HFU HF Underground
General Category => General Radio Discussion => Topic started by: Ct Yankee on November 11, 2022, 1334 UTC
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I have read a couple of articles suggesting that WTWW has permanently stopped broadcasting over shortwave, within the past day or two, due to the high costs of transmitting. However, they would continue as an internet broadcaster. I could not receive them on 5085 or 9940 today. Their webpage does not mention halting shortwave and still shows shortwave schedules.
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I think it's true.
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That would be a shame, I like the programing on 5085 at night. I will have to keep an ear out on it. As for an Internet stream broadcaster ... sorry, but there is much better programming out there on the Internet than WTWW.
I found this thread on The SWLing Post:
Has WTWW left shortwave? (https://swling.com/blog/2022/11/has-wtww-left-shortwave/)
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Well, this would suck... Especially, for the Amateur Radio community, that likes getting various info on that station.
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01:00 UTC 12 NOV 2022 - It definitely is "radio silence" on 5085.0 kHz and 9940.0 kHz.
Looks like a perfect opportunity for one of the pirate operators to take over the frequency!
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Yep, Wednesday night was the final sign-off around 0730 UTC on 5085. Ted Randall, who ran the place, announced on the air that the transmitter's electric bill jumped from $10,000 a month to $15k, and that was to blame for the switch to online only.
However, Glenn Hauser said on this week's "World of Radio" that the owner, Scriptures For America, found out their own program's weren't being broadcast when scheduled, so they personally pulled the plug on Ted and the station. I'm sure more is bound to come out.
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Seemed like WTWW was mostly playing music as filler in the absence of paying programmers. That would be expensive in the short run, if WTWW was paying the music licensing fees in advance, or in the long run after being contacted by lawyers for ASCAP, etc, for failing to pay.
Licensing organizations have gotten so aggressive in pursuing fees for music that they even scan every personal karaoke video uploaded to social media to be sure the bars hosting karaoke nights are paying. Some owners of bars, pubs, taprooms, etc., have asked patrons to refrain from video recording their friends singing karaoke and uploading the videos. You can imagine how successful those appeals are.
I almost always video my bike rides for safety and legal evidence. I used to upload them for friends after group rides, but quit doing that after YouTube and Facebook either muted or banned my videos because of copyrighted music that was audible in the background, played by cyclists with Bluetooth speakers on their bikes. Yeah, really.
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I used to upload them for friends after group rides, but quit doing that after YouTube and Facebook either muted or banned my videos because of copyrighted music that was audible in the background,
Oh yes. You're not the only one getting hit by this sort of thing. It cuts right across everything on Youtube.
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They're desperate, like most music royalty related operations, because there are no more music sales, so royalties are the only revenue for the music industry, and royalties do not pay as much as sales once did.
Sad, but that's the way of the world.
RE; WTWW, I probably heard them once or twice without knowing it on 9940. Never tuned into 5085, though.
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I almost always video my bike rides for safety and legal evidence. I used to upload them for friends after group rides, but quit doing that after YouTube and Facebook either muted or banned my videos because of copyrighted music that was audible in the background, played by cyclists with Bluetooth speakers on their bikes. Yeah, really.
My channel is full of videos of SWBC transmissions (lawful and otherwise) playing music. I get copyright strikes all the time but I don't care, my channel's never going to be big enough to monetize and it's not why I upload to youtube anyway. But only once (that I know) was a video muted. I have no idea why I'd get that once and you'd get it every time.
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YouTube isn't consistent in how it applies warnings or strikes. Going through both of my channels, one of which contains mostly air check recordings which contain some copyrighted music, there's no consistency.
In some cases YouTube apparently has an agreement with the music license holder to allow videos to be published, with YouTube inserting ads. Presumably any revenue goes toward compensating the music owner. That's fine.
One of my old attempts at creative stop-motion photography used "Little Miss Echo" by Raymond Scott as music. At the time I made that video YouTube's online editing tools were terrible and there was no selection of license-free music. So I chose some obscure stuff that might escape their AI. It did, for awhile. It still has a copyright claim, but it's still viewable and the music hasn't been muted. YT inserts ads to compensate the owner. Fine with me.
Another is a demo of the Palstar SP30 speaker vs a Radio Shack Optimus XTS3 speaker, using whatever music was playing on some shortwave station that night (probably WTWW, IIRC). That video got a copyright claims for "Music! Music! Music" by Del Wood. But the copyright owner had an agreement with YT to allow it. Presumably YT enables ads on my video. But I can't monetize that video. No problem, I don't monetize any radio related videos for that very reason. Demos inherently involve the possibility of copyright claims.
An antenna demo video got two copyright claims, one for a Romeo Void song (hey, I love Debora Iyall, so if it benefits her in any way, go for it). But the video wasn't blocked or muted.
But few of my dozens of other videos and audio recordings of jukebox pirates like Wolverine, Twentieth Century Radio, etc., has ever been hit with a copyright claim, despite entire songs in decent fidelity being recorded. Who knows.
Another is a clip from an old Motown music awards program, recorded with my video camera of Mary Wells just after she died. Mary was wearing this magnificent puffy blue gown that took up practically the entire stage. I got the impression she was making a statement after having been disrespected by Motown for years. And they cut her performance to a medley less than 60 seconds long. I couldn't find a video clip anywhere of that particular brief performance, which was a shame. So I uploaded it, fully expecting a warning or copyright strike. Years later, it's still there.
But a short clip from a nighttime group bike ride with friends, with Cake's "Long Skirt, Short Jacket" playing in the background on cyclist's Bluetooth speaker, barely audible over traffic noise, got a strike.
I'm guessing the warnings, strikes, audio muting or deletions are applied to videos containing music for which the artists or license holders haven't agreed to any such uses.
After that I started using my own compositions, mashups and remixes as background music for my videos. Much of it is copyrighted material, but it's unrecognizable to the current level of AI (YouTube, Shazam, Google, etc.) because of back-masking with overlapping sounds from various sources, some original material, and lots of effects via Cool Edit Pro or Audacity. So far, so good, no warnings. I've noticed that Shazam and Google music recognition AI struggles with shortwave pirate station music unless the signal is nearly perfect. Any static or hiss and often Shazam misses. Google works more often on recognizing songs despite static, but still fails about half the time.
But judging from complaints by many YouTubers who create original content for a living, there's no consistency inYouTube policies. It seems as if YT is using AI to scan every upload and if it perceives any controversial content (firearms, discussions of firearms laws, some political or medical/health issues, reasonable editorials on hotbutton topics or even parodies), the bots pre-emptively block the content and issue strikes. It's up to the channel owner to defend their content, and hope the appeal actually reaches a human rep at YT. I follow all kinds of channels from every political and cultural extreme, and they all get random, unexplained warnings, strikes, etc., so there's no apparent bias by YT. Just bad AI attempting to replace informed human moderators.
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I have similar problems with my channel, Shortwave Radio Archive. The vast majority of my videos have copyright claims, but only a small percentage get blocked. As Zoidberg said, it seems to be very inconsistent. Unlike his observation, I find AI (YouTube and Shazam in my case) are very good at identifying music heard on weak shortwave stations. I find my videos get blocked in Russia more often than any other region (I do upload recordings of Russian pirates, but so far none of those have been blocked anywhere, it is all American music that gets blocked in Russia). When that happens, I just leave it. To get an idea of how copyright claims affect my channel, the page showing my newest uploads has 30 videos. Two of them are blocked regionally, one in Russia and Belarus and the other just in Russia. On that page, 17 videos have copyright claims. I may have had one or two on that page that were blocked worldwide, but I have trimmed out the Copyrighted segment that YouTube doesn't like.
Also, I do not think YouTube should ever outright block content because it contains Copyrighted music. Running ads on the video and collecting the revenue generated makes sense. Blocking certain music can be very irritating, it prevents that music from being heard or found on YouTube. I have found that absolutely anything by The Beatles will get blocked on YouTube, I often have to trim out segments of my videos containing Beatles music for it to be seen by anybody.