Twitter’s UGC May Be The Key To Music’s Next Licensing Battle

Like most industries, the music business has found user-generated content to be a double-edged sword. On one hand UGC helps a video (and therefore a song) go viral and generate additional revenue. On the other, it’s a form of piracy and takes resources to protect against. Luckily, major social platforms usually have a built-in process to deal with unlicensed UGC, except for Twitter.

Most people think of Twitter as a text-only format but the fact of the matter is that video is also available on the platform as well. Its use is growing, and with it comes all the problems that come with UGC and unlicensed materials, especially music.

It’s A Bigger Problem Than You Think

According to Billboard, RIAA chairman and CEO Mitch Glazier testified in December before a Senate Subcommittee on Intellectual Property that music rights holders have sent Twitter notices regarding more than 3 million infringements of over 20,000 recordings in just the past two years (Twitter states it’s far less). Normally, that would mean that a standard Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) takedown notice would be issued, but Twitter hasn’t issued all that many that have resulted in withheld media.

Understand that Twitter doesn’t have a method to ferret out possible infringement automatically like YouTube and Facebook have with their Content ID and Rights Manager systems, which means that each record label has to allocate more resources to finding possible infringers on Twitter than on other platforms. As a result, the RIAA asked Twitter for access to its API (application programming interface) to make these searches more efficient. Twitter told them that it would cost $100,000 a year to do so.

It’s unlikely that the organization will pay up, since doing so would create a precedent that could cost the industry a lot of money. Imagine if other social platforms began charging for DMCA takedown notices? Talk about an untapped revenue source. Plus it might have the positive side effect of alleviating some of the takedown abuse that currently exists. But that’s not the real issue.

The Hidden Strategy

The fact of the matter is that Twitter may be just looking for a less expensive out with the music business. It has not signed any music licensing agreements and is loathe to do so, since music and/or video on the platform are still a small percentage of its business. It could throw the music industry a bone by dropping the API charge in exchange for less pressure to license its music strengthening its takedown measures. $100k is peanuts next to the millions a license would cost, but that’s how negotiations work. Give a little, maybe get a lot.

Video is a growing area of the platform however, and one that the company may decide to exploit more in the future in an effort to increase its somewhat stagnant user numbers. This is still a long shot, since there are so many other platforms that are dominated by music. TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, and to a lesser degree, Facebook, come to mind.

Treading water while keeping the labels at bay may be the best approach for Twitter in the end. It certainly doesn’t want to, and many not even be able to pay for expensive music licensing, and developing a content identification system will likely be an expensive add-on as well. The music industry might let a lot of infringement issues slide with licensing in place, but with no agreement in hand, the Twitter landscape is shaping up as its new battleground.