If you follow Ferry Corsten’s Corsten’s Countdown on YouTube, you might be out of luck with the two latest episodes.
His method is brutal. His weapon is the beat. Unfortunately, neither stood a chance in the face of the monolithic DMCA takedown system on YouTube. Today, Freezenet has learned that trance DJ legend Ferry Corsten has become the latest victim of YouTube’s DMCA takedown system.
The episodes in question are episodes 628 and episode 629. If one were to browse to either episode, they’ll see the takedown request. Here is 628:
Additionally, here is episode 629:
For those of you who are less familiar with the trance scene, Corsten’s Countdown is a radio show promoting the latest trance tracks. One of the biggest dreams for aspiring trance producers is to be featured on one of these radio show’s/podcasts. If you make it onto something like Corsten’s Countdown, A State of Trance, Group Therapy, or Degenerate Radio, you are well on the road to success in the trance scene.
So, what many producers do is submit their tracks to these DJ’s in the hopes that they would be one of the lucky few to be selected. Once you make an appearance, you suddenly gain exposure to several thousand new fans. As a trance producer, that is huge and can be a career maker.
So, not only is a takedown notice against once of these DJ’s potentially detrimental to you, but it is also detrimental to the other producers who also got lucky enough to make it onto the show in the first place.
We decided to investigate to see if we could figure out what is the potential culprit of these DMCA takedown notices. According to tracklists obtained by Freezenet, the tracks that were played are as follows. On episode 628, we see the following:
01. FaderX – Lose Yourself [Doorn Records]
02. Vintage & Morelli x Arielle Maren – Shadows [Silk Music]
03. Dennis Graft – Diving [Suanda Progressive]
04. Super8 & Tab – Thrive [Armind]
05. Alex Kunnari – Oceanic [A State Of Trance]
06. Miroslav Vrlik – Atlantis [Always Alive Recordings]
07. Temple One – Make The Earth Move [Digital Society Recordings]
08. Maarten de Jong & Woody van Eyden – Stroopwafels On Acid [WAO138]
09. Ultra Vibe – Choose Freedom [Camouflage] [LISTENER’S CHOICE]
10. Adam Wylie – Hinode [Alter Ego Progressive] [NUMBER 3]
11. Ferry Corsten & BT – 1997 [Flashover Recordings] [NUMBER 2]
12. Pierre Pienaar – Red Dune Kalahari [Flashover Trance] [NUMBER 1]
Meanwhile, 629 has the following playlist:
01. Kristian Nairn & Ferry Corsten – Galaxia [Flashover Recordings] [CORSTEN’S COUNTDOWN EXCLUSIVE]
02. David Guetta & Martin Solveig – Thing For You (Club Mix) [FFRR]
03. Astrosphere – Zephyr [Coldharbour Recordings]
04. Rub!k – Escape Time [A State Of Trance]
05. Chapter XJ – Radiate [Pure Trance NEON]
06. Dreamy & Frank Waanders – Wherever You Are [Always Alive Recordings]
07. Shedona – Faith [Flashover Trance] [CORSTEN’S COUNTDOWN EXCLUSIVE]
08. JES – Ghost (Solis & Sean Truby Remix) [Magik Muzik]
09. Thomas Bronzwaer – Close Horizon [Yakuza] [LISTENER’S CHOICE]
10. Ferry Corsten & BT – 1997 [Flashover Recordings] [NUMBER 3]
11. Maarten de Jong & Woody van Eyden – Stroopwafels On Acid [WAO138] [NUMBER 2]
12. Pierre Pienaar – Red Dune Kalahari [Flashover Trance] [NUMBER 1]
What you can notice is that after the track name is the name of the record label. None of them have “EDM” or “District” shown. So, the next best thing is to figure out which track appeared in both episodes. We found that three tracks appeared in both episodes:
Maarten de Jong & Woody van Eyden – Stroopwafels On Acid [WAO138]
Ferry Corsten & BT – 1997 [Flashover Recordings]
Pierre Pienaar – Red Dune Kalahari [Flashover Trance]
Now, we can further narrow down that list by examining what was played on episode 627. That episode is still available on YouTube and wasn’t touched. That episode has the following playlists:
01. PRAANA – Mojave (Boxer Remix) [Colorize]
02. Karanda – Vita [AVA Recordings]
03. Adam Wylie – Hinode [Alter Ego Progressive]
04. Rafael Osmo & Linnea Schossow – Another Day Without You [VANDIT]
05. Pierre Pienaar – Red Dune Kalahari [Flashover Trance] [CORSTEN’S COUNTDOWN EXCLUSIVE]
06. Stoneface & Terminal & DIM3NSION – Kilig [A State Of Trance]
07. Ben Ashley – Reflections [State Control Records]
08. Farb – Lilly [AVA White]
09. Jonas Steur – Silent Waves [Intuition Recordings] [LISTENER’S CHOICE]
10. Cosmic Gate – Come With Me [Wake Your Mind Recordings] [NUMBER 3]
11. Marcus Santoro – Memento [Flashover Recordings] [NUMBER 2]
12. Ferry Corsten & BT – 1997 [Flashover Recordings] [NUMBER 1 – HATTRICK]
Anything that appears in both our suspect list and in this playlist can be removed. The track 1997 appeared on this episode, so we can remove that from the list. Additionally, Red Dune Kalahari also appeared on that episode, so we can also remove that from the list. That just leaves this track:
Maarten de Jong & Woody van Eyden – Stroopwafels On Acid [WAO138]
A problem you might see here is that the record label is WAO138 (Or Who’s Afraid Of 138???), not EDM (District) as shown in the takedown notice. What happens for some tracks is that the track winds up on multiple labels. So, it could be that one label is doing their job promoting the track while another label is being destructive and taking down that track. So, we looked the track up on discogs and… found that this is the only label this is under.
Another possibility is that the track appeared on a compilation somewhere along the line, but we didn’t find this track on Discogs on any compilations. So, we looked up the track on YouTube to see if it is available at all and found multiple instances of the track being on YouTube including the appearance on A State of Trance.
We looked over the other two tracks on Discogs in the event that maybe the label missed the previous episode, but non were related to the complaining label. We then went back to the track and decided to dig into the label itself. Sometimes, a label is just a sublabel to a much larger parent company. So, here is Who’s Afraid of 138 on Discogs. It apparently has a parent company of Armada Music BV. Again, no relation to the complaining label that we can tell.
At this point in time, all we can conclude is that this is a false positive by a completely unrelated record label. We haven’t been able to find any connections to the complaining label and the playlists.
We’ve reached out to Ferry Corsten for his thought on the matter and will update you if we get a response.
As for the complaint itself, the only other possibility is that multiple tracks are involved and it just happens to be the same label complaining. Unfortunately, such a thing would make it much more difficult to track which, well, track is the culprit. The only option we have is to rely on what Google thinks is the rightsholder.
In that case, then the potential culprits is this track from 629:
- Dreamy & Frank Waanders – Wherever You Are (Extended Mix)
Then, from 628, these tracks are potential culprits:
- Miroslav Vrlik – Atlantis (Extended Mix)
- Temple One – Make The Earth Move (Extended Mix)
The only way we could even label these tracks as potential culprits is because the label in question is associated with those tracks according to Google.
Either way, this represents a set-back. It’s hard to tell whether or not this will get resolved. If anything, this case shows that anyone could be a target of a copyright complaint. Even people who have authorization to show their track off could get hit anyway – as is likely the case here.
Drew Wilson on Twitter: @icecube85 and Facebook.
