It ain’t easy……

Being me! And I don’t mean that in any sort of conceited way at all. No, this would be more about convincing others that you are really who you say you are. Confused? Let me explain. First up, I use Soundcloud to pretty much publish any music that I am putting out. Turns out Soundcloud works directly with Squarespace (the company I used to develop this website) and therefore is nearly a requirement if you want to easily get your music on to your website all the while maintaining some protection on it from being downloaded illegally. They also offer a pretty cool final mastering tool you can use when you are getting ready to put out your song. Lastly, they offer a service called “Repost” which allows your song to be shared with the world and the many, many streaming music platforms in which, of course, you hope to earn some money and if not that, at least some notice. So all good, right?

Well as it turns out, Repost is extremely protective of its artists and their music output to the point of where they will physically prevent music from being used, in this case, let’s say on a Youtube video, by claiming copyright infringement, placing said music video in limbo land where it will not be heard or played by anyone. And thus the rub in our story and the “it ain’t easy being me”. You see, last year I made a video promoting our Pulpland website, ran a few ads though Facebook and other than that, didn’t give it much thought. The ad, which we ran here as well and is on our Goatclothes Productions page (at least it used to be, I’ll have to see how far the hands have reached out!), featured the “Nothing at All” single playing in the background. In order to show a video here on the website it has to go through one of a few sources, Youtube being the most convenient, so that is the way I went, however, I wasn’t running advertising for it (paying to get more views) there so really, again, didn’t give it much thought. Shortly after that, I did put out the full single of the song, through the Repost service, its gotten some good listens and I believe I have even made a couple dollars off of it to date (by couple, I do mean 2, it’s not easy being a rock star!), so all good, correct? Not quite, you see recently, I got to looking at my Youtube account and wanted to potentially run the ad again and then I noticed a little note saying “copyright complaint” or something along those lines in the “status” section. It just so happens that I have held the copyright to that song for quite some time so whom, shall I ask, be pulling a copyright claim on me, the actual copyright holder? You guessed it, the good folks at Repost, but of course. And why do you ask? Well, as it turns out, I put all of my music out now under the name John Pulp (a nickname for me which I actually have a Trademark on). Apparently, the Pulpland video must have gone through some sort of computer listening system which triggered a flag in the Repost server and then an outright stoppage of the video on Youtube because the song belongs to an artist that puts music out on Repost and that artist is not Pulpland or me (my real name). But it was me.

So you get the opportunity to dispute the hold on the video, which I promptly did by stating much of above, aka, I am John Pulp, I have the copyright, etc. etc. Waited a couple days and got an email saying that my dispute was denied and I hadn’t done enough to prove that I was me and/or John Pulp and me are the same people. John Pulp did not authorize its use and we are still in limbo on playing the video. Which got me thinking, since I actually hold the copyright to the song under my surname, would I have to sue my alter ego John Pulp to get the rights and potential profits back for it? Funny situation. Went the other route and gave it one more shot on explaining that we were the same people, I am he and he is me and we share everything. The second appeal got answered that same day (guessing that got human eyes on it) and it was a win for the both of us, the video is back in play (which is a good thing cause we are working on the actual music video for it at the moment and it would be a shame to get censored again)!

Spent a lot of time this week getting the new computer up to speed to do the things I need it to do so not too much done on Pulp Improvement end of things. Also just finished getting the Ray Harm prints accounted for and photographed so building that page now so we can start offering them up for sale. A couple new pics on the New Pulp page so go check them out when you can.

All for now and see you next week!