What is SESAC? YouTube blocks songs by Adele, Kendrick Lamar, Nirvana and more popular artists

YouTube has blocked songs by numerous popular artists, including Adele, Kendrick Lamar, Bob Dylan, and Nirvana, over a legal dispute in the US. On Saturday, many but not all songs by those artists were unplayable on the video streaming platform. Attempts to play the blocked videos were followed by the message, “This video contains content from SESAC. It is not available in your country.”

What is SESAC? YouTube pulls songs by popular artists over legal dispute

SESAC, which stands for the Society of European Stage Authors and Composers, is a performance-rights organisation similar to BMI and ASCAP. Founded in 1930, it was acquired by the private equity firm Blackstone in 2017. According to its website, SESAC “currently licenses the public performance of more than 1.5 million songs on behalf of its 15,000+ affiliated songwriters, composers, and music publishers.” As the second-oldest performance-rights organisation in the US, it has 30,000 songwriters and more than 1 million compositions in its catalogue.

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While SESAC has yet to address its dispute with YouTube, a representative for the music platform said in a statement to Variety, “We have held good faith negotiations with SESAC to renew our existing deal. Unfortunately, despite our best efforts, we were unable to reach an equitable agreement before its expiration. We take copyright very seriously and as a result, content represented by SESAC is no longer available on YouTube in the US. We are in active conversations with SESAC and are hoping to reach a new deal as soon as possible.”

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With the sudden unavailability to stream popular songs, YouTube users expressed frustrations. In response to the outrage, the TeamYouTube account on X, formerly Twitter said, “Our music license agreement with SESAC has expired without an agreement on renewal conditions despite our best efforts. for this reason, we have blocked content on YouTube in the US known to be associated with SESAC – as in line with copyright law.”