YouTube solves its missing music problem

Over the weekend, users of YouTube and YouTube Music alike started noticing something quite odd: songs were going missing. Tracks previously available on the services started throwing up error messages when people tried to access them, complaining about rights issues with “content from SESAC.” While it’s been a bumpy few days, it looks like Google has finally worked this issue out, and all your favorite music should be returning shortly.

SESAC, or the Society of European Stage Authors and Composers, is an organization that manages performance rights for artists like Adele, Fleetwood Mac, and Nirvana. When companies like Google want to make music available on their streaming services, they ink deals with groups like SESAC to secure those rights. Problem is, Google’s deal with SESAC was up for renewal, and expired before the companies could come to a new arrangement. Without an active deal, Google had no choice but to pull all this content down from YouTube and YouTube Music.

YouTube issued a statement at the time, explaining that it was working hard to get a new deal set up soon, to hopefully make all this music available again. And this afternoon, YouTube announces accomplishing just that, in a message posted to X (via 9to5Google):

If you’re in the United States ➡️ we’re happy to share that YouTube has reached a deal with SESAC. Content (that was previously blocked) will be restored across YouTube services over the next day or two. We appreciate all your patience 🙏

It’s a little ridiculous that big companies like these can’t get their acts together and work deals like this out ahead of time — sparing us these very public outages. But sometimes, maybe it’s the outrage from that outage that ultimately convinces one of the parties to step up and make the needed concessions to close a deal.

Look for all your missing music starting to return over the course of the next couple days.