Is a cover video considered "Fair Use"

[misterCRUSH]

I post myself playing along with tunes for my wife on Facebook. Seems like about 50% of the time they come back muted in some countries, but she still sees them and that's all that matters to me. Sorry I don't have any answers. Just thought I would share my experience.

 

[Wilmingtonian]

I don't find them annoying at all. He's generally on point with his criticism.

Yeah, a lot of people think they should have carte blanche to use other people's stuff for their own profit.

 

[MultiScaleMale]

I find that the issue is that "fair use" is ill defined and that there is no mechanism in place for me to pay $20 or whatever to get permission for me to do a play-along with "Killing In The Name" or whatever. I use R.A.T.M. as an example because - go to ultimate guitar and look up the chords for "Killing". You will see that they were pulled because the "F the government", "F the establishment" rebels want to make sure that chord charts of their songs aren't released without them making a few bucks off them. Anyways, just give me a way to use your music legally. I'll pay $10 to play Kenny G's "Songbird" as the background music for my YouTube video about world peace.

 

[jtrom]

Hmm... looking at one of my cover videos right now. I did a quick and dirty cover of "Don't Take Me Alive" and it looks like YouTube added licensing and ownership info for the song; I'm assuming in order to correctly pay royalties from the... let's see... 167 views it received.

So I'm going with Barfany Shart on this. I do think these videos are educational in the sense that we tend to look them up to see how other players are doing something we're learning, even if they are not outright specified as "for educational use." I recorded mine as video auditions, mainly, but some of the verbiage talks about how much time I would spend learning the song note-for-note if it were a tribute band versus a dinky bar band, etc. So maybe that pushes it more toward educational territory, as well.

Anyway, I'm happy that someone's getting their little piece of a penny for their own work; no harm to me that they do.

Absolutely,
I will often check out someone elses playalong to see fingerings, fretboard position, picking/fingering style etc. That's education to me.

 

[swarfrat]

I like Rick, but get really frustrated with his blocked rants. What I'm doing here is the textbook definition of "Fair Use", but I don't want to do that, so instead I'll use my 2 million subscribers and industry buddies to pull strings. Rick could use his status to make some real headway for others making educational videos, but chooses not to. Perhaps because his status quo as a heavyweight on a current popular platform allows him to benefit while denying this to up and coming youtube educators.

 

[MonetBass]

Two of my YouTube videos are covers (I'm playing everything, not playing over the original song) and they posted them without complaint.