Posting a curated playlist to Google+

Like i mentioned in a previous post, Google+ is a wonderful reallife example to explain the do's and don't in a social network. It's main advantage is, that project has stopped and it's possible to reflect about the website from a higher perspective.

Suppose the idea is to post curated playlist to Google+. At first we have to answer what such a list is in detail. Playlists are created by DJ with the aim to entertain their audience. A popsong playlist contains of an ordered list of songs:

1. Madonna - What It Feels Like For A Girl

2. real mccoy automatic lover

3. Culture beat insight out

4. Blank & Jones - Desire

5. Create bikes 2012

The given example contains a handcrafted selection of nice songs. Such a list can be made with a texteditor, with MS-Excel or within the RSS XML format. What the DJ is doing with such a list is to play it back. He want's that other people hear the music. He has the printed sheet of paper in front of him, and because on the first rank Madonna is shown, the DJ goes to the turntable and puts the “What it feels like” vinyl song onto the machine and press the play button.

In the area of Google+ no real disco is needed, but the curated playlist is posted to a community group. If the underlying software was well programmed it is able to retrieve the songs from the internet and plays them back. If the DJ has selected the right titles he gets upvotes from the audience, if he has posted the wrong list, the moderator of Google+ will ban him.

The interesting aspect is, that creating such a list is not very complicated. Because the list contains only of music songs which are already available. The more demanding task is to create the content itself. Most music content is copyright protected, that means, the DJ is not allowed to playback the music in a public setting and he is not allow to upload the curated list to Google+.

To understand this legal situation we have to construct a case in which it's allowed for doing so. Suppose our self-curated playlist doesn't contains copyright protected songs, but songs under a creative commons license. A list of such songs is given by https://creativecommons.org/about/program-areas/arts-culture/arts-culture-resources/legalmusicforvideos/ In the tutorial it is explained, that the DJ has to make sure, that the songs are really have a CC-BY license. That means, he has to verify each individual song on the list if the license fits to the needs or not. Then he can playback these underlying songs in a disco or in Google+.

The surprising information is, that in the real Google+ social network only a small amount of communities were available in which creative commons playlists were posted. The problem is, that the amount of songs under such a license is small and most people never heard about it. What was posted instead were normal songs known from the music charts. These songs were posted by amateurs and by bots. If each DJ who was doing so had the consent of the copyright holder is unclear.

Reference vs. playlist

What will happen if this blogpost is uploaded to Google+, will the playlist with Madonna und Culture Beat will be problematic? If the social network software was programmed right, the algorithm will decide not to playback the 5 songs on the list because it wasn't tagged as a real playlist, but only as normal text. The only thing what is shown is the text created by me which is unique content. Similar to the introduction speech of a DJ. That means, the DJ opens his mic and explains that the next song he likes to played is from Madonna. The announcement is only referencing to a song (it's a link) but it's different from playlist. Only if the DJ puts the vinyl music on the turntable it's a normal playback of the curated playlist.

On the first look, this is only a detail problem which can be ignored, but if we are aware what the costs are for playback a simple song from the music charts it's not a minor question but a serious problem. That means, as long as the DJ speaks into the mic he has to pay no licence fee, but if he is pressing the play button the original artist will ask for 10000 US$ for each minute, because the song is great and the audience will love it.

Let us describe some uncritical actions a DJ can do if he likes to save copyright fees. The first one is to playback only songs with a creative commons license. The fee he has to pay for it is zero US$, the second option is to playback only songs created by himself. That means he owns the song. And the third possible action to not playback any kind of music but only speak into the mic. This kind of performance is going away from the role of a dj and but it is equal to make a performance on stage.