I Interviewed Undertale's Music Publisher 

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As many issues as we've had with all of this, I have a lot of respect for Jamie appearing on camera and answering questions in this format. Content ID being janky doesn't help anybody in this situation, but I do hope that this leads to creators being able to have a more open communication about this stuff with Materia instead of getting information through another Wolff thread causing massive issues.

Sebastian Wolff vs Toby Fox is some Waluigi type shit😭🙏

Thanks for having me on! I really enjoyed getting to chat about this stuff for once and I'm always happy to shed light on it to benefit the community.

I wish this happened BEFORE Wolff became an issue. Materia has always been a sort of copyright demon in the Undertale community, but we’ve never really gotten a look at their legal side until Wolff went way too far. Basically, an interview like this should’ve happened MUCH earlier.

My god, this just highlights how AWFUL RU-vid's claiming system is.

I commend you for putting undertale yellow music in the background. That's so funny

Huh, ngl, I'm impressed. Jamie seems like an overall chill guy and he went very into detail (as much as he could anyways) on all the questions. Thank you very much you two, have a great day.

Much needed interview honestly. It's honestly irksome to have to constantly receive copyright claims, even moreso as a channel of my scale. The kind of thing that leaves me reeling back, going "Ugh."

The fact that remixes even need a license and don't count as the new compositions that they are is wild to me.

This whole situation is less a fault of materia music and more a critique of copyright and the music industry.

If I understood it correctly, Jamie here says that the UTY copyright drama happened because UTY uploaded its music without getting the proper license. This doesn't make sense to me. I thought UTY used DistroKid (a music distributor) to upload its music? Or is it because they uploaded their music to RU-vid before getting a distributor? (Edit: Yes, that is the reason, Jamie confirmed it in the replies to his own comment in this video.) Does this also mean that all Undertale remixes require a music distributor to be uploaded? Music distributors cost money, after all. Also, as a musician I find it very concerning that Content ID finds videos to copyright claim based on the melodies that songs use. It's very easy for two people to come up with the exact same melody without ever interacting with each other, and it's even easier to subconsciously add melodies from songs you've heard without noticing. This system needs to change.

Absolutely insane how Materia seems to be a lot more professional and polite then they seemed at a first glance I thought they were an evil company or some shit but this video showed a much brighter side of the company And even the polar opposite,Sebastian seems a lot more of a respectable guy thanks to that explanation (given he is the CEO he coulda set it up so no one talked badly of him so i am forced to give that part the benefit of the doubt here)

Even if my question did not appear, it was answered indirectly, so I am satisfied with that

One of the most difficult areas are copyright law. This is so interesting, specially with the explanation of how the claims in google works.

I forget what the specifics were, but I saw a twitter thread around the time the initial backlash against Sebastian happened where someone claimed to have worked on an official Undertale project, and after badmouthing Sebastian, had their name removed from the project credits even though they did a lot of work on it Edit: Found it, Laura Platt posted about having her credits removed from the Deltarune Chapter 1 Piano Arrangement Book which she composed the piano arrangements for after publicly talking about her experiences with Sebastian. What on gods green earth is “well intentioned” about that?

sounds like a music publisher bossfight with the music in the background

I'll edit the end of my comment here when I'm done, but after all the BS that happened a few months ago, I wish stuff like this wasn't still happening. I'm glad you're keeping this in the spotlight Cibs. ❤ Ok, five minutes in, and I'm appreciating his attitude and responses to each of the questions, very insightful as to how... I guess automatic? these processes are. Hmm. Very much appreciative of how open he was to each and every question that was asked. Hopefully this makes understanding the process easier. ^^

It’s nice that Materia turned to be better than it looked and things were caused by just RU-vid Automations phew… 😅 Also damn Undertale Yellow was so good and Undertale Like that Copyright seemingly harmed it, even Google recognized it as it’s own game

DONT YOU LOVE COMING TO A [[new Video]] AND SEE THE NUMBER BEING AT [[No]] [[Early Hello]] TO ALL THE [[Big Shots]]

The explanations of how RU-vid's backend (poorly) handles the copyright claims, and why music remixes were getting claimed due to lack of license, actually make perfect sense. Props to both Cibles and Jamie for being super professional about this whole thing and shedding light on what happened and why!

WAIT SEBASTIAN WOLFF IS A REAL GUY I THOUGHT IT WAS A JOKE LIKE EVIL TOBY FOX OR SOME SHIT I DIDNT KNOW HE WAS REAL

Copyright hell when Public Domain Heaven walks in

Cibles, you are the future of us humans and monsters... our hopes and dreams...

About time they responded.

the background music being UTY is comical

I have no more minimum wage

I have a video that is copyright claimed by Materia Music Publishing for using the original Finale song which they very oddly label as "by Nick Nitro", someone who remixes Undertale songs. While it has no impact on the video (likely because its not monetized with the research I've made) I am still beyond confused why first, it was claimed to begin with, and second, why it says the song is by Nick Nitro. Not only is Nick Nitro obviously not working with Materia Music to publish their remixed version of Finale, I also wasn't even using their remixed version of Finale.

I appreciate the education and it's nice to get the other perspective on all of this. My only concern is with all this emphasis on "get your music licensed and have them upload it" I was hoping there would be a bit more focus on how one goes through the process of properly licensing their music. If people are making these fan games for free, then I'm a bit concern about how they would get the funds to get their works properly licensed.

Sebastian Wolff: Annoying dog´s more annoying grumpy twin. Sebastian Wolff in actuality: Just a normal annoying doggo that sucks at communicating and was trying to tell creators how to prevent getting copyright claimed by the system.

11:10 "licence before you post" is something I needed to know

What they were saying about the direct upload stuff around 5:50 actually happened to me where rather than getting a Materia clam I got a Skatune network claim for enemy approaching.

2:16 This is just untrue. They can just... Not have it on Content ID... RU-vid actually explicitly says that music that is free to use should just NOT be put into Content ID. Music doesn't even have to be on Content ID to be on RU-vid Music.

*ERASE COPYRIGHT* FREE THE INDIE CREATORS FROM *CORPORATE HELL!!!*

7:00 thanks so much for having my question in the video, Cibles! Wonderful video as always, and I’m happy some things were made a little more clear. ❤

This honestly clears up so many questions I've had for years about copyrighted music on youtube

Materia is focused on undertale yellow and stuff but what about the ads on RU-vid that use Toby’s music for profit?

We need to reform copyright law or else things like this will continue to happen.

AU: sebastian fox vs toby wolff

9:38 so what he is saying here ”Dont upload it yourself, instead upload it yourself”

no views 11 comments and 39 likes, youtube at its finest

Putting the Undertale Yellow music in the background was a nice touch. Power move, lmao.

“Perhaps I treated you too harshly”

Can we have THIS guy as the face of Materia? Really, a much more professional response to the problems.

So if I'm understanding it correctly... People who create remixes need to pay for a license before posting their work on RU-vid or other platforms. Sure, I guess if that's the way copyright law is then it is what it is. But then if someone wanted to use someone else's remix in their video, they just have to hope that the remix artist got a license or else they risk getting their own videos taken down? If that's really accurate then that has some terrible consequences for people who use remixes in their videos or play fangames with remixes, who are now themselves on the hook for every remix they use, even when both the remix artist and Toby Fox insist on not taking down such videos. And this seems to be the case given how it lines up with how UTY videos were treated... If this is really their policy then nothing has actually changed. The next hit UT-inspired fangame will result in people's gameplay getting claimed just like UTY's, unless the devs happen to go get a license first (which is unlikely to happen since most fangames don't even publish separate soundtracks). And all of this despite an explicit directive from Toby Fox to allow his music in videos. As nice and well-intentioned as this interview was, it still hides some of the same policies that people initially took issue with. Copyright law isn't going to change, but Materia's enforcement on remix by means of claiming gameplay videos is something they can and should change.

reveal the secrets

This actually answered a lot of questions I had about music publishing in general!

the thing is that there are people who uploaded the ost with nothing else and those vids are monetized and still up

Glad my question got answered! Hope things will start smoothing out when it comes to undertale's music and copy right claims :D

wow Cibles, just thanks for every thing you do! your one of the sweetest youtubers I know!

I'm still wondering why Undetale's soundtrack had to be uploaded to the content ID system in the first place? You don't see this problem with almost any other video game soundtrack, why is Undertale different?

That is crazy materia asked for an interview

Hearing official company representatives talking about rather niche Undertale songs and fangames is surreal

Man copyright is kind of a mess

If I had known that I needed a license before uploading my music to RU-vid I would have waited. Now I have like 90% of my games OST online and I have no way of undoing that really. It does seem that uploading is safer if you’re a small composer but if you want to officially do it, then you go through a publisher. That at least what I’ve taken away from all of this.

It's good to hear a measured response after the bad PR from the Twitter threads a few months ago, though I think Jamie and the team missed the mark when shown the LatinAutorPerf claim. As far as I've seen, LatinAutor is a performance collective, but *LatinAutorPerf* is a known copyright troll who has flaunted his abuse of foreign copyright systems to garnish earnings on game music and even go after big targets by claiming copyright to artists' work like Taylor Swift and Billie Eilish.

Love seeing a new video and love that they are just people who seem fed up with the God dam bots.

Thanks for making this video to clarify things, it's just what the community needed. And about my comment: Hope it made you laugh and sorry if it was annoying because you were searching for actual questions.

This video was very helpful With clearing things up With the whole situation, thank you.

So basically, Toby being a really nice guy makes things complicated for youtube. LOL

14:37 That thoroughly explains why a news station many years back used Undertale music in part of their segment, it was the track*sans.*which was the BGM.

I’m confused tho cuz sometimes I’ll get copyright claims [not undertale music, other music] and it’ll say that it has no effect and the creator allows the music on RU-vid?

The idea that the content ID system finds copyrighted material easier on bigger / more popular videos is not true. These checks are done automatically and immediately while uploading. Amazing interview and respect to the company to do this interview

I really don't think his claims about the RU-vid copyright systems are true. I have recieved automatic copyright claims for music before, however I didn't get a strike because "the license holder has allowed use of this music".

Interview was surprisingly interesting and educational. I didnt really expect information i would ever possibly use.

this video is great, i really appreciate you and the interviewer for doing this

This NEEDS to change! The statement "this is just how the music industry works" does not justify the absolute absurdity of these statements. This means things in CORPORATE need to change not that the fans should change how they interact with their favorite materials. It is not on us the individual (or even sometimes children) to search out a big corporation when we want to make a remix of a work, when we have open permission from the original creator. This shows a status quo that favors BIG Corporate over free open use remixes... How can anyone explain these kind of corrupt broken systems and not state how clearly it needs fixing!

Thanks for this, Cibles. Unfortunately I will most likely miss most of the charity stream, but I wish you luck with it!

I don’t care too much but seeing myself in a video is a bit satisfying to me. Thank you so much! Also, my question was answered indirectly by similar questions so cool.

I am watching the video and enjoying the interview, I expected something way more sinister xD, the dude being interviewed was nice , nice channel btw ^^~♥︎

Long post ahead. Sorry, I'm a talker. I'll tl;dr at the bottom. While I do think Jamie seems nice, a lot of his answers leave me skeptical. Whenever there is an interview with a representative of the company, one needs to remember that he was probably provided a list of hot topics to not address, unless directly asked. And when asked, pivot from them as quickly as possible. This isn't Jamie's fault; it's just the nature of the job. I tend to look at interviews like this through a microscope and pick at the littlest things, in an effort to see if something was hidden underneath. For instance, he claims Undertale Yellow was struck because of it's size and scope, but what about Undertale Red? That was *huge* when it came out, and used remixed songs that were posted on RU-vid by themselves. What about some of the large-scale content; series like Glitchtale and Dusttale using remixes that, once again, are put up on RU-vid as OSTs? In the case of Glitchtale, I even recall it used previously posted OSTs *and* made it's own remixes, all posted up. He claims that RU-vid auto-pings videos like that, yet I've never seen that happen before now. Did *all* of those videos, despite their many, many views, slip under the radar? What about the numerous remixes that are hilariously popular all over the web, some of which I purchased off iTunes or listened to on Spotify? I suppose it's possible they were pinged, disputed, and whitelisted, but I imagine at least *one* of those creators would have commented about that. And yet, I don't recall anything of this nature happening before. His answer doesn't hold water when you think about it outside of the realm of the tiny box he was trying to place the conversation in. He latched onto Undertale Yellow and avoided discussion about why, after ten years, Yellow was the only project big enough to ping. We have had *ten years* of anniversary albums, fan animations, fan games, spinoffs, AU content, Let's Plays, Reactions, Compilations, millions upon millions of remixes (Least it feels that way, sometimes,) on and on and on, and yet... Nothing this severe until now? Perhaps there is an explanation for this and I'm just woefully ignorant to it, but Jamie's answers didn't actually explain any of that to us. And if there is a reason, please illuminate me. I'd rather know and be better for it than not and remain ignorant. I will say this; I'm a part of several fandoms. One such fandom is struck regularly by copyright claims for music that was published over ten years ago, sometimes without warning. However, in those cases, it is clearly a calculated strike; one user, for instance, had an entire series of videos - six years in the making - all get claimed at once, but the rest of their videos were untouched. I saw a large-scale fan project with high quality voicework and animation, but a few questionable decisions in it's production, get blown out of the water so severely, it's creator stopped animating completely. But I've also seen similar projects fly by smoothly and without issue, much to the relief of everyone. Despite Jamie's claim, I don't know if *all* companies go by Materia's proffered method; I think they do have some degree of control over what is struck and what isn't. Whether or not Materia utilized that fact - or if I'm even correct! - are things we may never really know. Either way, a fandom should not be afraid to support the content they love. A fan should not be terrified that a beloved fan project may crash and burn for no good reason. That's how it should be, but unfortunately, not how it is. I will say, beyond that comment, I do think his answers are right. Sebastian Wolf, for instance, isn't some evil man. Nobody wakes up in the morning and chooses evil. We all want to be the "hero" or "the good guy." He was condescending and talked down to a lot of people, but I could absolutely see that being like a father scolding a child. Slap him on the wrist and teach him a lesson. I think he handled it poorly, yes, and I do hope he steps up and apologizes, but I doubt he will. He probably believes he was still in the right, despite disliking how the thread went. I do genuinely think Materia wants to move forward positively on all of this; they were knocked around a bit by the internet, but they want to get onto their feet again and keep going; so long as they do the right things and don't stifle their fans, I think they'll find a better reception. There are plenty of stories about situations like these turning around. tl;dr - Some of the things Jamie said had some holes in them. It might have been corporate double-speak, or it might be me just not knowing something about how things work. RU-vid's copyright claims seem far too biased and targeted to entirely be the algorithm, so I personally don't buy that, but I could be wrong. Beyond that, he seems pretty chill, and I hope Materia bounces back into a better attitude.

Remember: RU-vid's automated system can't count up to 2^16-1

Groovy interview. It was very informative.

yeah so my general takeaway from this seems to be pretty similar to most peoples. Materia isnt some evil company, theyre just kinda doin their publisher thing, but music copyright law, especially in America and on RU-vid sucks, which gets people into trouble sometimes. then Wolff went to talk about what was happenin, but was pretty rude and unprofessional in his statement, which fanned the flames and turned people more against the company as a whole than was necessary.

Props to Jamie for doing this interview. There's just one thing that's bugging me about this whole situation. On distribution platforms like DistroKid, the artist has the option to enable Content ID claims on their releases. So if the artist doesn't want the automatic algorithm to flag their music in videos, they can just turn that off. So if Materia has direct access to this system, why can't they just turn it off? Though Jamie said it's something they cannot control, which could be true since we technically still have no idea about the operation of the content ID system, and *maybe* once something is in its database, it cannot be removed. But as a person who had used these distribution services and saw this option, i just thought it's weird that indie artists technically have more control over their music in terms of content matching compared to a music licensing company. But i may be entirely wrong, since i have no insight into the system, it's just something to think about.

7:24 i can see him actively trying not to get fired

I appreciate the transparency. It sounds like they’re trying their best.

I'm glad that we finally get some insight on what's going on!

Wow, this has cleared up so much! RU-vid copyright system is flawed, sadly.

Content ID automatically claims videos it detects as using copyrighted media, regardless of the size of the video. They also clearly don't care if it's a remix and don't care if you are a small channel. I was getting constant claims when I only had a few hundred subs. I recently got to 500 subs but I am still a small channel according to RU-vid as 500 subs is just the former milestone for the community tab and nothing else. Now that the community tab is available to everyone, it isn't even a milestone at all. So, if what they were saying was true, I shouldn't have been claimed. They also refused to remove any of the claims other than the cover I made of the Smash Bros Ultimate Megalovania (most likely because they didn't want to get in trouble with Nintendo who probably co-owns the remix) even after I both disputed and appealed it. When I emailed them about it, I found out they were automatically denying my appeals without reading them and they said what they were doing was legal because fair use only applies as a defense in court (which makes no sense considering how the DMCA statute is worded). So, I would take everything this guy says with a grain of salt at minimum. Edit: I emailed Sebastian Wolff directly so all of this came from the president of Materia. He was very unprofessional, just like with the creators of Undertale Yellow.

I truly hate copyright in the music industry.

Much respect to Jamie for doing this and to Cibles for adding subtitles to the interview! ❤

The fact that the guy doing the commentary is actually nicer.

Nice Anison Hijack Sticker on the Wall ;)

The undertale yellow music playing under Jamie introducing himself is giving me high hopes

5:40 i had something similar happen to me where some of my arrangements were copyright claimed because they were detected to use the same melody as FalKKone's metal remixes lmao thankfully i can't/don't intend to monetize anything so idc but still that's silly also it's kinda messed up that people make fan games for FREE yet still have to pay to get a licence to post the remixed songs but oh well

wow so cool

13:46 why is this a thing genuine -- frustrated but genuine question

Really nice video

@RU-vid @RU-vid @youtube Appear ya big being, and fix these copyright problems with music.

I HATE that his solution for remixes is to pay a company to do it for you! This is absurd we are in an age where people can finally separate them selves from the limitations and risks of handing over your work to an unkown entity or even a known one that isn't under your control. We are finally in an age where artist can ACTUALLY own their own work. We should be discussing the methods said license holder acquires these persimmons so that independents can do it them selves. That was a disgusting and dystopian take to say the least.

What’s weird about the licensing thing for the yellow team is that they mentioned they use the record company Distrokid. This is weird because distrokid has a very easy interface that makes it super simple to indenting something as a cover instead of an original. While most of the yellow songs can def be seen as originals, i think it would have been smart for the team to treat “Enemy Approaching (yellow) as a cover instead of an original because that is the most similar song they have as well as it being the most common song that got copyright in peoples videos. I’m not going to entirely blame either team tho because hindsight is 20/20 and that song could def be seen differently between different people

So it seems RU-vid! YOU NEED TO STOP!

No way there's a fan game live stream on April 27th! That's my friends birthday! Man, the 27th's gonna be exiting for me.

Does anyone else thing the Materia Music Publishing logo looks a LOT like the logo for Polytron? What's up with that?

You can really tell he’s being legitimate because the company gives their tone in that one segment opposed to his

bad idea: make a fangame, upload its soundtrack onto youtube by uploading the separate tracks but with a twist (like how the siivagunner team modifies videogame music), fool everyone

Wow, and that’s great content

Ok, this give me a more curious question, how does licensing remix or different compositions work? Does it cost money? How long does it takes to do so? And there's a possibility to get your request denied?

copyright is a boowomp moment