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Sony’s SoundCloud takedown frenzy takes down Dummy’s Sony supplied promos
By Chris Cooke | Published on Friday 14 August 2015
Sony’s always proactive SoundCloud takedowns team caused another little stir yesterday, when music website Dummy announced that its channel on the audio-streaming site, via which it streams records it is covering elsewhere, and in liaison with label promo teams, had been blocked because of multiple takedown requests by Sony.
Although the website’s SoundCloud channel was still active, it found yesterday that it couldn’t access the account or upload new content. “The reason Soundcloud has given” Dummy reported yesterday, “is that we have received three strikes for content that we have uploaded which is in breach of Sony’s copyright, although SoundCloud have so far not told us which tracks are in question”.
This was somewhat annoying for Dummy because, “we have only ever uploaded music that Sony have sent us to promote, so it seems ridiculous that they would want to shut down our account and prevent us from supporting new music signed to their label in the future”.
Making things all the more frustrating, “Soundcloud have stated if we can persuade Sony to remove the objections then they will remove the strikes to restore and unlock our account. However, under instruction from Sony, Soundcloud are not allowed to tell us who to contact within the organisation”.
Which is all fun, fun, fun. We should add that, after Team Dummy went public about the problem yesterday, someone at Sony sorted out the mess pretty much straight away so that the website’s SoundCloud account is live again. But it’s still a bit embarrassing for the major, and possibly another example of PR not always talking to Team Takedown, or of an overly-efficient automated takedown process.
That takedown team, of course, has been instructed to be more prolific with SoundCloud takedowns in recent months as talks between the major and the digital firm about the former possibly licensing the latter’s all-new ad and subscription-funded services stalled.
Last month an up and coming producer went public about how he had received a Sony takedown request for posting a One Direction remix to SoundCloud, even though he did so as part of a Sony-organised competition, the instructions for which said to upload entries to SoundCloud. Fun, fun, fun, fun, fun.