholesale (i.e. reuploading a music video). Some won't even do it if you just upload a CD quality rip over a static image of the single cover. What they'll do is monetize your video so that all ad revenue from the videos goes to them. I am fine with this as I'm not looking to make money off of Youtube, so I just keep uploading videos with copyrighted material that then get monetized by the copyright owners. I'm happy, the scant number of viewers I have are happy and the record companies are happy.

The records companies do this because they know that as long as you're not in direct competition with them (i.e. reuploading their music videos or CD rips of their songs people can listen without looking at the screen if they're just in the mood to listen to the song), they lose nothing from someone using their track(s) as ambient or background music in, say, gaming videos. In my years and years and uploading videos onto Youtube using copyrighted music as background music, I've only received a single strike.

Very prevalent are also streaming restrictions: Most of my videos are not streamable through mobile. I.e. you can't use the official Youtube app on mobile devices of the m.youtube domain, but you can stream them just fine through a web browser forced to load the desktop version. Rarer, but still somewhat prevalent, are also location restrictions: Your videos may not be viewable for viewers with IP addresses in certain countries. This used to always include Germany when the German copyright organization had a dispute with the German recording industry (this lasted for several years), but this is no longer true. Also, some record companies choose not to strike videos (probably because they don't want to incur the wrath of the Internet for putting content providers out of business) but instead making your video blocked in literally all of the known world (it looks quite funny). Only a select few record companies do this, however. Adele's songs get this treatment (blocked throughout all of the known world), so I just stopped using her songs. One other prominent female artist's record company did the same to several of my videos, so I stopped using them as well, I just can't remember who they are.

This is why a few years ago, notable Just Dance video makers started uploading 2 versions of each of their videos, 1 "normal" upload and 1 with the sound muted. The muted version allowed them to still monetize their videos while others just started soliciting donations throuh Patreon. Some people nowadays do this by using alternate versions of the songs. AthurVideoSong still uses the originals, while [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A3kE3YicW7g rfmckinleyport] instead uses covers (that particular cover of "Despacito" is actually the one most commonly used for uploads of the Extreme versions on Youtube).

Record companies do not lose additional money from Just Dance videos that they were not already losing out from lost sales due to streaming on legal platforms or pirating, so they don't care about Just Dance videos outside of monetizing them. This isn't new, either. My first Just Dance video was uploaded in November of 2012 and it just received a monetization claim by UMG Music. Not a single one of my Just Dance videos have ever been struck by a record company (nor by Ubisoft, but that's because all of them are transformative).

ArthurVideoSong's (and some other Just Dance video uploaders') problem is that their work is just a straight rip of the game that can be used to substitute for the game, which is why Ubisoft are going after them. If you insert yourself into the video like that Ukranian guy that did it for a few years (I've forgotten what his username was and he stopped uploading Just Dance videos a few years ago) or film a screen with a crowd dancing to the game/videos, Ubisoft will leave you be.

Ubisoft aren't doing this to be petty, they're doing it because they've been losing a lot of money from not having cracked down on this earlier. If you want the series to continue existing without huge budget cuts or just being cancelled altogether, you must support these new rules. Just Dance is a relatively cheap games series to make, but that doesn't matter much if sales plummet. The Ubisoft employee was actually very nice to be, after a snarky initial rebuke, which I took as a joke ("I hope I don't see that up on Youtube later!"). She basically said that she knew I was a "real" Just Dance fan after seeing me dancing in front of (and even on) the Ubisoft stage for 3 days straight and for having come to the Meltdown Party to play the Gamescom demo build, and as such, she wanted to give me proper warning as she didn't want Ubisoft to have to strike my videos. So she explained to me Ubisoft's plans to crack down on gameplay videos that aren't transformative, namedropping ArthurVideoSong (and only him).

Is it annoying for those of us who buy the games but also want to be able to quickly view the songs without having to boot up the game first? Yes. Is it understandable? Also, yes. Is it necessary? If we want the series to continue existing, also yes. The Just Dance team are very nice, very gracious and love the fans very, very much. Every single person who work for Ubisoft I've ever come in contact with have been extremely nice and engaging. But this is just one of those things that are an unfortunate necessity.