As I have mentioned a few times before on here, I’m a big fan of a music genre known as “Eurobeat.” Imagine 80’s pop gone, well, a little insane, and you kind of have an idea on what Eurobeat is. If you are familiar with Italio Disco, then you know the basic sound already. Interestingly, it’s a very niche genre – it is produced in Italy, but is almost always in English, or sometimes Japanese, and marketed virtually exclusively in Japan.
Update: https://www.xadara.com/the-eurolovers-youtube-channel-a-follow-up/
Anyway, there has been, for many years, one amazing channel that has uploaded thousands of songs in this genre, a channel known as Eurolovers. Some songs are extremely rare, only appearing in full on limited run special albums, but sure enough this channel had them, as well as virtually every other song published, or so it would seem, available without any issues to listen to.
Of course, this is copyright infringement, if done by someone on their own volition, and for whatever reason, Eurolovers caught the attention of some of the copyright holders for the music being uploaded, and they filed DMCA takendown claims against the content. Of course, YouTube has a “3 strikes and you’re out” policy when it comes to this, and the end result is that on November 25th, 2016, Eurolovers was taken down.
This is one of those “are you serious?” kind of things. I mean, I get it, I fully understand why this happened, but the fact that it did still annoys me. It was convenient to share content, to enjoy rare songs, and overall just a useful thing that would help me know if I wanted to buy an album or not, as they did often upload recent releases as well as classic content.
The story would end here, but things get interesting when you look at the socialblade page for the channel. Socialblade, if you don’t know, is a site that specializes in intricate data related to YouTube channels. If we follow this archived link, we notice something interesting…
https://web.archive.org/web/20161126030231/http://socialblade.com/youtube/user/eurolovers
Notice the “Claimed by” section, and the company listed: Saifam.
Saifam is an Italian record label and music distribution company that does own the rights to a great number of Eurobeat tracks, many of which would be on a channel like Eurolovers.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAIFAM
We also notice that the channel location is listed as “Japan” which also makes sense, but for the channel to be claimed by Saifam, rights wise, is odd. Maybe it was an official channel of some kind? If that’s the case, then who claimed what music to take it down? With the channel done we have no way of actually seeing just what happened, sadly, and I really want to know what exactly did bring this channel down. If it was associated with the actual Saifam company, then it seems odd such claims would go through like they did, but if it was a “fan” channel, then, why would it be claimed by Saifam?
Of course, I say that jokingly: It was obviously a fan channel, with content being uploaded illegally. It’s just odd to see the SAIFAM claim, as that indicates channel ownership, rather than individual upload content claims. I just wanted to clarify that little bit! The fact remains, this wasn’t anything official – this was a pirate music channel, and as a user on Reddit said, this wasn’t a matter of if, but when, this channel got taken down.
More Youtube copyright madness is coming soon, as well – the craziness just keeps on happening!
In case you want an example of the genre, well, here’s one of my favorites!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pO4FYy0yRmo