Psy Makes $8.1 Million By Ignoring Copyright Infringements Of Gangnam Style

http://www.techdirt.com/blog/casestudies/articles/20121209/07431921317/psy-makes-81-million-ignoring-copyright-infringements-gangnam-style.shtml

by mtgx • 14 years ago

155 100 14 years ago

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kristopher• 14 years ago

"Ignoring" might be too strong a word here. Licensing is in play, but they are not going after individual infringers.

spin• 14 years ago

From the article, some of his money comes from Youtube ads, which I don't think would exist if it weren't for traditional copyright laws. (ie, Youtube wouldn't be giving him a cut of the ad revenue if it weren't for copyright.)

Still... Kudos to him for not using draconian enforcement, yet still making lots of money.

andrewflnr2• 14 years ago

Similarly, he wouldn't get any money from people making commercials without copyright law. They would simply rip it off without asking.

njharman• 14 years ago

The point is; no one would being paying anything unless it got so popular. And, it was allowd to get so popular because no one pettily went after "small fry" infringers. They let (encouraged probably) it go "viral". Let it be mixed, shared, performed, Let it become part of our culture, almost in The Commons.

And when it was good enough to be shared, massively, they reaped the just rewards.

yeonhoyoon• 14 years ago

making the downloading & sharing songs easier and earning profits from live performances is the way to go for the music industry.

camus2• 14 years ago

ok , let me enjoy your work for free , you should be lucky i'm sharing it ? let's apply that fact to developers then.

unfed• 14 years ago

Umm would you also pay to watch my live coding session?

Kim_Bruning• 14 years ago

Yes, that's where it started. :-)

Natsu2• 14 years ago

You're talking to an audience where the average person has a Github account and loves FOSS.

sp332• 14 years ago

That argument has been used for about 4 decades now http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Letter_to_Hobbyists and yet corporations still contribute huge amounts of code to free and open-source projects. e.g. http://www.linuxfoundation.org/news-media/announcements/2012...

smackfu• 14 years ago

I think the current YouTube system is pretty good. YouTube detects you are using copyrighted music, and the copyright owner can choose to block it or allow it but gets the money for the ads. Most of them seem to be choosing the second.

zlotty• 14 years ago

Note to self: it's as simple as creating the most popular YouTube video of all time. Done and done. Say you're independent and have a decent hit -- 100,000 views. Earnings: $870.

Danieru• 14 years ago

100,000 views isn't much. I think my silly videos of Sid Meier's Railroads[1][2] have more than that.

These are things I put together in a day and edited in windows movie maker. When youtube offered adding ads I ignored them thinking it would never amount to anything. At $8.7 ECPM I feel absurd having skipped the chance!

For an independent band 1k means vital equipment and capital to sell fan goods. For a "Let's play" gamer it means a better microphone and subsidizes the cost of games.

Many large websites run on rates far lower, and those have to provide their own traffic.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zYgCwYfVkQ8&list=UUQ7Hrh... [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fUXL-zua9ho&list=UUQ7Hrh...

gabemart• 14 years ago

>These are things I put together in a day and edited in windows movie maker. When youtube offered adding ads I ignored them thinking it would never amount to anything. At $8.7 ECPM I feel absurd having skipped the chance!

Presumably, you would not be able to show ads on those videos because they use IP you don't have the rights to. They're popular (again, presumably) because people search for footage of those copyright games and enjoy the first copyright music track. It's fairly easy to put something together "in a day" that becomes popular when you're not constricted by the rules of copyright and can piggyback on the popularity of existing content. I'm not criticizing - I have a viral video on youtube that's within spitting distance of a million views, but I would never be able to show ads on it because I don't have permission to use the footage or the music.

And yes, it seems that presently most video games companies generally turn a blind eye to people posting footage from their games. But you'd be foolhardy indeed to start to rely on advertising revenue that was built entirely on the goodwill of a diverse group of for-profit companies. There are a host of semi- and fully-professional video game personalities whose livelihood could be shut down overnight if a few companies decided to enforce their copyrights.

jQueryIsAwesome• 14 years ago

Lets do the math: 800 million views for 8 million dollars; so to make $8.000 you need 800.000 Youtube views... this is in no way an example for other artists; and "Gangman style" is a exception in music popularity grow, like "Asereje", "Macarena", "Smells like teen spirit" or "Mambo #5" (is just that YouTube didn't exist back then).

zalew• 14 years ago

what's "Smells like teen spirit" doing on that list? Nirvana weren't one hit wonders.

jaredsohn• 14 years ago

The list seems to be of very popular songs; it just so happens that many of the songs are one-hit wonders.

rgbrenner• 14 years ago

800mil/8mil=100 views per $ so to make $8, you would need 800 page views

That's $10CPM, which is a very reasonable rate.

polshaw• 14 years ago

Except the $8m figure included iTunes sales too.

Source: TFA.

tehwebguy• 14 years ago

It seems reasonable but pulling a $10 blended CPM on YouTube on this many views on the same content has probably never happened.

tokenadult• 14 years ago

The song industry includes singer-songwriters, and it also includes specialist singers and specialist songwriters. A healthy industry will support people who create music but who do not necessarily perform it in public performances.

npsimons• 14 years ago

A healthy industry will support people who create music but who do not necessarily perform it in public performances.

That's your opinion, and you're certainly entitled to it, but it doesn't make it true. While I don't want to discourage anyone composing/songwriting, keep in mind that separate singers and songwriters are what gave us Britney Spears, and the sheet music guild is at least as bad as RIAA (charging non-profit performing charities per performance for sheet music they've already paid for).

w1ntermute4• 14 years ago

As explained on The Verge[0], the internet has been essential to the rise of K-pop, and the K-pop industry is not nearly as strict about piracy as the American music industry is.

0: http://www.theverge.com/2012/10/18/3516562/k-pop-invades-ame...

ineedtosleep• 14 years ago

Though I'm not really riding on the South Korean wave, I have a huge amount of respect for Korea's music labels (at least when it comes to how they release their content).

If one takes a look at YouTube channels for the South Korean labels, the videos the provide are almost always high quality -- both in terms of actual video quality and content that they release (e.g. LOEN[1] and SMTOWN[2]).

On the other side of the sea, you have Japan. From the US side, it seems that Japanese labels haven't been too generous with releasing their content overseas. Universal Music Japan has been the only big label (IMO) that has been great with releasing content. The other end of the spectrum, you have Sony Music...and they've been pretty quick to bring down videos as well.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/user/LOENENT/videos?view=0

[2] https://www.youtube.com/user/SMTOWN

[3] https://www.youtube.com/user/universalmusicjapan

[4] https://www.youtube.com/user/sonymusicnetwork

w1ntermute4• 14 years ago

> On the other side of the sea, you have Japan. From the US side, it seems that Japanese labels haven't been too generous with releasing their content overseas.

As explained in this article by The Verge[0], the Japanese are still very much tethered to physical media. They regularly rent/buy CDs, DVDs, and Blu-ray discs, for reasons discussed in the article, which has kept profits high in the Japanese entertainment industry, compared to the West. Physical album sales have actually risen 11% in Japan in 2012, compared to 2011[1].

This, combined with the Japanese market's size and the almost complete absence of piracy there, has obviated the need for Japanese artists to embrace the internet or market their products abroad. Korea, on the other hand, has a much smaller population, and one for which piracy is a way of life. Korean artists are thus forced to market abroad, and in fact get 80% of their profits from Japan[1].

Among domestic Japanese groups, on the other hand, there has also been a reliance on various gimmicks to boost physical single and album sales. For example, AKB48, a girl pop group with dozens of members (originally 48 of them), holds yearly elections (senbatsu) to determine the order in which the members are ranked. You get one voting code for each physical copy of a particular single/album that you buy. There are crazy fans that will literally buy thousands of copies of a single CD in order to repeatedly vote for their favorite member, so that member wins[2,3].

0: http://www.theverge.com/2012/11/15/3628376/japan-digital-con...

1: http://seoulbeats.com/2012/12/worry-for-the-right-reasons-k-...

2: http://blog.livedoor.jp/kinisoku/archives/3425353.html

3: http://getnews.jp/archives/119107

jasonoliver• 14 years ago

Artists and Media companies know that music copyright is impossible to enforce, and they do not build their business around selling of music content. In China, Korea, Japan, Taiwan, no one buys CDs, but people spend a ton on consumer goods that are schilled by these artists, and also a ton on concerts to watch them perform live. US record labels need to wake up and figure out how to build real businesses around artists not tied to selling music.

w1ntermute4• 14 years ago

> In China, Korea, Japan, Taiwan, no one buys CDs

What are you talking about? This might be true for the other countries, but it is most definitely not true for Japan, as I explained in this post: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4903236

ladzoppelin• 14 years ago

Gangnam Style is a horrible example of "... a shift in how money is being made in the music business". Psy deserves every bit of it but the popularity of that song is a freak incident.

scotty79• 14 years ago

I think same can be said about almost anything vastly popular.

CamperBob2• 14 years ago

Along the same lines, it's interesting that not only has Constantin Film apparently stopped issuing DMCA notices on the Untergang (Downfall) parody videos, but some of the older ones that were previously DMCA'ed off of YouTube seem to have come back. Maybe it finally occurred to someone at Constantin how many viewers those unlicensed parodies have attracted to their excellent but otherwise obscure movie over the past few years.

I posted one a couple of years ago, myself. It stayed up for about a year, then was yanked in response to a DMCA complaint from Constantin. About a year after that -- meaning just a few weeks ago -- I started getting notifications of user comments again. The video had magically reappeared on YouTube with no intervention or counterclaim on my part.

GigabyteCoin2• 14 years ago

Perhaps YouTube has a re-inclusion program?

chris_wot4• 14 years ago

I doubt it. That would most definitely violate the DMCA.

bgentry• 14 years ago

I recently watched this film on Netflix and it was great! I knew nothing about it before seeing some parodies pop up a few years back.

jamesmcn2• 14 years ago

Devil's advocate: where do you draw the line?

MIT did a Gangnam style video, did they pay Psy for the right to do so?

If BMW were to do a Gangnam style video, surely Psy would expect to be paid, right?

Why BMW and why not MIT?

We are in a liminal period where copyright is sometimes enforced, and sometimes not. Social pressure and business inertia causes some people to play by the rules. Risk taking, greed, and ignorance causes other people to not do so. Where this ends up is anyone's guess, but it isn't likely to stay this way for long.

[That said, I'll reiterate my previous comment about record labels who bring hundred-million-dollar suits against their fans: fuck them.]

primatology• 14 years ago

BMW is a for-profit business. MIT is a non-profit educational institution.

I'll agree that copyright in the digital era is a mess, but the line in this case is fairly clear. Yes, fair use (regarding parodies/satires) is convoluted, but the general rule makes intuitive sense to me: unless your parody is blatantly for-profit/self-advancement, you're covered.

jamesmcn2• 14 years ago

So, what if BMW kicked the BMWCCA a few bills to make a "parody" video of their own?

gadders2• 14 years ago

A non-profit with $15b in total assets and endowments.

http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2012/institute-endowment-figur...

gonehome• 14 years ago

"We are in a liminal period where copyright is sometimes enforced, and sometimes not. Social pressure and business inertia causes some people to play by the rules. Risk taking, greed, and ignorance causes other people to not do so. Where this ends up is anyone's guess, but it isn't likely to stay this way for long."

It's more nuanced than that - modern copyright is not doing what it was supposed to do (http://zacharyalberico.com/post/16427595132/no-infringement-...).

shin_lao2• 14 years ago

Parody is considered to be "fair use". Commercials aren't.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use#Fair_use_and_parody

Actually copyright laws were pretty clear, we just had massive regression due to intense lobbying of greedy entities.

saurik3• 14 years ago

A) If you accept this argument premise, then you violate the assumption that PSY is "ignoring copyright infringement" in the first place. B) Using the music verbatim but changing only the video content to make a parody would probably not hold up as "fair use".

Jach• 14 years ago

Parody commercials (and indeed t.v. shows) are just fine, however. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturday_night_live

tmh88j2• 14 years ago

>Parody is considered to be "fair use". Commercials aren't.

How about when parodies generate money? Weird Al made millions doing that.

bjourne2• 14 years ago

For the record (hah) "Fair use" is only a legal concept in the US. Other jurisdictions sometimes have analogies to Fair use, like the right for journalists to quote parts of a text. But those rights are much more limited. There is also no DMCA which means site owners are responsible for the content users may publish.

vy8vWJlco• 14 years ago

"Devil's advocate: where do you draw the line?"

Individual and not-for-profit uses are fair.

http://torrentfreak.com/file-sharing-for-personal-use-declar...

MichaelSalib• 14 years ago

MIT didn't make a Gangnam style video at all. The Korean Students Association at MIT did and got a bunch of random students to help out. The KSA doesn't have any money; BMW does.

danielweber3• 14 years ago

MIT pays a flat ASCAP license fee that covers all its students which probably provides them substantial legal cover for most use.

kyllo• 14 years ago

Honestly, who (outside of Korea) would even buy an entire PSY record, though? I don't think album sales are a very big revenue stream for such a novelty act. Single-song downloads, advertisements, and talk show and event appearances are of course where the money is at for him.

Nice to see that he isn't trying to "charge for smells" though.

mxxx• 14 years ago

The article implies that if you just let anybody infringe on your copyright and play/use your work however they feel, it'll pay off in the long run because you gain exposure.

Seems like a _reasonable_ assumption, but I don't really think that PSY is a good example. They mention he's been hired to do ads for Samsung, etc, but is that really a feasible endgame for the majority of artists? Quite apart from the fact that 0.00001% are going to ever be _asked_ to appear in commercials, how many would actually want to? Not exactly a shining example of artistic integrity, is it?

I feel like they're kind of clutching at straws here, probably because articles like this are so popular with readers - have a browse through the comments to see how much everybody enjoys sticking the boot into the record companies.

Anyway, good for him. It's nice to hear that there are other ways to be successful, I suppose.

pretoriusB2• 14 years ago

>Psy Makes $8.1 Million By Ignoring Copyright Infringements Of Gangnam Style

Really? Why not:

"Psy Makes $8.1 Million DESPITE Ignoring Copyright Infringements Of Gangnam Style"

josephlord• 14 years ago

Yep the old correlation is not causation fallacy with the correlation calculated from a single datapoint for extra validity.

Now it may be that permissive distribution was key to the success but it is not shown by this article.

shuzchen• 14 years ago

Because your edit implies that Psy's success was solely on the merits of his music video and official marketing, and that infringing parodies were not able to dent that success.

The original (and the one I prefer) implies that Psy's success was due in part of the infringing parodies, because of the network effects created by these parodies.

polymatter• 14 years ago

Or just "Psy makes $8.1 million and has ignored copyright infringements of Gangnam Style" which states the facts without putting a spin on it.

chris_wot4• 14 years ago

Because that's not the central thrust of the article. He has actually grown his fan base hugely by allowing copying, which is how he got to promote himself in ads, etc. outside of his music video.

Your headline implies that the copying is still bad for him, and without I he would have been even more successful, but in fact that's no the case. If he had cracked down on copyright violations, his video probably wouldn't have gone viral (i.e. celebs saw it on YouTube in copyright violation form, they tweeted it, it went viral).

tlianza• 14 years ago

Or how about "Psy Makes ONLY $8.1 Million..."

Is this a lot of money for the most viewed video in the history of the Internet and the most popular song worldwide?

chris_wot4• 14 years ago

Yes. See http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100712/23482610186.shtml

pixl972• 14 years ago

I'd say yes. In the bad old days, you only got to number 1 because of payola. Chances of an unsigned Korean artist getting there. 0. He for sure did not fit the boy band/pop star profile.

Now you can go from someone mostly unheard of to a global superstar outside of traditional channels. Now, if you are already someone signed on a big label and have a big name, then 8.1M may not be huge, especially for how popular it was.

beerglass• 14 years ago

As a counterpoint, this letter from songwriter Tom Waits written over 10 years ago is a solid rebuttal to the practice of artists making money from commercials while giving away their copyrights for free. Here it goes - http://www.lettersofnote.com/2012/12/its-virus.html

belorn• 14 years ago

Tom Waits sounds awful close to John Phillip Sousa testament before the US Congress 1906 if you swap talking machines with songs in commercials.

illuminate2• 14 years ago

"When I was a boy . . . in front of every house in the summer evenings you would find young people together singing the songs of the day or the old songs. Today you hear these infernal machines going night and day. We will not have a vocal cord left. The vocal cords will be eliminated by a process of evolution, as was the tail of man when he came from the ape”"

I really don't see how. Waits is making an appeal to art and integrity, Sousa is decrying the act and presentation of mechanical reproduction.

darushimo• 14 years ago

This isn't a "new way" for artists to make money. This is how one-hit wonders bank off their popular songs. Hasn't changed.

petrel• 14 years ago

Microsoft Windows has already gone in same way. Piracy has actually made Windows so popular and inevitable also. You can not ignore and you can not live without Windows, atleast for now. Here in India, computing is a Windows though the most of the PC are running on pirated Windows. Piracy has it won benefits.

madaxe• 14 years ago

Surely if Psy condones piracy, the RIAA should be going after him with their black helicopters, ricin umbrellas and polonium pills. Wait, I've confused them with the NKVD, haven't I? Ah well, it'll do.

mtgx• 14 years ago

Wasn't there a lot of "innovation" in jazz in the early days when it was very popular, because no one copyrighted their jazz songs? I remember watching something about this. I might've seen it in one of the Everything is a Remix videos:

http://www.everythingisaremix.info/everything-is-a-remix-par...

laumars• 14 years ago

There's a similar case with dance (club) music. eg the "Amen Break":

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5SaFTm2bcac

tjr• 14 years ago

A lot of somewhat early jazz (bebop) initially used popular showtunes as the base composition, and then improvised solos off those. But precisely because of not wanting to deal with the copyright on the showtune compositions, jazz players began composing their own music. They used the same chord progressions so that the improvisations stayed the same, but a different melody, so it legally was a different piece of music.

othello• 14 years ago

Those $8.1 million did not come from Youtube advertisement: according to the original AP article, only $870,000 did.

https://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jlcpd0qGl...

This estimate seems to be based on views for all of PSY's channel, i.e. 1.3 billion views. That works out as a $0.7 eCPM, which seems more credible than the $8 floated below in this thread.

pixl972• 14 years ago

"From just those sources, PSY and his camp will rake in at least $8.1 million this year, according to an analysis by The Associated Press of publicly available information and industry estimates. But for online music sales in South Korea, he'll earn less than $60,000."

This is the important part of the article. He earns around US$0.00015 per song sold in his own country via online sales. He earns a hell of a lot more via Youtube and iTunes. What gets him up to 8M is other advertizing deals.

89a• 14 years ago

Doesn't seem like much for something so huge

marijn• 14 years ago

Hah. Tried opening the Youtube link in Germany. Got "Unfortunately, this video is not available in Germany because it may contain music for which GEMA has not granted the respective music rights." The GEMA situation is completely out of control here -- it often feels like half of Youtube is blocked, including many things that obviously don't infringe.

akie• 14 years ago

Install ProxMate or ProxTube to get around this.

meerita• 14 years ago

Just wait he rans out of money. Then it will become a copytroll :)

Psy Makes $8.1 Million By Ignoring Copyright Infringements Of Gangnam Style

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