The SoundCloud man can, the SoundCloud man can.
The SoundCloud man can ’cause he checks the copyrights and makes the rights holders good.
When I wrote about the best TV theme song ever, I wasn’t planning to include a YouTube video. I wanted to upload and MP3 of Sammy Davis Jr. singing the Hawaii Five-O theme song to SoundCloud and embed it in my post as audio.
So I signed up for SoundCloud and uploaded my file. When I was done, I ended up on a listing screen that said I had no sound files. I wondered if it wasn’t done uploading or if I had missed some kind of save button. It was my first time using SoundCloud after all.
So I tried uploading the song again.
While I was waiting, I checked my email and saw this message from Sound Cloud.
Subject: Your upload “You Can Count On Me” / Case #7760336
Our automatic content protection system has detected that your sound “You Can Count On Me” may contain the following copyright content: “You Can Count On Me” by Sammy Davis, Jr., owned by Universal Music GmbH. As a result, its publication on your profile has been blocked.
You can dispute this report, if you believe the copyright content has been mistakenly identified or if you have obtained all the necessary rights, licenses and/or permissions to upload and share this material on SoundCloud.
If you would like to learn more about copyright, please visit our copyright information page.
I’ve heard of services detecting and blocking copyrighted material, but I’ve never seen one in action and never imagined it would be so quick.
Nicely done, SoundCloud.
Brian Alvey 