OPM Musical Artist Gets Copyright Notice For Performing His Own Song

from the whoops dept

It’s a tale as old as time, assuming time began a decade or two ago. A music artist who just wants to make and perform their craft gets on the internet and performs the song he or she created, only to receive some version of a copyright notice or warning, confusing the hell out of them. Sometimes this happens due to fraud. More often it’s due to some mistake with some automated bot that trolls for rights violations on behest of some massive company.

The latter is likely the case when it comes to OPM performer Jireh Lim, who recently performed one of his songs from over a decade ago on Facebook, only to be notified that his reel was being demonetized.

OPM singer Jireh Lim appeared amused and puzzled at the same time after he got a copyright notice for singing his 2013 song “Buko” in one of his social media posts. Lim shared a video of himself singing his song along with a band, through his Facebook page on Saturday, Feb. 21.

Lim shared a screenshot of the notice that reads, “Your reel’s earnings are being claimed by music rights holders. Multiple rights owners requested changes to your video because a large amount of their music was detected.”

Lim included a response in the caption of the screenshot in what I believe is Tagalog. I’m sure the translation isn’t perfect, but he essentially says, “Guys, this is me. It’s my song.”

So, what’s going on here? Well, the details are somewhat lacking, so I’m left to speculate a bit. Here’s what I know for sure. Lim is currently signed with Warner Music Philippines. Warner definitely has the rights to Lin’s album Love and Soul, which he made in 2015 while with Warner. Before Warner, and in 2013 when Buko was recorded, he was an independent artist. His pre-Warner catalog, however, made its way onto streaming platforms also in 2015.

And now for the speculation. I am guessing that Warner also acquired the rights to his older music, at least for streaming distribution and the like. Warner is not only extremely protectionist on copyright matters, but also employs copyright bots that automatically look for infringing content on the internet, particularly on YouTube and social media sites. So, I would guess that Lim’s reel performing “his” song got flagged by whatever automated setup Warner Music has going.

None of which changes the fact that’s it’s crazy-pants that a musical artist can’t perform his own song on the internet unmolested, nor the fact that copyright laws are obviously so stupidly insane that even these artists can’t figure out how to navigate them properly.

Filed Under: automated copyright notice, copyright, demonetization, jireh lim

Companies: warner music group