The Rat's Nest

I tried out Google Radio on their 30 day free trial and found I really like it, but I also came to realise I can't afford to spend $12 a month on a luxury. I looked at the alternatives and decided to try out Pandora. Somebody had already registered an account on it using my email address, but it turns out it was easy to take it back by changing the password. It looks like whoever they were had abandoned the account some months ago anyway. At least their musical taste wasn't limited to the top 40. So if somebody called kangaroos06 had previously insulted you on Pandora, please be assured the rebranded Marko Rat is not like that. ;)

I am pretty pleased with Pandora so far. Its ability to pick musical sounds based on a band seems pretty good. I accept the price of a "free" service is advertising, but so far there hasn't been much. There seems to be no advertising when listening to music on the web interface and I've only heard one advert in the audio stream. There seems to be a lot of advertising on the Android app, but that will mostly be in the car when I can't look at it.

Last night I left my computer uploading a new Rattus video to YouTube, one I'd been working on since December last year and my first HD video of Rattus. Because I didn't want to give the copyright trolls any gristle to work with, I took care to only use music released under Creative Commons and to abide by any CC licensing requirements. But when I checked it this morning I found YouTube had content ID matched part (or all) of the soundtrack to Rumblefish. At first I thought YouTube's automated content matcher had made a mistake and I disputed the claim, but Harvard showed me different. Rumblefish was supposed to be a service letting small indie creators like myself add copyrighted music to their videos at a nominal cost, but they have been adding Creative Commons music to their catalogue which YouTube then picks up and overlays advertising on otherwise royalty-free videos to pay rumblefish's royalties (and no doubt claim a share of the advertising revenue themselves). This is the last straw. I will not be party to letting a third party make revenue from other creators' work without paying anything back or value adding in any way. Better creators than me have already deserted YouTube and I know I will not be the last. How many do they need to lose until they care? Google have a delicate balancing act to play with copyright holders, but in this case they slipped and missed the net. Creators release their work under Creative Commons for a reason: so it can be distributed as widely as possible. Rumblefish, whether intentionally or not, is restricting that without paying anything back.

In future, the most I will upload to YouTube are teasers directing viewers to my Vimeo account.

What do these two Finnish bands have in common? (Other than being Finnish.)


Desert Planet -- Riot Sector 68


Lordi -- Devil is a Loser

( Answer behind cut... )