Comment on TOS Spotlight: Commercial Promotion

  1. nonbinarywitch Sat 28 Jun 2025 08:19PM UTC

    parody of charli xcx's "brat" album cover that says "cute" instead

    At the FAQ on fanmixes I saw that it says "you may use licensed streaming sites such as Spotify, 8tracks, or YouTube" and "if you just post a list of song titles without including any way to listen to the songs, then your work may not be considered a transformative fanwork", which seems to be opposite to the spirit of this policy.

    Why is a list of song titles without a way to listen to them considered less of a fanwork than the exact same fanwork content would be if it added links to monetized sites?

    I think it would be more consistent if fanmixes were encouraged to be artist-and-title lists only, and discouraging linking to monetized sites like those.

    Love you AO3 and OTW volunteers, thank you for being awesome!

    Edit: since other replies addressed some of my questions.

    Last Edited Mon 30 Jun 2025 03:29AM UTC

    Comment Actions

    1. AO3_Policy_and_Abuse (Official) Mon 30 Jun 2025 06:48PM UTC

      a stylized AO3 cat

      We do not consider a work that consists solely of a list of song titles and artists to be a transformative fanwork in and of itself. A work such as this would need to include additional fanwork content. For example, a user could post their playlist in the author's notes of their actual fanwork.

      However, if the primary purpose of the work is intended to be the playlist itself, then we recommend including banner artwork, a freely-accessible way to listen to the songs, and/or some level of analysis or reasoning as to why each song was chosen. We consider such analysis to be a form of meta commentary, which is a type of fannish nonfiction, and thus a transformative fanwork.

      The links to the included songs have to lead to a service which is free to access, such as Spotify or YouTube. Because users aren't required to pay to access the linked content on those sites, and the majority of content on these sites isn't restricted behind a paywall, we don't consider these platforms to be commercial. This is true even if they offer optional monetization features. As such, you are allowed to link or embed content from those sites so long as you do not promote the paid aspects of those sites.

      Comment Actions