The show can also be heard on KWSS on USA radio as well as Indie 104.

View MUSICEYZ review of Le Monnier

YouTube. We’ve all used it and every day many people upload their content to share with the world. Whether it be a small-time filmmaker or someone sharing their family footage, right up to a Hollywood production company sharing their latest trailer, a freely accessible website such as YouTube is of course open to breach of copyright whether intentional or otherwise.

For musicians the situation is especially precarious. Anyone can take a track they don’t own or have the rights to, and upload it to YouTube. Thankfully, YouTube has a content ID system designed for this sort of issue. It scans videos that are uploaded and sees if music under copyright has been used. The record label or artist then has the option of blocking the video or recouping some of their loss with adverts displayed on page and the video.

What does this mean for the average everyday user? Well let’s say you upload a video of your dog on a skateboard and stick a Lady Gaga track in the background. YouTube will detect that a copyrighted track has been used and the rights holder will have the option of blocking the video or make money from it. This is a great system especially to smaller bands as it potentially opens up a new revenue stream.

Of course, no system is perfect and occasionally it will get it wrong. YouTube provides a dispute system that allows content creators/uploaders to put forward their case, especially if the music has been mis-identified. Once you dispute this, the rights-holder will be contacts and asked to review the content. This is where we come to the main part of our story.

In October, our band Le Monnier uploaded a music video called ‘Con Amor Siempre’ to YouTube. The music is entirely original, the video is entirely original – both created by ourselves and we hold the rights to everything. We are an unsigned band. Weeks later after taking a look at our YouTube account, I noticed that our video was blocked in certain territories so I took a look further. SME (Sony Music Entertainment) had been identified as a potential owner to some or all of the content. This was incorrect so we submitted a dispute. It’s not Sony Music’s fault at this point. The Content ID system got it wrong so our dispute should clear it all up and it should all be resolved nice and quickly.

Imagine our surprise then, when we logged back into our account and was greet with this notice:

These content owners have reviewed your video and confirmed their claims to some or all of its content:
Entity: SME Content Type: Sound Recording

This is where Sony Music Entertainment starts to take the blame. By their own admission, they have watched our music video and decided that they own some or all of the sound recording. They don’t. They never have and never will. We tweeted about our situation and were hastily contacted by whoever runs their twitter account with an e-mail address. To cut a long story short, in December, we e-mailed them. Here is their reply:

We checked our account. It’s not been fixed. We e-mailed again, we’ve not had a response.

This raises some serious questions about Sony Music Entertainment’s conduct with regards to online content. Now SME have claimed ownership to some or all of our sound recording, adverts are displayed on our video page and an iTunes link displayed below for a completely different artist.

Are Sony Music Entertainment making money out of our music? Are Sony Music Entertainment trying to trick viewers into buying one of their tracks through iTunes? How many other unsigned acts have they done this to? 

We don’t know whether SME will ever resolve this. We’re not keeping our hopes up.

If you’re an unsigned artist/band we seriously encourage you to check all of your videos to see if Sony Music Entertainment has made any similar false claims. This is a disgusting and shocking example of major label disregard and disrespect for the  aspiring musician.

Once you’ve bought it, don’t forget to leave us a review!


Le Monnier Store (Worldwide)

Amazon (US)

Amazon (UK)

*Russian Doll Life is also available from all worldwide Amazon Stores

CD Baby (US)

CD Universe (US)

In and Out Records (UK/EU)

To redeem your free download, just visit Le Monnier on Facebook – you will have to ‘like’ the band first though! This download is only available for the next few weeks so hurry!