So I’ve been uploading practice covers to YouTube. I expected these to get copyright claimed the moment they went up, so I only share them as ‘unlisted’ links. What I’m curious about, and what people here may have experience with, is how this affects channel ‘standing’. Let’s say one day in future I did want to monetize different (non-music) videos on this channel - would the presence of these on my channel inherently prevent that? Or, what if I were to suddenly make some of these covers public while having monetised videos elsewhere - would that automatically get the channel nuked?
I imagine there’s people with far more experience with the platform or follow musicians who’ve dealt with this sort of thing, so I’d love to know what you know.
Broadly speaking any time you use copyrighted music YT will recognize that.
It then gives you an option to use it but usually all (if any) monetized content goes to whoever owns the music. This happens when you’ve uploaded the video and gone through a series of questions at the end of the YT upload process.
This is why YouTubers won’t use songs as they’ll be giving away all potential revenue from that video to a company.
Sometimes artists don’t let you use their music and you have to cut it out of your video.
One way round that is to play so badly that it doesn’t recognize the song. So that’s an option for you
My understanding is that copyright claims on cover songs aren’t necessarily the same thing as copyright strikes, but if you’re concerned about future monetization, a separate channel for bass covers seems like the cleanest approach. It keeps your music uploads and any future monetized content completely separate.
All of our full covers got copyright claims. We took that as a badge of honor
No backing tracks, all instruments and vocals covered, still detected as being the song, that’s as close to a “passing grade” as you get on the youtubes.
Correct. A claim will just funnel money to the original artist and that’s how come all the music posted gets to stay up at all.
A few labels (and fewer but notable bands, like the Eagles) are complete dicks and file takedowns for their artists and that gives a strike. After a few strikes your account is toast.
I have this sort of virtual rock band in a certain MMORPG, and I have a channel where I post songs I’ve covered. Despite being, essentially, crappy video game MIDI renditions, they still get copyright claims about 2/3 of the time. I consider that a mark of quality, since it was good enough to fool an AI!
Thanks everyone, sounds pretty concrete! I’m going to make a second channel to be on the safe side, and then at least I can have the videos be public without risking my real channel!
I just saw that and came to post it here! Youtube is getting ridiculous! Copyright claims where there is no sound! I think it is enough now if the person is holding an instrument and says the name of the song, no playing necessary!
On my Final Fantasy XIV virtual band channel, I got a copyright claim for what was known as “The Most Mysterious Song on the Internet”. It was recorded off of German radio in 1984, and at the time nobody had been able to identify it’s author, the band, their nationality, or even the song’s correct title. But my video still got claimed by something called “CD Baby”, so someone said they owned it.
BTW, the song was finally identified after 17 years of searching, it’s “Subways of Your Mind” by FEX. But at the time the search was still ongoing and nobody knew that. The original band members weren’t really on the internet and had no idea people were looking for them, but they have since reunited and rerecorded the song. I wonder what hoops they had to jump through to get the rights back?
Thanks for mentioning this! I remember this story from some years ago. The band has now released an official video for the song. The text in the video description is so interesting, worth reading.
Hopefully that helps, but for example here’s the video I mentioned that got copyright claimed despite nobody at the time even knowing who performed it. It’s video game MIDI that doesn’t sound like real instruments at all, but the algorithm still found it. Roughly 65-70% of my FFXIV videos get flagged.
Youtube is getting ridiculous! Copyright claims where there is no sound! I think it is enough now if the person is holding an instrument and says the name of the song, no playing necessary!
