Songs like Adele‘s “Somebody Like You,” Inexperienced Day‘s “Boulevard of Damaged Desires,” Bob Dylan‘s “I Need You” and R.E.M.’s “Dropping My Faith” have been blocked by YouTube in a authorized dispute with SESAC, a efficiency rights group that offers with copyright points for performers and publishers.

Different musicians affected by the blockage embody Alice in Chains, Burna Boy and Fleetwood Mac. Although a few of the artists’ songs show a black display — which reads “Video unavailable” with the subhead “This video accommodates content material from SESAC. It’s not out there in your nation.” — not all tracks are affected.

SESAC is amongst a number of corporations that helps songwriters defend their unique work and acquire royalties. Simply as with Common Music Group’s dispute with TikTok earlier this 12 months, which resulted in 4 million songs from artists like Taylor Swift, Unhealthy Bunny and Adele being pulled from the social media platform for months, SESAC and YouTube haven’t reached a deal settlement on renewal phrases. Thus, SESAC is inside its purview to dam public performances of music, from streaming to radio play, although that is usually exhausting to implement.

Quite a few Reddit threads popped up as customers shared their frustration over being unable to stream their favourite tunes, with the problem seemingly starting earlier at this time. Whereas YouTube has not but launched an announcement on the matter, its X account replied to a number of customers, writing, “we hear you. our music license settlement with SESAC has expired with out an settlement on renewal circumstances regardless of our greatest efforts. for that reason, now we have blocked content material on YouTube within the US recognized to be related to SESAC – as according to copyright regulation.”

The account added in a later reply, “we perceive this can be a troublesome scenario and our groups proceed to work on reaching a renewal settlement.” In a separate remark, Group YouTube wrote it’s “persevering with” discussions with SESAC, although it has “no actual dates for future updates but.”

Blocks like this are widespread when copyright corporations and distributing platforms can’t agree on a licensing deal. The length of such authorized disputes can final wherever from a number of days to months at a time, corresponding to when the behemoth Warner Music Group pulled music movies off of YouTube for the higher a part of a 12 months from 2008-09.