If you make YouTube videos, you will agree that copyright claims are super annoying!
Wouldn’t it be nice to see if a particular song or piece of music is copyrighted before uploading it?
In this post we will look at some practical tips how to check music for copyright and explore several options how you can legally use copyrighted music.
Keep reading!
Music copyright basics
First, let’s get the terminology right.
From the legal perspective, with exception of music that is already in public domain (a.k.a. REALLY old), all music is copyrighted.
This applies to both the compositions (the melody and lyrics) and their actual recordings.
However, when most people say “copyrighted”, they typically want to know:
Can I use this music on YouTube (Facebook, Instagram, …) without getting in trouble?
Is it possible to legally use copyrighted music on YouTube?
So all music is copyrighted.. Don’t leave just yet!
Copyrighted means that each piece of music has the legal owner. However, that owner may be perfectly OK with you using their music on YouTube.
Here are some types of copyrighted music that you can legally use on YouTube:
1. Creative commons music
Many composers distribute their music under Creative Commons license.
You can use Creative Commons music free. However, depending on the specific license, you have to credit the author or only use the music in non-commercial videos.
This may not be the best option if you plan to monetize your videos.
2. Ad supported music
Many recording labels and publishers signed a deal with YouTube that allows creators to use their music in exchange for placing ads in videos.
If you don’t mind the ads, this can be a great opportunity to use top music in your videos. But (!) your videos won’t be eligible for monetization. That is, the ad revenue goes to the music owners.
This can be a good option for a hobby channel but certainly will not work for monetized or promotional videos.
3. Licensed music
If you have explicit permission or license from the rights owner, you can certainly use that music on YouTube.
How do you get the license? Here are some options:
1) This can be as simple as sending an email to an indie artist you like and asking permission.
2) For major recording artists you need to get in touch with their publishers and recording labels and negotiate the license. Typically, that wouldn’t be the most practical (or cheap) solution for a YouTuber.
3) License royalty free music made specifically for videos and commercial use. That’s the best option if you monetize. Make sure your music provider offers copyright support.
OK, back to the original topic.
So you want to use a song on YouTube.. how do you know what happens when you upload your video?
How to check music for copyright?
Before we get into the details, it’s important to understand how YouTube copyright works.
YouTube employs a robust copyright system called Content ID that helps music owners to protect their work and to make money to allowing others to use their music in YouTube videos.
Every time you upload a video, YouTube scans it to detect if your video contains any copyrighted music. If it finds a match, you get a copyright claim.
So the big question is:
How do I know in advance, which songs trigger copyright claims?
We’ve tested some “copyright checkers” that claim to answer this very question and the results were so disappointingly inaccurate that we decided not even post the links.
Which brings us to the only sure-fire, 100% accurate solution that is currently incorporated into YouTube’s own creators studio.
How to use creator studio to check if a song is copyrighted
YouTube creator studio has recently got a new feature that allows creators to check their videos for copyright issues BEFORE the video is published.
How cool is that!
Here’s a quick tutorial how you can quickly any music for copyright.
Step 1: Make a quick video
Unfortunately, you do need to make some kind of a video before you can test the music for copyright.
We’ve experimented with converting the file types from MP3 to MP4 and some other video types using both online and offline converters but apparently YouTube needs the real video.
Otherwise, all you get from YouTube is this error:
The footage can be literally anything. A simple video loop will do.
Related: 40+ placed to download free video footage
Ready? Upload your video to YouTube.
Step 2: Upload your video to YouTube
Start uploading in the creative studio as with any other video.
Look up the “Checks” tab – this will come handy once the processing is finished.
Step 3: See the results in the “Checks” tab
Once YouTube has finished processing the video, click on the “Checks” tab to see the results.
If the music is free of claims here’s what you will see:
If the music is registered with Content ID (hence will trigger copyright claims on YouTube), you will see a big red exclamation mark in the “Checks” tab:
Click on the “Checks” tab for details:
Now you click on “SEE DETAILS” to see how exactly your video will be affected if you proceed with the upload:
How this affects my video?
UPDATE
Recently YouTube has made changes to the Copyright Details screen.
On one hand it tells you the exactly what effect the claim has on your video.
On the other hand you need to dig a little deeper if you want to find our who issued the claim.
To find our more about the claimant, hover over “Impact on video” section:
Copyright claims do not necessarily restrict you from using the music.
In fact, the claim details page gives us all the information we need to make the decision.
So, in this particular example we see that:
1) This isn’t a copyright strike, so there is no penalty on my channel.
2) I cannot monetize the video.
3) I still can use the music if I don’t mind occasional ads.
4) If I have the license to use this music (and I want to monetize or don’t want the ads) I need to contact HAAWK to get the claim removed.
Related: How to resolve copyright claims for properly licensed music
Will checking for copyright penalize my channel?
Testing for copyright will not penalize your channel.
If you still have concerns you can do this:
1) Set up a new channel specifically for testing.
2) Cancel the upload if you get a claim.
However, as we said, copyrights claims (not to be confused with copyright strikes) do not penalize the channel.
IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER!
This method will only tell you whether a song is registered with YouTube’s Content ID system (and if you can monetize your video). This does not automatically grants you the legal permission or license to freely use the music. If you don’t have the permission to use the music, use it at your own risk.
Neither it guarantees that you never get a claim in the future.
Even if you’re not seeing any claims now, the copyright owner can decide to protect the content with Content ID later on or block your videos manually.
These risks will always be there if you’re using copyrighted material without permission. The only way to mitigate these risks is to get the permission (or license).
If you need music that you can legally use in videos and monetized YouTube channels (with lifetime royalty free license), check out our growing collection of royalty free music.
Takeaway
It is indeed possible to know with 100% accuracy if a song or a piece of music in copyrighted (that is, will trigger copyright claim on YouTube).
For that you need to make a simple video with that music, upload it to YouTube, and pay attention to the “Checks” tab during the upload.
In most cases, you still can use copyrighted music in your videos, as long as you don’t monetize.
Questions? Comments?
Post a comment below.
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thank you, very helpful!
Good tip! I often forget to check if a song is copyrighted before I use in my videos. Thanks for the reminder!
Hi I was wondering how a few twitch streamers I’ve seen post their vods on youtube with popular songs that are definitely copyrighted. These would be like kpop songs and such.
Granted they’re only playing the songs for the first 5-10 mins as a stream-starting-soon background music, I would assume it’s still copyrightable on youtube? If a specific example is required, have a look at Shoto’s Twitch VODs on youtube.
What about public domain?
That depends. Technically, registering public domain recordings with Content ID is against YouTube’s rules, yet it often ignored and people do abuse the system. On the bright side, this issues can be reported and typically resolved quickly.
On the other hand, even if a composition is in public domain, the recordings of that composition can still under copyright. Think of modern day recordings of old jazz or classical music.
The way YouTube checks for copyrighted content is automated and cannot be trusted. You have to manually review every copyright claim. We upload present day performances of classical music a lot, and I fought a lot of false claims. They are either claims for composition ownership, or soundtrack ownership. Someone can submit false ownership of e.g. opera composer’s work from 19th century, and YouTube just blindly follows it without proofing the current status (such copyright usually expires 70 years after composer’s death, which can even be 150 years ago!). Recording ownership is another story – if two pianists or orchestras play the same composition equally good and both track are of high quality, they will sound identically from the algorithm’s point of view. Hence a lot of false claims. You just have to carefully review each time, what exactly is being claimed, and submit a dispute. It’s a very easy and short process, and after that the claimant has 30 days to reply back. During which, the video is not monetized by anyone. If the claimant does not bother to reply or even check (which is the case 99% of the time for us), the claim is released automatically.
Youtube is a bit of a joke now. I tried using public domain live music from archive.org and it wouldn’t let me use the full song.
Keep in mind archivel.org does not really moderate the content. Anybody can upload anything and claim it’s public domain. That’s not always the case. Often, even if the composition is already in public domain, the recordings of that composition are not. Also, it depends if you’re getting the claims for the recording or publishing claims on YouTube. There are many factors at play, it’s hard to tell without knowing the details. As a rule of thumb, if you want copyright support, get music from a reputable place. Hope this helps.
I was doing experiments and figured out you can get around youtubes copy write claims/strikes it seems just by speeding up/slowing down a song enough. I’m making a commercial game and am using pixabay.com music and fear someone could modify a copyright protected song enough so youtube can’t tell. I have the licenses but fear a possible lawsuit if my game makes enough money and the original music creators find out… apparently some people on pixabay.com have uploaded copyright protected music and people in the comments were furious. How much exactly do these licenses help? Would they hold up in court?
If you’re making a commercial game, we always recommend licensing music from reputable source. Sadly, digital content gets stolen quite often. We regularly have to deal with cases when people try to re-distribute our music under different names.
The main issue with free music sites is that they simply allow anyone to upload music. To the best of our knowledge, there is no verification of copyright ownership.
For example, we only work with a small number of providers and we know for the fact that we’re getting the music directly from original composers who created it.
All in all, if you’re making commercial games, our advise is to get proper license. You can learn more here: https://www.tunepocket.com/music-licensing/
I am curious as to how YouTube check for copyright protected content. I uploaded a music video with my original song and video animation created my me. When the check was completed it showed Copyright-protected content found’. The message displayed was,
‘Video uses this song’s melody. Content found during: 4:09 – 5:18’.
The length of the video is 5min 20sec.
The content in timecode 4:09 – 5:18 is the chorus repeated twice at the end of the song.
The same chorus is also used after the 1st verse at 1:07 – 1:31 and after the 2nd verse at 2:25 – 2:50. The choruses are identical because they were copied and pasted.
I’m curious as to why the YouTube checker skipped the 1st and 2nd chorus and found the copyright protected content in the last two chorus which are identical to the 1st and 2nd chorus.
That’s a good question. Unfortunately, only YouTube can answer definitively 🙁 In our experience, their matching algorithm works fine most of the time but it does mismatch content occasionally.
Hello, I am a new Youtuber Animator ready to make videos with music in them. With all this information about safely not getting the videos taken down or other risks. I am still afraid to make further videos with music that’s from others. Considering that the years are moving along, things will change.
Reply if you have time, thank you.
By all means copyright infringement should be taken seriously. That does not mean, however, that you have to create your own music 🙂 As long as you have the license / permission to use the music, you should be fine. If you’re interested we offer a wide range of music (over 11K music tracks and sounds at the time of this writing) and we provide copyright support if you get any claims.
Good article. Back in 2015 I used a couple dozen well known Christmas songs in a video. As I expected, I got copyright notice on all of them but I was able to use the music as the ad revenue went to the copyright owner. I just tried posting a new video a number of these songs and the notices are now “video cannot be seen”. Any Idea what has changed with these copyright owners? It would seem they would be happy to receive revenue? My channel is not monetized.
It’s hard to tell definitively without seeing the actual claim. The rights owners do have the option of muting or taking down the videos if they decide that ad revenue is not what they want. Also, keep in mind that claims (or takedowns) are not necessarily about music. Can be triggered by the footage, trademarks, or generally the content of the video.
What about a 3 second snippet of a music video cut into your footage for a laugh?🤔 like Black eyed peas- I got a feeling. Lol
This may qualify as fair use but you still most likely will get a copyright claim on your video.
How about your try and post back the results?
I think if you send a video to YouTube (public channel) you need to seriously check and verify the copyright ownership of the music.
Every time you upload a video with music that you’re using without explicit permission you’re running a risk of copyright action. Even if the “Checks” tool does not report any issues right away the copyright owners still have ways of finding infringing videos. We can only recommend to always having the license for any music (even free music) you use.
Hello which music can I use for my channel because already I have to copyrighted videos and I want to monetize my videos
We always recommend using music from a trusted music provider where you can get the license that proves you have the permission to use the music. Here are some reasons people use us to get their music: https://www.tunepocket.com/why-choose-us/
I have mustic distributed by Distrokid. On Distrokid my music has Content ID. When I post my music to Facebook, Facebook mutes my music, saying I am infringing on my own copyright. I can’t promote my own music. Facebook have a way for me to confirm my copyright so I can post my music? Does Distrokid Content ID have some system that allows me to post my music on Facebook, Instagram and other social media without being stopped by my own copyright?
Content ID only affects YouTube. You must be using Distrolock service. That service indeed stops your songs from being used on Facebook, Twitter, Soundcloud, Vimeo, Twitch, and other platforms.
Hi,
I’ve uploaded a video including several copyright content videos with do no monetize state only.
It was OK for several months.
Now suddenly I get the state changed into a Blocked state.
What can I do ? How Can I trust Youtube copyright check if it changes like this?
Please advise.
Hi Eli,
The copyright check tool only reports the restrictions that exist at the moment you perform the checks. You still can get claims later on if the owner decides to protects the content with Content ID or blocks your video manually via their creator studio copyright report (that’s the report that shows all other videos using your content).
If you’re using copyrighted material without permission or license these are the risks that always will be there. The only way around it is to actually get the license.
Hope this helps!
If you get the license from the rights holder of the music – how can you let YouTube know that you’ve got the license and not get strikes against yourself or your content taken down?
Is there a specific section or place where you can say that you got the rights? And if so – how is it verified by the people who granted you those rights? If the systems that check the content are automatic – how can you notify them or disable them manually?
YouTube wouldn’t know that you have license. In fact, YouTube isn’t even involved in making these decisions. They perform the matching and let the copyright owner decide what to do about that. So even if you have the license, you need to dispute the claim. Some copyright owners (or rather technology partners that work on their behalf) have systems that can release the claims almost instantly. For others it may take some emailing back and forth. Keep in mind that it also possible to whitelist channels to prevent repeated claims. Our clients usually are able to do so with little problem. Hope this helps!