Is Universal Music Going to War with Rick Beato?

Just when you thought major labels couldn't get more stupid...

I lost faith in the music industry decades ago, and I’ll never get it back. You will have an easier time convincing me that Elvis still lives in Graceland or Santa Claus delivers gifts from an Amazon truck.

I’ve heard too many horror stories and I’ve seen too much firsthand. I eventually came up with my “Idiot Nephew Theory” to explain why major record labels seem so much more stupid than other businesses.

Here’s how I’ve described it:

THE IDIOT NEPHEW THEORY: Whenever a record label makes a strategic decision, it picks the option that the boss’s idiot nephew thinks is best.

And what do idiot nephews decide? That’s easy—they always do whatever the company lawyer recommends.

But just when I think I’ve seen it all, some new kind of stupid comes my way via the music biz.

And that’s the case right now. Universal Music Group has gone to war with Rick Beato.

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If UMG were wise, they would thank Mr. Beato, who works tirelessly to grow the audience for their recording artists. Rick is smart and trustworthy, and is probably the most influential music educator in the world right now.

He does his work on YouTube, where he has more than five million subscribers. I’m one of them. I learn a lot from Rick’s videos, and have been fortunate to be his guest on two occasions (here and here).

He offers sharp commentary, and has conducted smart interviews with Sting, Pat Metheny, Rick Rubin, David Gilmour, Ron Carter, George Benson, Keith Jarrett, Michael McDonald, Jimmy Webb, and many other legends. These artists open up with Rick, because he is so knowledgeable, with big ears and a big heart.

So why is Universal Music upset?

Like any music educator, Beato plays a few seconds of the songs he discusses on these videos. But he’s very careful to limit himself to just a short extract—and this is allowed by law.

It’s called fair use. And it’s part of our copyright law.

Universal Music can’t change fair use standards. But it can file a constant stream of copyright infringement complaints with YouTube. And this puts Beato in a difficult situation—because he will get banned from YouTube after just three copyright strikes.

If that happens, his 2,000 videos disappear from the web—including all those historic interviews. His five million subscribers lose a trusted voice.

That may be what Universal Music wants. Listen to Beato explain this dire situation:

Universal Music is making surprising claims. On a short 42-second video on Olivia Rodrigo, Beato included just ten seconds of a song. But UMG still charged him with copyright violation—although this seems a straightforward example of fair use.

Beato pushes back and successfully defends his fair use rights—but the disputes keep coming. He showed us his email box on the recent video.

Rick has been forced to hire a fulltime lawyer to handle the endless stream of infringement claims. He has won repeatedly—but maybe that’s what gets the label so upset.

“We have successfully fought thousands of these now,” Rick explains in the video. “But it literally has cost me so much money to do this. Since we’ve been fighting these things and have never lost one, they still keep coming in….And they’re all Universal Music Group.”

“It looks to me like Rick Beato was targeted,” claims lawyer Krystle Delgado, who runs the Top Music Attorney channel on YouTube. “What the major labels have said in their closed door meetings to me is nothing short of shocking.”

“If you try fighting them, they get upset,” she adds. “And that’s when this thing starts to escalate.” She notes that her other clients run into this problem and one company—Universal Music Group—is the leading instigator.

“Rick can lose everything,” explains drummer Jorge Garrido who operates on YouTube as El Estepario Siberiano. “He’s been working for a decade using an unbelievable amount of time, resources, and effort in order to build it. And if UMG succeeds three times…Rick’s channel is gone forever. Just like that. Now I don’t think that’s fair at all.”

“These people do not understand what Rick Beato is doing,” adds YouTuber Andy Edwards. And he offers his theory of UMG’s motivation:

This is not about money. This is about power….They want to frighten people. They want to go to YouTube and say, ‘Look, if you want to deal with us, then you’re going to have to take anybody out. If we want them out, they get taken out.’ That is what this is about. Rick Beato is not big enough. Nobody ever has been with this industry.

I could share many other videos expressing support of Beato. But you get the idea—the wider community of music educators and commentators is alarmed.

This is sad confirming evidence for my Idiot Nephew Theory. Maybe some corporate lawyer thinks this is a smart strategy for UMG. But people who care about music see it differently—they know how destructive this kind of behavior really is.

People often ask me why I don’t teach a YouTube lecture course on jazz history. It’s a great idea—but I can’t teach the course without playing music, and record labels would shut me down in a New York minute.

It’s absurd. I might be able to develop a huge new audience for jazz—maybe even a million new fans. The record labels would benefit enormously. But that doesn’t matter. They would still shut me down.

Rick Beato deserves better than this.

His audience knows how much good Beato does. We see how much he loves the music and how much he supports the record labels and their artists. They should give him their support in return.

If UMG wants to retain a shred of my respect, they need to act now. And if they don’t, maybe the folks at YouTube should get involved. They are bigger than any record labels, and this might be a good time for them to show where they stand.

I have a hunch that they care more about creators than idiot nephews. Perhaps we will find out.