so a few months ago I talked about an absurd situation I found myself in with the music publisher Behind undertale soundtrack Materia Collective well after that video Jamie who I referred to as quote apparently the only normal person to work there reached out to me asking if I wanted to interview him if you follow undertale content widely on YouTube you might know fellow YouTuber sibles also interviewed Jamie but given the complete meltdown that happened he wanted to come on and answer even more questions on my channel so today I'll be doing an in-depth interview with Jamie from Materia Collective with the focus on the situation regarding YouTube content ID and how it relates to undertale soundtrack and Materia place in it all I tried to ask as many questions as I could but feel free to ask further questions in the comments below and Jamie might be able to answer them for you now hold on there just a second if you remember back in June we sold the shap plush here if you missed out on this it's okay do not fear because a second sha plush has hit the channel this one is jumbo sized it has a Purple Heart it's I mean it is huge look at it it is larger than my head we want a size comparison between the two of them this promotion will be running through the entire month of November so if you want to get yours you can go get it at the link in the description if you want to grab your big jumbo boy look how large he is he's purple this time around with that out of the way I hope you enjoy the video and it can hopefully clear up confusion or questions hi everybody what's up I've got Jamie here from Materia Collective who has reached out to me for an interview thank you so much for having me I'm really really excited to be here yeah it's always the most exciting thing in interview you're right you know I don't really mind it um just because it's one of those things where like I'd rather be helpful and provide people with more information and it's so much easier to do that talking about it over text uh it's really easy for tone to get lost over text and then as soon as you like pick up the phone and call somebody the the animosity or the confusion just goes right out the window and it's really really easy I have definitely noticed it's a lot easier to do things when you're actually talking to the person cuz you know if you ever write with like professional grammar nowadays in 2024 it's almost like seen as an aggressive tone one of my favorite pictures that I've ever seen that like continues to stick with me like to this day is somebody had like a pissed off Winnie the Pooh and it was captioned can you read and then there was like Winnie the poo smugly with a monocle that's like as per my last email I love that so we were going to do this interview two weeks ago but it got delayed cuz I was sick and then you were at what Comic-Con was it yeah so we had a table at New York ComicCon which was really cool and I actually have to fly out to LA next week for another show so uh never never ends no rest for the weary for sure yeah I was surprised when you were like oh yeah I'm on the East Coast because I just thought all of you guys were in Seattle together it's actually a fairly spread out team um there is the core team in Seattle but there's a few people in Texas there's a few people like out here in the general you know East Coast New York greater area or kind of all over the place that was actually one of the questions I had here was um how big is the Materia team because other than you and Sebastian I don't actually know anybody who works at the company nowadays it's smaller than you might think we have about 12 or so full-time employees and then I'd say like the total scope of employees to the company including contractors and such is around 20 yeah that is definitely smaller than I thought it was going to be people think we're like this humongous monolithic company and part of it is like The Branding is sort of like very professional and corporate in that way but no we're we're a pretty small team that makes sense I think another thing is also like the the statement about you know providing Millions into video game music kind of makes you think it's like oh this is like a big thing cuz Millions is a big word but compared to how much money like Google has nowadays it's a drop in the bucket it's literally the Austin Powers thing where Dr Evil asks for a million dollars and they're like that's not that much money anymore like it's yeah it's not really anything anymore let's see here okay so I got some questions mostly related to like you know YouTube copyright stuff cuz that's where I come in on all of this and I actually went to college for music for a year and I am I was aware getting into this industry that music copyright laws just suck they're just bad they're so outdated yeah just digital copyright in general it's like we're in the 1990s before the internet took off or something like that question here is that I get a lot of people coming to me to ask like hey I have you know my video has been copyright claimed by material what do I do how can I reach out to them cuz a lot of people nowadays they're like they don't know if it's safe to reach out like where to reach out to what's the best place to like contact you guys yeah I mean the the easiest way is to reach out to our publishing email inbox info mat ip.com um just CU that's the inbox that gets looked at and is set up to specifically handle YouTube content claim issues um but yeah always always feel free to reach out is Twitter a safe place to reach out Twitter's just not a great place to reach out for business inquiries in general um one because you know we just don't necessarily want to uh support such platforms and two it's just it's not really a great place for like business to transpire if you're reaching out about like a YouTube claim that is business even if it's something small best to keep that over email you know a great rule of thumb is if there's a public question there's going to be a public response so the easiest thing to do is to keep things over email it's much better for archival purposes you you can download an email keep it in the back pocket it tends to be a little more uh permanent than like a screen cap of whatever post that could be deleted or something um so yeah email is always the best place makes sense do you guys have have a blue sky we do we do have a blue sky we I've basically moved over there now I wanted to get off of uh I wanted to get off of the everything app X cuz it's terrible now hard agree so let's see say your video gets claimed for an undertale song that you either used uh as external bgm like unrelated to the game itself you're like using it as background music for a video essay something or it was background music on actual undertale gameplay sometimes disputing the claim just doesn't work what should a person do if this happens so if you're disputing a claim and you're like it's for a let's play of undertale or a speedrun of undertale or anything like that like the the music is just in the game you're playing dispute that that should work if that doesn't work reach out to us and we'll take care of it that's something that we have explicitly permitted that's something Toby has explicitly permitted we don't want anybody getting any sort of claims on their undertale Let's Plays and stuff like that with with being bgm in like a different video where it's unrelated to the game at all that's usually fine sometimes it doesn't always work from a copyright perspective it is a valid claim so sometimes they do get left and it's important to note that a claim is not the same as a strike right like if your video gets a claim it's not like that video is being taken down it just means that the music revenue is going to be collected which then gets paid out to Toby Fox but I should probably take a step back and kind of explain how the whole claiming system works because it's really complicated and and a little strange um and there's not a lot of information about it publicly so it might be good if I can help people just understand what happens here so the content ID system claims videos in two types of ways one is a Melody claim and one is a composition claim a Melody claim is when the content ID system Hears A Melody and recognizes it as being a melody that is from something else owned by someone else whatever and you see a lot of this happen for example when somebody uploads a cover song and that cover song gets claimed and it says oh well you know your cover song is actually using this other piece of music in it and it gets claimed a composition claim is when it actually recognizes the melody but not a sound recording it's recognizing the actual composition and saying that hey you're using a composition that a composer owns and and implements a claim that way you don't always see that on your side like as the person getting the claim you're not necessarily seeing um which type of claim it is but on the rights holder side it does somewhat affect our ability to resolve those claims um a great example Shay is actually uh your recent issue where you had a claim by iprs so iprs is actually the performance rights society in India so technically speaking Unfortunately they do legally have the right to implement that claim uh because they are sort of the organization that has been given legal permission to administrate the rights of Music in their territory and there's just nothing we can do about that the music copyright ecosystem is such a broad sort of international Matrix of like different companies interacting with each other and different rights being administered by different people that sometimes it gets a little bloated and unclean um and actually one fun thing and I say fun sarcastically is that when you see a video where it says like oh this video has been claimed by Materia music publishing we have no ability or desire to manually claim anybody's videos any single anytime you see that it's because the content ID system has automatically implemented that claim and it's saying that it's doing that on our behalf because it's recognizing that we have the right to admin that music but it's not at all Materia like going in and putting a claim on anybody's videos automated systems yeah we love it yeah it's it's an automated system and you know it does do what it's supposed to do in the sense that it's airing on the side of the overly cautious it's trying to say we want to make absolutely sure that people's rights aren't being infringed who want control of those rights and unfortunately it's just situations like this that are being caught in the crosshairs and to Circle back around to your question a little bit what happens if my video gets claimed so we do review claims on an individual basis you know we take a look at the video we take a look at stuff and we always try to be as liberal as possible with you know letting claims go and and dismissing them and letting people have their videos once in a while we run into a situation where you know we can't always do that I know that sort of the the hot button issue is the Toby Fox tweet where a while ago he said like hey you know if you're using undertales bgm for whatever purpose you know dispute the claim and it should be let go unfortunately that's not necessarily true and it's because the like the system of copyright law is bigger than either us or Toby if there's one thing I'd love the world to take away from this it is neither Materia nor Toby has the ability to change the way International copyright is administered all we can do is react to it as best as we can that makes sense that that does make a lot of sense I am curious you mentioned like um with the iprs thing you mentioned like oh we you know there was nothing we could do about the claims which I understand like the claims happen automatically but uh how were you able to resolve them cuz they did eventually get resolved so sometimes they they will get resolved um if you dispute the claim and if you like counter claim it they will sometimes let them go and sometimes we are able to put in like an over over claim like override and say like hey ex performance rights organization around the world um we are able to try to sort of like overexert our Authority and say no no we have the right to claim this and usually they'll be copacetic to it but ultimately at the end of the day like that local territory does have the right to say no if iprs told us no then there would unfortunately be no recourse at all for us that unfortunately makes sense I know it's tough working with intern music people I know for at least for like content copyright and content ID for video footage itself like on my back end there is a t like a a do nothing option exists cuz I've actually had videos like automatically claimed in my name before but I just have it set to do nothing because um I have a couple of old speedruns that are like completely uncommentatedpannen ability to do nothing does that just not exist for music no no unfortunately um music specific stuff is a little different basically and this actually gets into me being a massive turbo nerd here this actually gets into kind of a funny little interesting uh Quirk of the way YouTube does music stuff so at some point many years ago YouTube and the video game industry sort of you know mutually and silently decided to look the other way on music copyright and if you look at the content ID support page and you look at what is eligible and not eligible for Content ID there is a specific exception for original video game soundtracks where like unless the soundtrack is being manually uploaded and entered into content ID by the game Studio itself it is not eligible to be part of content ID the problem with this is that the music industry the pr around the world would not agree with this interpretation it is you know still google/youtube legal obligation to report usages of music to PR around the world and so the the compromise that winds up being sort of levied is that songs are identified often times using cover songs so great example we recently got tweeted at by VIN sauce and he was saying hey I was doing a stream of Super Mario 64 and my video got a copyright claim our cover of dire dire docs was listed as the claimed song we had absolutely no ownership of Nintendo music publishing in any way whatsoever so you know we shouldn't have been within 50 feet of that claim but because the Nintendo catalog is not part of the YouTube content ID system YouTube is using our cover song to identify the melody in dire dire docs and report that as hey this music is being used in this video we obviously want nothing to do with over stepping our bounds and being the claim it listed on Nintendo anything but you know unfortunately that just doesn't you know we don't we don't have the ability to not do that that's just YouTube doing what YouTube does I've definitely noticed that pretty much every content claim I've ever gotten lists itself as a remix like It'll point out like hey this is actually uh richad EB's cover that he pops up in mine all the time and I I I noticed it's never it's almost never for the original and that's exactly why that makes sense so I was curious actually I was going to bring up the vine sauce thing because I noticed a lot of people noticed uh the the public response to that uh you said you have hired a new PR person for the company post telling me to go to sleep yes uh Shay it is the middle of the day please stay awake um yeah yeah there Thursday Night Football the night am I going to miss that come on Legit like when I like I came to work and I saw that tweet and it was like the thing from uh Community where the dude walks in with a box of pizza and everything's on fire on fire yeah I just started calling people and yelling at people and being like why on Earth did you respond to anybody this way on Twitter or anywhere else like this is not how we talk and yeah we have uh brought in a new marketing person and uh needless to say that shouldn't happen again and uh yeah we we do apologize for uh the rude tone of that tweet it is certainly not reflective of my values and definely not reflective of the company values um yeah there was a lot of uh wrist slapping to put it gently after that one see you didn't name any names or say anything wrong see that that's actual you know PR doing it properly people make mistakes you know I'm not going to I'm not going to like fire somebody over a bad tweet or I'm not gonna like throw somebody publicly under the bus because they said something wrong like I want this person to learn from the mistake they made and I believe they have after being yelled at by me you know I also want to be fair in how I respond to that and and not over overdo it with the punishment that makes sense yeah you could definitely I I think I've noticed the the new PR person been doing pretty well cuz the whole thing with Vine sauce was handled as far as I'm aware pretty professionally right like did that ever get resolved yes um got the CL release and everything uh as far as I believe I believe so I I would have to double check but you know we certainly would have released the claim on our end if that's possible for us to do which it should have be if we were like listed as the claim it actually really funny thing about that specific one we looked into like some of what is displayed on YouTube's back end for the data on that and it's like it's the the situation with Nintendo's music publishing on YouTube is not great something we tell people is if it's worth creating it's worth protecting and if you don't control your property rights yourself somebody else will and what we're seeing with Nintendo is there's a lot of rampant false registrations and false claims on a lot of their music on YouTube because Nintendo traditionally doesn't get involved in a lot of music publishing um it's wild we are actually compiling a case study about it to to demonstrate uh why it's important to pay attention to the way music writes are are handled on YouTube and other platforms but yeah we're we're sort of in the middle of this gordian knot of Music nonsense on YouTube and other platforms right now yeah I know with Nintendo in particular they never like officially released tons of their soundtracks I mean we're still using Game rips for most of them which is just like like no quality release for the customers they don't have the proper control over their own stuff so you get random guy who lives in like like Pakistan copyrighting your copyrighting your content that's it that's exactly what I mean yeah stuff like that that's like why you know prevent that from happening do it yourself but at the same time you know it is important to understand that this is basically an entirely new business for a game Studio like Nintendo is in the business of making and selling video games they don't want to be part of the music business necessarily which is unfortunate and it's it's something that we are actively seeking and advocating for change regarding because we want to advocate for a system where composers get what they're do we want to see composers getting royalties as they're supposed to and making the most amount of money from the video games they're producing scores for it it absolutely breaks my heart when I go on Spotify and I see you know oh here's a soundtrack for such and such a video game and it's just listed the artist is just like video game sound team I think the people who poured their Blood Sweat and Tears into music should be compensated appropriately yeah I know that's been a hot button issue with stuff like the credits in the Mario movie they didn't even they didn't have any of the composers other than COI condo listed yeah I love COI condo but he's not the only person who's done yeah I feel like video game composers have not gotten their uh Fair share of credit I definitely agree on that yeah it's a it's a young industry so you know the video game industry is still kind of working out a lot of the the ancillary sort of things like film rights and cartoon rights and you know music rights and all these things this is like the the secondary rights system that exists outside of video games themselves and this is all pretty new if we have a system where music rights are properly managed literally everyone benefits the studio benefits because they get more control of their intellectual property and they'll see other streams of royalty income that they're not seeing right now because they're not registering their music publishing stuff correctly and they're not collecting those royalties composers will benefit because they'll see royalty income that they're not seeing right now all they're really getting is like you usually they're getting like the the buyou fees many of the deals that game studio sign with composers are sort of flat buyout deals where hey game composer you get one flat fee and then we own everything and then that's it go forth in peace you know we'd like to see uh more composers finding steady passive income from their catalog that makes a lot of sense and yeah I generally agree because like it's it's definitely like I've noticed video game composers they they normally get the flat onetime thing instead of any sort of royalties I know that came up a lot with that situation with um what's the Doom composers name uh oh Mick Gordon Mick Gordon yeah I know that was all over the place when he came out about that so another question I got here if you wanted to make uh covers of music from undertale like straight up covers like I make piano covers for instance I've made a couple of them in the past if the video gets you know claimed and stuff is that's proper procedure that's supposed to happen yes so the the best thing you can do if you want to produce a cover song is to go through a DIY distribution service like Dr kid or sound drop or tune core or any of those because what they will do is they will get the mechanical license that is required to do that like automatically on their back end from us and then when they distribute your song to Youtube it'll be on YouTube as like a licensed cover if your cover song gets claimed all that really means is that a portion of the money from that video is being routed to us and then through us it gets routed to Toby it's a little trickier if you make a cover and you just upload a video directly to YouTube because then YouTube will detect the melody using the cop Content ID system um and in either case if you get a claim and you want to just check if it's legitimate or if it should be there or can it be removed just shoot our publishing inbox and email and we'll take a look makes sense yeah that's generally how it's gone for me any of the ones that have gotten claimed it will get the revenue sharing thing which seems like it's proper procedure it's just like because YouTube mixes all this stuff together as just copyright claim or content claim it can be scary it's like oh God is my video going to get taken down how much are they taking but uh that actually brought me into my next question I noticed with because when I when I do the cover uploads it goes straight into the revenue sharing claim like if I get a claim from you guys it'll go straight into Revenue sharing like I uploaded a piano cover of hopes and dreams and it went straight into Revenue sharing which I was fine with cuz I just wanted to put something out on YouTube with the claims for background music it's always straight to complete demonetization of the video is there anything that can be done about that cuz it it's just like it's scary if you go to sleep and the video is fine and then you wake up and it's uh oh the first you know eight hours of the video have just no Revenue gone just dispute the claim and email us that's the that's the best thing we'll we'll take a look at it we'll try to get that turned over that wouldn't be the way we want things to work like even even at the most cynical right like even if you're saying like oh you know Materia is terrible and they just want to take all this money or whatever like even if we're going with the most cynical interpret which I don't I don't think you are but I'm just playing devil's advocate here even if that's how how somebody thought of it it's like if a video gets demonetized we don't get money from it um if a video is ever demonetized and like we are listed as the claim it on that video just email us about wait you guys don't get the money no if a video is demonetized it's demonetized like like when it says it it has a little red symbol with ineligible you guys aren't getting anything from that no because if a video is and actually let me let me clarify or I should say disclaimer that like this is this is my own personal knowledge of this piece of YouTube I I don't like know 100% but my belief is that um if a video is fully demonetized what that means is that advertisers aren't allowing their videos I should say their ads to be part of your video so there's no Revenue coming from them for anyone mhm that makes sense you know it's a funny story actually about that um many many years ago I used to work for Sony actually oh God I'm sorry at the yeah um and I was a huge fan of the anime Pua Moka Moka Maga Pua Magi Moka mag and a lot of friends who love that one I love that show and I actually made like a 25 video that I poured Blood Sweat and Tears into analyzing the dis the uh cinematography of the first episode and talking about how many of like the shot compositions were meaningful foreshadowing and like color coding and all this stuff and it got like immediately um like pulled from the platform for copyright infringement and the funniest part was the the claimant was Sony Music whom I worked for and so I was emailing like my literal colleagues being like hey can you put this back and then they were like no wow to this day that video is gone so earlier you mentioned when we talked about um you know background music in like in a gameplay video it should always be resolved in your favor if you email you guys and usually if you're using it as background music for like a video essay CU that that should constitute his fair use if you know the law actually worked properly but um fan games came up recently because there was a thing on the FAQ page for Materia that said like hey if you're using undertale music in a fan game specifically we will not resolve the claim for you which confused a lot of people because it seems like it's fine in video essays that are unrelated to undertale and it's fine when it's with undertale why specifically fan games well okay so so I should point out a few things so usually with fan games they will often not use the the exact OST often times they're using like remixes or covers or you know just some edited version of a song and the tricky thing there is that if you edit a song in any way whether it's a remix or cover or a performance or whatever you're creating what's called a derivative work and a derivative work needs a license so if you publish a video using a fan game that has derivative work music in it then the claim is technically valid because you're using hobie's music in a new way and then again you know the all the claim means is that the revenue is just going back to Toby for the music it's it's a little different from like a video essay or gameplay footage of undertale itself where the music being used is just the straight undertale OST um in that case it's like we can we can generally let that go just because I mean for for one thing for undertale itself that's fine that should be let go that's always let go we don't want to screw with anybody's Let's Plays um fan games in particular require a sync license a sync license in music is when you get permission and a license to put music with fil FM or moving pictures so for example when Universal did the Mario movie they got a sync license from Nintendo for all of their music to appear in the Mario movie with fan games technically speaking because there's generally no sync license in there that creates an issue where it muddles the the YouTube rights understanding like on YouTube's back end and you'll start getting Content ID claims based on you know one incorrect thing or another and we don't always have the power to resolve that in your favor my recommendation if you're making a fan game where you're doing remixes and covers or whatever is take the OST of your fan game go through a distributor like drro kid or to core or what have you and release that as an album and get like an official license for it and that will actually make it easier because then you can say oh you know the fan game that I'm playing on YouTube is using music from this album which has been released and is properly licensed okay way less complicated so you're recommending for fan game authors to go through droke kid for their soundtracks like something like undertale yellow or TS under swap with these big like soundtracks filled with remix well not even straight remixes derivative covers of the undertale music because I know in music copyright those are two separate things a straight remix versus a derivative you know if you're making a new composition with elements of the old composition is a different thing than just mixing the original composition I know that much I had to deal with that when I was in college one time and B suck you're and you're you're absolutely correct um yeah yes that's uninformative response but yeah you are correct so I was just wondering like if but if this does happen like say you're playing a like doing a video on a fan game and something gets dinged by YouTube is it still good to go through you guys to try to get it resolved would you definitely the first that's definitely the good first point of contact right like because I just noticed the old fq and I'm not sure if it's still up said like specifically we will not handle this at all which was kind of like um let me you know what let me consult my notes real quick oh okay so it's saying that the the specific language that's here is please note that in the case of fan games which use music from the original game including cover song versions or interpolations are claims will remain in place so what that's saying is yes if you're playing a fan game and you're using Toby's compositions in any way like Toby should be compensated for usage of his music that doesn't mean that your video is going to get taken down or demonetized or anything like that and if you see anything like that happening like if your channel gets a strike or if your video is demonetized reach out to us and we'll do our best to help you okay because again most of the claims are automatic like ineligibility I wouldn't even get like I want to get a scent from the video which is obviously a problem because that de incentivizes people to share videos of fan games which is which is not what we want like we love fan games like just to be clear like we've even published osts of some fan games like one of the most popular ones that we have is the Calamity mod for Terraria the score by DM Doo we we helped DM Doo released that like we have no issue with fan games whatsoever it's really just you know again us trying our best to react to the the YouTube system the way it is I was actually going to bring up Calamity later because you might not know this but I'm actually a developer for that mod I I didn't know that so funny yeah I actually in the I run the social media accounts for it so awesome I was almost sort of wondering if it would ever come up if I had to like you know if we had to get into a conversation with you guys about anything like I just pop up like hey let's add our social media manager to this group chat hey Jamie that so crazy yeah I did not know that but yeah that um I know I brought this up one time when talking about it cuz as far as we're aware there haven't been like any issues regarding claims on that music at all was there like a special thing put in place for that work or you know some something that is just sort of an unfortunate reality of Music rights online in general is the more the more popular a score is the more likely it is to get hit by these systems and you know it's not that Calamity is not popular but it's more that um undertale is so ludicrously popular that like it it gets in the crossfires of of all of the different systems like just to be clear undertale soundtrack is the most stream the video game soundtrack of all time yeah that sounds about right yeah and because of that all of the different music Publishers are like hey we want our piece of that pie and you know that's what that's what creates a lot of these problems and sometimes for for smaller games it doesn't happen not because there's any difference in the rules but because the systems are just not taking notice I'm actually curious though um Can content ID claim the sound effect like tracks in undertale soundtrack because there's there's stuff in the soundtrack like long elevator or oo which is just a drone like is that can that be copyrighted is that possible that's like that's like a music lawyer Round Table topic um I I've never seen it happen technically speaking samples of any kind do have copyright and for what it's worth we actually we don't get involved at all in like like sound effect stuff the answer is like technically yes but probably no I think it would be pretty bad if samples end end up getting like copyright stuff on them because so much music nowadays uses sampling Toby Fox would be in a lot of trouble there's so much sampling from Earthbound specifically obviously is the big one so I was going to ask you mentioned you guys love fan games um yeah one of the questions I had written here was how do you personally feel about fan games and how does Materia as a company feel about them cuz there have been some interesting choice takes like calling fan games a commercial Venture that was something that Sebastian said about undertale yellow which has not sat particularly well with a of people considering that was like a seven-year labor of love type thing well the issue the issue with that one specifically and I know I know undertale yellow is kind of the elephant in the room so I'll just go ahead and talk about it a little bit it became a commercial Venture when it got put on Digital streaming platforms right because if if you know if there's a million streams on the undertale yellow soundtrack on Spotify Spotify is going to send them a check for for money for that so and it's not even that we don't want that to happen it's more just like we want to make sure that all the rights and Es are correctly put in place um if the undertale yellow soundtrack had been distributed before anything went on the YouTube and it got distributed through like Dr kid or Toon Core one of those type of of companies and there was a proper license put in place and it went on to Spotify and other Platforms in a properly licensed way before it got released on YouTube that actually would have been fine there there really wouldn't have been an issue with that at all there would have still been claims where some of the money would get allocated back to Toby but like there would have not been like takedowns or or strikes or anything like that it's really just it's unfortunate um the way undertale yellow score got released and this is not at all to throw shade at the undertale yellow team in any way um this stuff is really complicated it's not accessible um there's there's really nothing that teaches people about this stuff um unless you really go out of your way to learn about it and that's kind of the the Gap that we're trying to fill and why I'm working on a new like YouTube FAQ it's more just like we were forced to react to a situation that already became messy rather than you know preemptively getting licenses in place before the thing came out so with that was the problem that they uploaded the soundtrack on YouTube first before going to because I know they did go through Dro kid and released it on Spotify that way yes and the the direct upload to Youtube first was the problem because you remember how I said earlier I don't think there's a way they could have known about that to be fair not accessible at all nope I I I I reserve zero blame for this directed at the undertale yellow team I I just it's so complicated and annoying to deal with but uh yeah it it's it's exactly as you said the the main issue was the direct upload to Youtube with no license in place because what will happen is YouTube will often mistakenly View something like that as an original composition because it's not being uploaded with a license linked to it so what might happen now or like like as a hypothetical what happens in that kind of situation is people uploading undertale music or or playing it or performing it or doing let's plays of the game or whatever might get copyright claims where the claim it is listed as the undertale yellow team like if you're let's playing undertale it might say oh we detected this undertale Yellow megga movania remix in your video you're using undertale yellow's original music and undertale yellow is now listed as the claimant for a copyright claim being levied against you and that's something we want to avoid because if that happens we have no power over that situation that makes sense I've uh I've actually I I know the developers of I'm not sure if you've heard of TS under swap it's another popular undertale fan game um they haven't uploaded the soundtrack to YouTube yet because they were worried about the whole process and the undertale yellow thing had just happened so would your recommendation for them to go get a license with Dr kid first and then they're good to upload it to YouTube well yeah and actually as a matter of fact usually drro kid will will do it for them like Dr kid can deliver to YouTube Oh through YouTube music yeah yeah that's a thing isn't it it sure is um yeah that or they can that or like obviously if they want to if anybody wants to they can actually reach out to us directly and say hey we have this fan game OST um you know we'd love to release this officially or or whatever and and we can we can actually help put get those licenses in place right from the get-go and the fun thing is and this is more of like my own personal uh investment in it like if people who make fan games come to us and they want to release them that way like I'd rather release it officially and like maybe do like CDs or vinyl or like support it with like a bigger release like I would love to do a TS under swap like record like that'd be really fun uh and we can do that um we could also theoretically do like an undertale yellow record if we worked directly with them and got their permission to do that and so on and so forth um which would be really cool too um so I would say don't be scared to talk to us I know I know that past conduct on social media hasn't been great and you know we've we've really taken action to change that um I promise we're not the big bad wolf if you email us and say hey um yeah no that was great choice of words yeah know that was actually not intended and as soon as I said that I was like oh man yeah I think a lot of people with like the commercial Venture like comment would took a took a arm to that because like they know they weren't meaning to be a it's not like the game was developed to make money that was never the intention it was a poor choice of words I think that's a good way to put it oh I meant to ask this personally because I do a lot of mods uh how does that work with is that that's just treated as bass undertale because it's a modification of undertale as opposed to being a fan game oh like you mean like if you're doing a YouTube video of an undertale mod yes I mean as long as if it's the same music then that's kind of exactly the same thing okay yeah CU a lot of my videos are like you know mods that change one or two things about the game yeah seems to be the niche I've fallen into I um I'm not sure if you're able to comment on undertale yellow related stuff at all I know they've been looking to you know do a full release of the soundtrack has that situation how has that been going it is progressing I will say we we are in communication with the undertale yellow team and we are working on that now uh here's a question for me personally if you make a undertale inspired track but not necessar like something that maybe uses a motif from undertale but other than that is either wholly original or like you know like a lot of people um recently not even recently anymore this was like two years ago but somebody was making like spoof Delta Rune tracks that were original but also had like Toby Fox motifs peppered in there how would that how would you be able to handle that hey everybody editing sha from the future here uh Jamie sent me this clip to replace his original response in our interview because it provides more clarity of his point that he was trying to discuss so if you notice a tiny jump in audio quality or visuals that's why it'll only be for this response so the kind of thing you're describing here is what we refer to as a derivative work where it's not quite a straight cover but it's also not original soundtrack music the the simplest answer is if you're going to make make a derivative work please make sure to contact us and get it properly licensed before it gets released even if it only contains like little pieces of you know light motifs or melodies or whatever because from a copyright perspective a derivative work becomes a little bit tricky great example um you know we have standing deals with Distributors licensing platforms sheet music platforms like music notes Etc and you know a few years ago we started getting license requests and royalty statements for the music of Delta Rune chapter 3 obviously Delta run chapter 3 is not something that exists ORS out yet what was happening was fans were creating unofficial Delta Run music but it looked official to the platforms because the platforms didn't understand the nuances of it and that started complicating things on the licensing front and it was a complete yes we had to spend time clarifying that this was unofficial music we didn't own represent any of the rights to it these were unlicensed and you know we had to send people back the royalties that they had sent us because we were not technically owed those royalties it was it was kind of a nightmare so I would just say if you're going to make fan content fan covers fan derivative Works fan anything make sure it's clearly marked as unofficial and in the case of something like a derivative work I would really say either come to us to get a license or just don't make it at all is the safest bet I know that's I know that's not the answer anybody wants to hear but it does technically become an impersonation or fraud issue if it's mishandled and it can become a bit of a copyright nightmare so yeah I would just say like avoid it if you don't want to go out of your way to get a proper license in place before you distribute it okay well that is basically all the questions I had on my little uh thing that I sent you oh my gosh we plan this in July we did it's been so long it The Summer's been way too busy I was just looking at the data the email like wow July 26th I did notice Materia uh taking action against that one like slot mobile game that was using in the undertale music for their trailers that thinly veiled thinly veiled fetish game I mean I'll call it what it is those advertisements are weird yeah on this episode The Writers barely disguised fetish um yeah it was uh yeah the uh yeah so that's that's something that we would take action against if somebody's using Toby's music for something that is like clearly disingenuous um you know if you're trying to advertise like a gambling thing or some other dumb you know clearly illegal unlicensed type of financial thing then yeah the company's going to step in and do something about it that's good I think if you guys wanted to be mean to people those are the people to be mean to so yeah I just I know a lot of creators are like I get a ton of DMS nowadays asking like hey you know who do I reach out to so email you guys best place to go to yep yeah email is good and then also like if you you know if you're if you're bound to like social media and you don't like doing emails or whatever you know you can always DM me on Twitter or X whatever um Twitter yeah quitter quitter um you know I'm obviously I don't I don't tend to like conduct business there it's not a business platform but I will at least like answer you and point you in the right direction if I can I would just say you know be p cuz I don't check it super often especially on weekends I'm not looking at it all one other thing I wanted to ask about was um there was after Sebastian wolf talked about undertale yellow there was a former Materia employee uh Lara who came forward mentioning that like she wasn't being properly credited and then the credit was added later was that just like a mistake or did something yeah actually she she emailed me or actually they I apologize I don't know I don't know what Laura's pronouns are um and I don't want to misgender anyone um but um Laura did reach out to me and and I just it was literally just an error I had it fixed okay there wasn't any like no because I I know there have been issues there in the past and I wanted to make sure there wasn't any like noedit you spoke of me badly so I'm going to remove the credit like no credit credit for people's work is a non-negotiable like core pillar of our company values we credit everybody for everything no exceptions no negotiations about it um if there was some reason why somebody said hey can you credit me under a pseudonym or like remove my name from the credits on something we could do it but to my knowledge or at least while I've been at the company that's never happened makes sense so final question is um what is your position in the company like how high up are you nowadays so I'm the vice president of Business Development so I'm basically number two okay that was my impression but I you know you're Twitter bio just says publishing label which could mean any amount of things yeah makes sense I I I was just wondering you know when I saw your comment on my video I was like thinking in the back of my mind I'm like what is his job security like hi okay very high good cuz I feel like in most jobs if you you know talked about if you were that honest it would get you into trouble right when I came to the company it's actually of funny I like kicked down Sebastian's door for a year and I was like look you need to hire me I will [ __ ] you need to hire me and after like the fourth time he was like okay I'll schedule a call and after a couple of calls literally like him and I were kind of dancing this dance of like him talking to me about like hey you know like how would you improve Materia what do you see um that we could fix or improve or whatever and eventually I was like look let's cut the [ __ ] you want to hire me and I want to work for you let's make an offer I'm I'm a New York guy I'm kind of from that New York School of Business where I'm like look let's not waste each other's time and get directly to the point that was um I assume you started working there right after that whole thing with the Celeste artists a little later I around that time period I came in May of 2022 okay because I just remember that was all over the place with the whole you know they weren't being paid properly and and the the you know what the the sad truth of that is is the the company response to that was not good and it was not necessary for it to be that way I think it would have been a lot easier to just say like look you know we screwed up we're a growing company we apologize for for this being handled incorrectly the truth of the matter was at that time we had an issue where our systems were not properly functioning you know we have our own sort of internal inhouse built system that handles our accounting and disperses royalties and it's wonderful it's literally better than things I've seen at Major record labels but you know it's also proprietary and young and in-house and in that moment it wasn't doing what it was supposed to do since you know that that incident happened in late 2020 and I haven't seen anything like that ever happen again um so I do think that the the systematic changes that we've made are working but you know uh a poorly handled public response like that takes a very long time to recover from and I'm respectful of that uh bad PR you know that's bad PR posts still get brought up today from like companies posts five years ago that still get like brought up the uh the the most horrify words are this you with screen attached this you with a screen cap yep that's a classic uh I know Pizza Tower signed on with you guys recently so have any issues Arisen from that cuz I know that game is popular but not like it's not undertale popular so far really nothing um it's been really good and I will uh offer a sneak peek that we do have some really cool Pizza Tower projects in the works uh more details TBD can't say anything yet um sense but but you know we want to make that we're supporting that game really hard and and you know also having a lot of fun with it because the game's just really goddamn cool it is a very very good game yeah I think that is all of my questions I didn't have any more written I don't think I mean hey if you've got anything to spitball at me I'm here what's your contact with Toby Fox like do you guys speak directly frequently or you want to hear something absolutely insane let me guess the answer is no you guys barely talk so we had a conversation like on a on a zoom call or a Google call whatever like earlier this year and that was the first time anybody from the company including Sebastian had spoken verbally with Toby really everything prior was written communication so far I have had phone convos with him twice um but uh generally generally it's over email I mean Toby Toby is the kind of person who likes to just take things at his own pace and is very much busy doing a million things at the same time ultimately at the end of the day like what our company does is hand handles all the administrative nonsense so that artists can spend time focusing on their art um with music yeah wait no you already answered that question I was going to I was going to ask the question about the the compositional thing again but you already answered that there very outdated La here's an interesting one that I didn't bring up before medle so technically when a song gets licensed you license the composition that's in the song So if you create a medley you actually have to license each composition that's in the medley so if you have five songs in an undertale medley you need to license all five songs for my audience at home Melody and medley are different things a medley is a composition of or a compilation of a bunch of tracks usually linked into each other seamlessly yeah yeah yeah cuz I know there's been confusion plenty of times over Melody and medley you know the undertale fan base is a little young with musical terms they got they got they they got their hands on the term L matif and we're like I know what this is Jerry's out on that I'm not quite sure you guys know what that is all the time it's such a cool way to like establish a character or an idea mm definitely Toby loves using it did you have anything else you wanted to add or tell the people um I guess uh as like a closing remark just if you have any questions whatsoever about music rights or music on YouTube how it applies to video game music or fan games or claims or any of that stuff please don't hesitate to reach out you know we have our different social media platforms we're on meta we're on Blue Sky we're on you know Here There and Everywhere uh you can also reach out to our publishing inbox at info@ Material music pub.com and I am also on Twitter at Jamie Materia um I should probably set up a work Blue Sky I haven't done it yet um feel free to just hit me up and ask me questions I'm always happy to help makes sense well I uh thank you for joining me and um thanks for coming on and being part of the interview even though my fan base doesn't have the highest um perception of as a company at the moment likewise thanks for thanks for having me and uh yeah hopefully with like patience and transparency that can change one step at a time oh I remember what I wanted to say now was about the legal e thing because I know a lot of people read through that statement that was issued to me and they didn't know even my video editor made fun of all the like the usage of the big words I knew what that meant but like I don't think many people out there know what like ephemeral reproductive display exploitation means yeah like using big words to like be like I know more about this but it doesn't actually explain what that is to people well part of the part of the issue is that if something's on like a public social media platform that can be construed as like a legally binding communication so the company's hand is forced in where it's like we have to we have to speak in the same level of ask coverage as if we were like writing a formal letter to somebody because it's like well you know if if we say something on a public platform somebody can point point to that and like well this company said this and then it becomes a problem if it's something we didn't like intend for it to be interpreted as the response is going to be exactly the same as if they were like on the stand in the courtroom because it just has to be unless it's YouTube where it feels like it's a automatic response being written by a 14-year-old for some reason I don't know why they that's a can of worms that you know is another hourong interview ai ai is definitely a problem already and will continue to become a problem as as time goes by actually that brings up a good question how have you guys been dealing with those because I know there's been this trend lately that's been it's one thing to have like the AI song covers because you know I feel like there's something intrinsically kind of NE about hearing like Freddy Mercury sing like a beetle song but there's the AI extensions of things lately how have you been handling those because I know some undertale ones have popped up have you just been nuking those yeah we're not a fan we don't like AI our company stance is that AI itself is built on copyright infringement and you know if your system is built on crime it shouldn't exist AI is just something that gets used duplicitously to steal jobs from artists it's not acceptable um you know companies being like oh we're we're laying off people because you know chat GPT can do it instead that's just so foolish and short-sighted um I agree don't like that at all and you know there I actually saw a great anecdote online where a college professor in the beginning of their semester took their class and said okay here's what we're going to do here's an essay prompt get chat GPT to write the essay for you and then fact checked the essay every single student was anti- aai after that as the Evergreen quote from IBM says a computer can never be held accountable therefore a computer must never make a management decision the only thing an AI can do is regurgitate whatever is being fed into it there's no creative spark there's no intentionality there's no uh you know there's no artistic value it's just the for simile of art it's I feel like unless the the thing you're doing is specifically poking fun at AI doing that like I've done a couple of videos poking fun at you know AI generated text mods for the game but that's like the the point is insulting what it's coming up with because it's just nonsense yeah but when you use it to try to replace like you know try to extend music that just feels yeah I agree with you 100% And I think the the worst part about AI is there are some applications of AI that are incredible like there's uh there was recently some coverage around an AI model that's being trained to detect cancers much earlier like that's incredible if we're using AI to save lives and and revolutionize medicine you know if we get the you know the technology that is being pioneered right now where nanom machines and AI are working together to specifically Target cancer cells in somebody's body and break those down without attacking healthy cells and will one day replace chemotherapy that's amazing that's that's how you Market AI I don't know why these companies insist on using Ai and selling it with like the promise that it's going to devalue artists I don't want AI to do art so I can do my laundry I want AI to do my laundry so I can you do your art yeah that's the whole yeah like that's I don't I feel like they've gone backwards with it right like they've started at the the most human things instead of doing the most meaning like they've gone backwards with it I don't want AI like you know AI music AI art even AI voices the potential for AI to be used to either take people's jobs away or spread active misinformation because there are so many tools now that are allowing AI to create convincing fake video or fake audio it's when somebody uses an AI to convincingly recreate your voice and call your grandma to ask for money it's when somebody you know creates a fake video of a politician saying something they never said puts that on online and suddenly an entire generation believes that somebody said something like that's the part where this technology is very toxic yeah it's good to have a good stance on that because I was kind of interested how the company viewed AI in general I had a feeling this was going to be the answer given you guys are a Materia generally is pretty Progressive on social policies I've noticed so yeah what did you say your blue sky was um I don't have a work Blue Sky yet but Materia I just found the Materia Collective one but I was curious if you had a personal one or anything like that not yet okay but uh yeah I don't think I have anything else to ask if you had anything else you wanted to add uh is it better to reach out to the company email or to you personally probably I'd probably say to the company email because I usually get looped in anyway on a lot of the issues so like one way or another I'll check it out because I I've talked with the company email it's you know I can tell I've vaguely gotten like an understanding of who I'm talking to based on like typing quirks and then you know sometimes you'll say your name in there I'll get the mysterious email from s I'm like oh I wonder who that could be yeah yeah the mysterious s signature like oh by the way just the fact that we've all known this for years but the fact that it's like Toby Fox and sebastianas wolf funniest [ __ ] it is the funniest [ __ ] I I noticed you guys okay question you asked for I remember you were asking for the person who drew the original art to get like merchandise of it are you guys actually going to do that uh well I'd have to get the permission to do that um but I would love to at least get like a hat made or something um it it's like it's just a really good iteration of the design like the yin and yang of like the white cute dog and then the Angry Black uh wolf is or sorry yeah it's just funny to you know as an onlooker to all of that it's like what is going on like what's the relationship there do you guys like because it almost kind of comes across like yeah I Hate My Boss not no no not that at all and actually you know what I will say this and this isn't me just being nice like to me at least and to the team as as far as I've seen it Sebastian has actually been a really great boss um he is really assertive about advocating for like mental health like he like he's like if you're sick take the day off if you need a mental health day take the day off like take care of yourself you know he has never told any employee that they have to like put the company over themselves or anything like that like he's very much um like I will retain employees and make sure they're okay um which has been far more admirable than many other workplace leadership positions I've seen um but my personal um stance on the whole like Toby Sebastian wolf character thing I think it's important for a company to be able to have some laughs at itself like I I think it's exhausting to take myself seriously all the time you know I think the the Sebastian mascot thing is really funny and so does everyone else the company we you know just think it's kind of cool if anything if somebody if somebody drew me as a mascot I'd be more flattered than anything else okay well I think that's just about it then I don't think I have anything else to ask um unless you had some thing you wanted to add like some I think I said my outro bit like 20 minutes ago yeah I I'll give this to my editor and be like hey cut out all the the fluff and put my webcam in a fancy border and make it you know do flips and stuff do like an OBS overlay where we're like inside the YouTube play button as like Reflections on the surface yeah like a podcast layout yeah I am uh I have no more questions to ask yeah cool I I think I think I'm also out of out of ideas I'm sure I've eaten up enough of your time fine yeah uh for everybody at home we had this listed as a 1H hour thing and it is currently 1 hour and 40 minutes into our recording so yes that uh that went great I'll have to tell my Editor to cut out my start menu button so you can't see my Discord pings go up and down as I clear them out thank you everybody for watching thank you Jamie for joining me here and uh hopefully it answers some of your questions if you have further questions for them you can always email them or email Jamie or you know leave your questions in the comments and I'm sure he might even look through the comments and be like I'm going to go answer them like a Reddit AMA I will I will absolutely wind up looking through the comments and yeah thank you thank you for having me happy to happy I bet you the YouTube comments will treat you nicer than the Reddit AMA did that's a low bar but I hope so I I like to think my my community is a little bit better than Reddit yeah [Music] a