German here.
I'm happy that the whole thing is finally over, but also at the same time very angry that GEMA succeeded in getting it their way, once again. I don't think it's known how much money really changed hands, but knowing Google and the scale of the situation, I think it's a fair bet that GEMA got a huge sum out of this.
This was really a ridiculous situation. Sometimes you couldn't see a movie trailer (which is basically an ad) because there was a GEMA song in it, and sometimes you couldn't watch the song video from the musicians official channel because GEMA. I really hope that this will all be opened now that the case is finished.
Maybe they got cold feet because finally a cool alternative to GEMA is emerging: <a href="https://www.c3s.cc/" rel="nofollow">https://www.c3s.cc/</a>
(current status: somewhere in the bureaucratic labyrinth, but slowly making progress)
I still see "This Content is not available in your Country" on many Japanese Youtube Videos (browsing from USA). And even stranger, it only shows that message when browsing from a mobile phone's browser (ex: iPhone Safari). Here's an example of a cat video (there are many more) : <a href="https://www.pawpurrazi.com/cat-toilet-paper-sit-roll/" rel="nofollow">https://www.pawpurrazi.com/cat-toilet-paper-sit-roll/</a><p>Watch the youtube embed video on that page in a mobile phone.<p>So what gives? Is Japan also in some dispute?
Not sure I'd come across this particular rights / negotiation case in the past but I'm grateful to get a chance to read this article posted here. Quite useful to stay in the know. I hope all the parties are pretty satisfied with the terms and processes now.