Copyright Strike Confusion

[Mike Soda]

I've always wanted to make gaming music videos but in fear of copyright strikes I've shy'd away from it. However I've found quite a few channels have managed to use some very popular songs with seemingly no negative effects. So I decided to do some reading which only lead to more confusion, hence why I'm asking here now. I've checked out a few songs I want to use by various fairly popular artists via YouTube's Creator Studio Music Policies section. Below is a screenshot of what they say that's confusing me along with my questions explaining how. I understand the owner of the music can monetize my video that uses their song & I really don't mind this. As a matter of fact I'm completely for it because it's the least I can do to say thanks for them making something I can get ideas from. In general it boils down to many telling me to not ever use another's work even if I give credit & there's no actual statement saying I can't use a specific thing.

 

1: If I use a song that's "viewable worldwide", I don't try to monetize it myself & I give credit to the original artist in the video & or it's description, can it or my channel still get a copyright strike?

 

2: If so then why does Youtube not give the same initial statement of "you can't use this song in any of your videos" as they do for other popular songs?

[Guest The Viking]

It's youtube. They are weird. Copyright strikes, depends on the company. Some are cool and send you a message asking to delete the vid, others claim & monetize it and move on, others strike it. It really comes down to whether youtube identifies the song or not. If they do, then the copyright holder will most likely come and do one of the three options. If youtube doesn't recognize the song, then you'll be ok until the owner finds it (and some check regularly), and there again, repeat.

 

I would just use copyright free music such as OMFG (yes ok, old, but you get my point), put the credits in the description and done.

[Mike Soda]

1 minute ago, The Viking said:

It's youtube. They are weird. Copyright strikes, depends on the company. Some are cool and send you a message asking to delete the vid, others claim & monetize it and move on, others strike it. It really comes down to whether youtube identifies the song or not. If they do, then the copyright holder will most likely come and do one of the three options. If youtube doesn't recognize the song, then you'll be ok until the owner finds it (and some check regularly), and there again, repeat.

 

I would just use copyright free music such as OMFG (yes ok, old, but you get my point), put the credits in the description and done.

Thank you, I've only ever had 1 strike years ago for using Fuel by Metallica for burning a jack-o-lantern with break cleaner. Although once I learned about some of their major lawsuits over petty things I avoided them completely. Oddly when I deleted that video the strike was removed with it, I thought they were permanent or maybe because that was so long ago I don't know. The hard part about royalty free music is trusting the publisher to not embed malware just to help spread their track or profit in some other way. Although I understand in the long run that would only forever damage their reputation once discovered so long as something is fairly popular & highly rated it should be safe I guess.

[Guest The Viking]

Strikes go away after a few months. I think 1 strike is 6 months of limitations (no livestreaming+no 15+ minutes videos).

 

There's more than that, there's also scummy "music publishers" who will strike your content claiming you used one of their obscure tracks which never existed in the first place, even when using copyright free music. I got 2 strikes (they claimed the video and monetized it) from INgrooves, which, if you google them, they basically do just that for a living: they'll strike and run ads on your videos and they'll get the cash. Usually small channels are affected so it represents peanuts for you but for them, in a large scale, probably hundreds if not thousands of dollars of income (so scummy).

 

You could check artists on Soundcloud that release copyright free songs too.

 

If you get a strike from one of those scummy companies, google their name first, and if they really appear as scum, just fight the strike back, they want to keep doing their disgusting stuff in the background so they'll f/ck off rather easily.

 

edit: you can also contact indie music makers to see if they authorize you to use their songs and maybe even offer them to claim the video after so they get the revenue