YouTube pulls Adele and Kendrick Lamar tracks in SESAC dispute, then restores them

Songs by Adele, Kendrick Lamar, Nirvana, Britney Spears, Green Day, Kanye West and Burna Boy disappeared from YouTube and YouTube Music on Saturday. Instead of the track, viewers saw a short message: "This video contains content from SESAC. It is not available in your country."

The Verge reported the outage on 29 September. The same catalogue had been playable the day before. By Monday afternoon, YouTube said it had signed a new deal and that the missing music would be restored "over the next day or two."

The blackout was not total. The Verge found that one listing for Kanye West's "Power" was blocked while the music video version kept streaming. SESAC publishes a searchable database of its repertory, but not every song listed there appeared to have been removed. The same report notes that the organisation's site also hosts a 44,267-page PDF of the complete list.

What SESAC is, and who owns it

SESAC stands for the Society of European Stage Authors and Composers. It has existed since 1930. According to its website, it licenses the public performance of more than 1.5 million songs on behalf of its 15,000-plus affiliated songwriters, composers and music publishers. It is smaller than BMI and ASCAP, the two US performing rights organisations that most listeners recognise, but its portfolio includes well-known names. In 2017 the private equity firm Blackstone acquired SESAC.

The dispute was about money and timing, not about a single artist. YouTube's spokesperson Mariana de Felice told The Verge that the company had negotiated in good faith to renew an existing deal but could not reach what it called an equitable agreement before expiry. "We take copyright very seriously and as a result, content represented by SESAC is no longer available on YouTube in the US," she said. "We are in active conversations with SESAC and are hoping to reach a new deal as soon as possible."

We have held good faith negotiations with SESAC to renew our existing deal. Unfortunately, despite our best efforts, we were unable to reach an equitable agreement before its expiration.

SESAC itself did not comment publicly during the outage. Variety, citing an unnamed source, reported that the previous deal did not actually expire until the following week, suggesting the takedown could have been a YouTube negotiating tactic. The Verge flagged that claim as unverified. The two accounts never got reconciled in public. By the time YouTube confirmed the new agreement, listeners had stopped caring who walked away first.

What the episode does show is how much of the music on YouTube sits behind collective licences rather than direct deals with labels. A single rights body can remove a large slice of the catalogue from one platform in one country, and the platform cannot substitute individual agreements fast enough to fill the hole. The songs returned. The structural exposure remains.

Rights fights are spreading beyond music

Three other disputes reported this month and last show the same pattern in different sectors.

The Guardian reported on 3 February that Spanish figure skater Tomàs-Llorenç Guarino Sabaté had been told late last week that his short programme, built around music from the Minions films, would not be cleared for the Milano Cortina Winter Games. He had submitted the music through the International Skating Union's recommended rights-clearance process months earlier and had skated to it all season, including at the European championships in Sheffield. Universal then granted permission for the Olympic use after a fan campaign. The skater thanked supporters on Instagram and said two other pieces of music in the programme still needed clearing.

The ISU's director-general, Colin Smith, described the problem to the Guardian at last year's world championships in Boston: "It's a complex issue, frankly, because the music industry has no common clearance platform. There are multiple buckets of rights, and within those buckets the clearance process isn't done on a single platform." Smith said he had held direct talks with a major publishing and music company, and that the ISU is working with the IOC on a multi-pronged approach.

Costs can kill programmes outright. Canadian pairs skaters Deanna Stellato-Dudek and Maxime Deschamps said they dropped a cover of a Phil Collins track after being quoted a fee in the tens of thousands of dollars. At the Beijing Olympics in 2022, American pairs champions Alexa Knierim and Brandon Frazier faced a copyright lawsuit over a cover of House of the Rising Sun; the Guardian understands the case settled for around $1.4m. Canadian ice dancers Marie-Jade Lauriault and Romain Le Gac learned late last year that two Prince songs planned for their rhythm dance could not be cleared for Olympic use, despite being approved during the regular season.

Legal questions pile up elsewhere

In Canada, the non-profit Canadian Legal Information Institute and Vancouver AI startup Caseway AI settled a copyright case that CanLII filed in the British Columbia Supreme Court in November 2024. CanLII alleged Caseway built its business on a bulk and systemic download of its database without permission or compensation. Terms are confidential. In a joint blog post, CanLII said it "continues its work providing broad public access to primary legal information" while Caseway "continues developing technology solutions." Caseway's own release called the outcome a shift away from slowing technological progress through litigation.

In Europe, the Dutch Supreme Court has asked the Court of Justice of the European Union three questions about geo-blocking and VPNs, in a case involving the Anne Frank manuscripts, TorrentFreak reported on 25 September. The Anne Frank Fonds argues that state-of-the-art geo-blocking is not enough because users can bypass it with a VPN, and that the manuscripts should not be online at all. The lower court and the appeal court both rejected that argument. The answers could affect every streaming service and publisher that relies on geographic licensing.

And in the guitar market, German retailer Thomann is suing Fender over its recent wave of cease-and-desist letters, Guitar World reported on 22 June. Fender's campaign followed a default ruling at the Regional Court of Dusseldorf in March granting enforceable rights against guitars using the Stratocaster body shape in the EU. Thomann, whose Harley Benton brand received its own letter, argues the Stratocaster is not a copyrightable work of art and that its success comes from ergonomics. CEO Hans Thomann said the company is acting for smaller builders who lack the means to litigate. Fender has said it wants to work with companies on practical paths forward.