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2021 Patreon Tiers: Amending to comply with U.S. Copyright Law. (Patreon)

Published:
2021-01-09 02:12:02
Imported:
2026-06

Content

Hi Patrons!

tl;dr: I unfortunately have to remove MP3/WAV downloads, Backing Tracks, and the Complete Discography tiers due to Copyright Law. This is not in response to any specific incident, just me being compliant with the law as I understand it. You are totally welcome to unpledge if these were the reasons you signed up to support me in the first place - no hard feelings. 

I hope you’re all having an excellent start to 2021! I’m hard at work creating new music for you all! I’m planning on releasing new videos every other Saturday for the first few months of 2021, as I begin to work with a team of people to help me create my videos. Your support on my videos is extremely appreciated, as I’ve been able to hire on a mixer and a video editor to handle some of my future work, enabling me to focus on writing arrangements, recording new music, and working on other behind-the-scenes projects.

In light of Twitch’s DMCA policies that were more strongly enforced in November of 2020, I’ve been taking some time to review my compliance with U.S. Copyright Law as I understand it. Since creating cover songs on the internet is my full-time career now, I’m being as vigilant as reasonably possible to make sure that I am in compliance with the law. Because of this, I unfortunately have to remove some Patreon rewards that don’t comply with these laws, including MP3 / WAV downloads, Backing Tracks, and the Complete Discography. I’ve provided a short explanation of why I’ve had to remove each of these below, and a viable alternative option if you’d still like something similar to these rewards. Feel free to skip the italicized text if you’re not interested in music law!

MP3/WAV Downloads: When distributing a cover song that has already been commercially released in the United States, the cover artist has to pay a statutory mechanical royalty rate for digital downloads, regardless of whether or not the song is being distributed for free, or being distributed in exchange for payment. Even though Patrons pledged at this tier were technically paying enough money to cover the royalties that would be due for each free download, there’s no easy way for me to know how many Patrons have downloaded a certain audio file, or get that royalty money to the proper rights holder without going through a third party service. Additionally, even though I do own the right to the sound recordings of my songs, I do not own the compositional copyright, as that belongs to the original composer, so I don’t have complete legal authority to decide how the song may be distributed. My recommended alternative is to listen to my songs on music platforms such as Apple Music and Spotify - these songs on these platforms are all licensed, and ensure money goes to the proper rights holder with minimal oversight from me.

Backing Tracks: Same as MP3/WAV Downloads. Backing tracks may additionally qualify as “derivative works”, which would not go through the same process of licensing as a normal cover song would. I don’t have a viable alternative option for this at the moment, but I am looking into the possibility of publishing backing track versions of my albums that could be available on the same streaming platforms as my other music.

Complete Discography: Same as MP3/WAV Downloads, but on a much larger scale. The alternative is to listen to my songs on music platforms that have licensed streams / downloads. I will be focusing on distributing as many songs as I can to these platforms to ensure that my discography between YouTube and other music distribution platforms is as consistent as possible.

I understand that these rewards were why many of you pledged to my Patreon, so I am certainly saddened to be removing them, and I completely understand if you'd like to retract your pledge - no hard feelings. If you do choose to remain pledged, thank you so much - your pledges go towards making better content for the channel, including hiring on additional help as I've mentioned earlier, and investments in new instruments and gear.

To be clear, these changes are not being enacted as a response to any particular claim or incident regarding my channel. Rather, they are proactive measures that I'm taking to ensure that things move forward as smoothly as possible.

To better comply with copyright law regarding distribution of cover songs, I’ve amended my Patreon rewards to those listed below.

$1 per month

  • Exclusive Patron-Only Update Video: I’ll be posting a new Patreon update vlog at the beginning of each month, giving a lot of behind-the-scenes info on the channel, and exclusive details on future projects.
  • Patreon-Exclusive Discord Channel: Access to the #patrons channel in my Discord server! I post small behind-the-scenes updates on here from time to time.
  • Downloads of Original Music: You’ll receive MP3 and WAV downloads of any music that I have complete copyright ownership of! This includes original music, and cover songs that I have personally obtained rights for free distribution (most of my cover songs do not fall under this category).

$5 per month

  • All of the above, and...
  • Early Video Access: You’ll get early access to any videos as soon as they’re completed and uploaded to YouTube.

$10 per month

  • All of the above, and...
  • Credits in my Videos: Your Patreon name will be listed in the end slate of each of my videos as a “Special Thanks” for your support!

This is certainly not an easy change to make, and I know for a fact it won't be a profitable one, but I am more interested in complying with the law as much as possible than potentially losing my Patreon account / facing legal action. Thank you, Patrons, for reading and hopefully understanding the actions I'm taking to ensure a safe future for the channel. I look forward to creating more great music for you in 2021! I'm happy to answer any comments below if you have them.

Comments

Nicolas Daoust

My policy has always been "either you let me pay for the music, or I'm stealing it without remorse". But it's not your fault copyright law makes so much trouble, AND you've always gone above and beyond for your fans. No way you're losing my support just because I have to procure your covers through unsavory methods! Keep doing what you do, I'll keep sending money.

Tengor

Would releasing the tracks with proper licensing on Bandcamp, iTunes, etc, as done with Sinnohvation, be a possibility? I personally much prefer downloading music rather than streaming, so I would be interested in such alternatives. Nevertheless will continue pledging and understand the concerns.

insaneintherainmusic
>>51084751

Pretty much all of my tracks that are available on streaming services are also available on iTunes, so downloads are accessible that way. Unfortunately I can't put most stuff on Bandcamp, since that requires a lot of licensing upkeep (there is no automated system - I made a special exception by hiring someone to handle that for Sinnohvation).

insaneintherainmusic
>>51073149

I certainly can't stop you from stealing the music, and I'd in fact love to be able to provide you with downloads, but I'm glad you understand! Hope your unsavory method gets you a good quality audio file :)

KleinGrrmpf

Ok, so I just saw the Vlog and I think it is a cool addition. I can totally understand that you want to take some precautionary steps with distributing the music, just in case. Even thought it might be just a gray area. The future projects sound cool and I am very excited for the Xenoblade 2 stuff, even though I hope that one day you will come across the Xenoblade X music and do some covers of that ^^ I only have one question. Will there be any possibility to purchase the hq-files of your covers? On the music distributers I'v only seen the MP3s... I don't know if you can have hq-files sold there, but having the possibility to purchase them would be cool :) But other than that, it is going to be a great year!

insaneintherainmusic
>>51102304

There aren't any platforms that I know of that my distributor sends music to that also offers downloads of lossless audio files. The closest I can think of is Tidal, which does offer uncompressed audio files, but that's a streaming service.

KleinGrrmpf
>>51102304

Thanks. I just noticed that in the description you have linked your bandcamp account which does offer hq-files. Is this going to be normal because I remember you complaining about how bandcamp is not supported by your distributor. Did that change?

insaneintherainmusic
>>51102304

There's an explanation on the Bandcamp page itself. "(For those wondering, I don't usually distribute my music on Bandcamp due to copyright reasons, but for this particular cover, I've obtained a blanket usage license from the original rightsholder to distribute on any platform.)"

A.C.3

I'm going to stick around! When I first joined this Patreon, the main reason I did was to get those MP3 downloads (especially for the tracks that you didn't release anywhere else). By now my reasons for that have shifted to just..helping you make better music! I was super surprised to see that grand piano in your January vlog, but it made me super happy. I'm glad you mentioned iTunes in other replies (as I'm not a fan of music streaming platforms), but I'm curious what this change means for the future if you were to, say, cover another game song that hasn't been released in the states. Is that just something you won't do anymore? If you do it, I'm assuming there won't be any way to get a good audio file?