[blog] Why my new music video is delayed

Published January 23rd 2016

I had hoped to write a reasonably proud post today about my brand new music video, “Don’t Know Why I Got So Attached” – which took me approximately 3 days to make – but I can’t.

The video was finally finished last Wednesday, but when it was just about finished uploading, to my surprise, it got blocked by YouTube. Apparently, “Don’t Know Why I Got So Attached” matched someone else’s song in YouTube’s database and the copyright owners had instructed YouTube to block any matching content.

Don't Know Why I Got So Attached

Don’t Know Why I Got So Attached

What Do Mean I Match An Existing Song?

I was in shock. Firstly, because I knew I wrote the lyrics myself and came up with the melodies for all the vocals. So, it had to be about the music.

The music was given to me last year, by someone who said I would get something especially written for me, so I was under the impression the instrumental I had received was original.

Who Do I Match To?

The problem with YouTube’s copyright claims, is that you only get to see a representative of the music’s rights. In my case, a German company. You don’t get to see which song or video you match with. From there on in, you are on your own, in trying to figure that out.

Thank You Shazam

So, that’s when smartphone app Shazam comes in handy. It was the craziest thing for me to do – to Shazam one of my own songs – but after a few seconds, a completely unknown Italian singer popped up with a song I didn’t know.

Back on YouTube, I found his video for the song: An audio upload with a whole 4 views. Phew! He’s just as popular as me. Thankfully, not a major artist. I pressed play and OMG! It is “my” music. And with a little bit of Googling, I found out this song was released in 2011 already.

For a moment, I thought that my collaborator may have still written the music, but a day later, it was confirmed that he didn’t.

Difference In Writing Methods

As a lyricist, I’ve been collaborating with producers and artists for about 14 years or so. Even though every collaboration is different, everyone has always send me original music to write to, but in this case, it is claimed, it was a collaborative instrumental track. It was supposed to be a reference, apparently.

It’s supposed to be “very usual” within the business, so I’m told, but if you, dear reader, are a music professional, please use the comments form on this page to fill me in. Because, so far, all references I’ve always gotten from people, are links to full tracks by famous artists. They serve as a sample for whatever style or feel I should try to achieve for my writing and they usually refer to a (usually very commercially successful) track. I had actually provided those kinds of references myself in this case.

Altogether, I do have a bit of a different recollection of events. I actually got stuck in the song, while writing it, and asked for help to push the idea further. I was actually hoping to change the music, because I now have a very unusual third verse and I felt the song could use some variation. We ended up solving it another way, but if the intention was to create our own music based on this, that would’ve been a great time to say something about it.

Communication Is Key

All of this is just a classic example of bad communication. It all would’ve been so much better, if this working method would’ve been explained right away. I wouldn’t have put the effort into writing on the music at all then. Why tie yourself down to a format someone else has predetermined, if you can work from scratch and have the freedom to create anything you want?

Nora Tol

Still from the video

What About The Video?

Unfortunately, now I am tied down. Because there´s already a video ready to go, I can´t make any drastic changed to the setup of the song, but luckily I have found a producer willing to help me out by creating new music for the song as it is, so I can upload the video once it´s done. The track, as it is now, will also be removed from streaming platforms as soon as possible. For obvious reasons.

Creating good music takes some time, so I hope to upload the video for the new version of “Don’t Know Why I Got Attached” soon, but I will pick up working on other songs in the meantime, and one of those may make it to YouTube sooner. Time will tell. I’ll keep you posted.

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