What happened to A.V. Club's A.V. Undercover series?
September 16, 2021 6:10 AM Subscribe
For eight years from 2010 to 2017, A.V. Club published a video series called A.V. Undercover featuring musicians covering a song from an ever-dwindling list chosen at the beginning of each "season." It was a fascinating showcase for both veteran and up-and-coming bands and cross-genre covers. Now, those videos have all been deleted from their website and official YouTube channel. Why?
As far as I can tell, this happened in mid-2017. I have found a couple of different Reddit posts from July 2017 commenting on it. There are also, tantalizingly, still articles on A.V. Club about Undercover (announcing song lists for new seasons, and the like). Someone on Wikipedia also attempted to delete the entire list of artists from the article in September 2017, and again in September 2018, but they don't seem to have any obvious real-world connection to A.V. Club. Some intrepid individuals have re-uploaded some of those videos (or the audio tracks) to their own YouTube channels, but it's only a fraction of what had been available before.
Anyway, this seems like such a weird thing for A.V. Club to have done, since it costs them literally nothing to continue hosting those legacy videos on YouTube, and I can only assume they're insulated from copyright claims and such there (even if mechanical licensing wasn't enough for some reason). Besides, such claims could be dealt with individually, rather than by nuking the entire series. Does anyone have any inside info on what happened here? Links to information that I missed? Why remove so much cool music from the public sphere?
As far as I can tell, this happened in mid-2017. I have found a couple of different Reddit posts from July 2017 commenting on it. There are also, tantalizingly, still articles on A.V. Club about Undercover (announcing song lists for new seasons, and the like). Someone on Wikipedia also attempted to delete the entire list of artists from the article in September 2017, and again in September 2018, but they don't seem to have any obvious real-world connection to A.V. Club. Some intrepid individuals have re-uploaded some of those videos (or the audio tracks) to their own YouTube channels, but it's only a fraction of what had been available before.
Anyway, this seems like such a weird thing for A.V. Club to have done, since it costs them literally nothing to continue hosting those legacy videos on YouTube, and I can only assume they're insulated from copyright claims and such there (even if mechanical licensing wasn't enough for some reason). Besides, such claims could be dealt with individually, rather than by nuking the entire series. Does anyone have any inside info on what happened here? Links to information that I missed? Why remove so much cool music from the public sphere?
To fill the void you might want to check out Australia's Triple J radio, their Like A Version project has been running for many years and all of their recordings are still on YouTube. (and this one particularly kicks ass. yummy yummy!)
I know this isn't a direct answer but probably reinforces JZig's answer. It's certainly not because of rights management or else these videos would be gone too.
posted by JoeZydeco at 9:37 AM on September 16, 2021 [3 favorites]
I know this isn't a direct answer but probably reinforces JZig's answer. It's certainly not because of rights management or else these videos would be gone too.
posted by JoeZydeco at 9:37 AM on September 16, 2021 [3 favorites]
The other thing that came to mind is that some of the later series of AVU had sponsors embedded in the videos (Starbucks, Budweiser). Maybe someone else knows if that's a problem later on.
posted by JoeZydeco at 9:58 AM on September 16, 2021
posted by JoeZydeco at 9:58 AM on September 16, 2021
Best answer: In case you missed it, this CoverMeSongs.com article from July points to a YouTube channel ("Alvin Untercover", lol) that has "almost all of them, several hundred worth, in hi-def".
As for the missing ones, note that some (though by no means all) of them may be preserved and watchable via Archive.org. The first one I pulled from your link (Julien Baker covers Death Cab For Cutie’s “Photobooth”) is available here, for example. If you can find a list of episodes with YouTube URLs, there may be a way to turn those into Archive links and quickly see what was captured.
posted by Rhaomi at 7:28 PM on September 16, 2021 [3 favorites]
As for the missing ones, note that some (though by no means all) of them may be preserved and watchable via Archive.org. The first one I pulled from your link (Julien Baker covers Death Cab For Cutie’s “Photobooth”) is available here, for example. If you can find a list of episodes with YouTube URLs, there may be a way to turn those into Archive links and quickly see what was captured.
posted by Rhaomi at 7:28 PM on September 16, 2021 [3 favorites]
Response by poster: Jzig, that is a plausible and reasonably satisfying answer! I mean, satisfactory in terms of explanatory power – it's still terrible, but explicably so now.
Rhaomi, that is useful information – thank you!
posted by skoosh at 7:58 PM on September 16, 2021
Rhaomi, that is useful information – thank you!
posted by skoosh at 7:58 PM on September 16, 2021
This thread is closed to new comments.
This part is speculation but once it was cancelled there were probably discussions about what to do with the videos, but they probably weren't monetizable directly on YouTube because all of the ad revenue would go to either the songwriters or musicians. Maybe one artist complained for some reason. I can definitely see some executive deciding "These videos are a hassle and don't make us any money, delete them!" AV club has gone through a lot of different corporate owners the last 5 years
posted by JZig at 8:37 AM on September 16, 2021 [5 favorites]