Every now and then every creator on YouTube or any other social media receives a copyright claim. In today’s world musicians, photographers and writers are protecting their materials way more than it was a decade ago. Hence, as a content creator, you must follow their rules to be away from any claims and strikes that can damage the reputation of your social media channel.
What is a copyright claim?
In short, a copyright claim is when someone states that you have used their content, whether it is a video, an image, or a piece of audio.
Copyright claims on YouTube are also known as Content ID claims. Content ID is a fully automated digitized tool on the YouTube platform that scans videos and notifies the rights holders, if their videos clips, images or audio have been used without their permission.
Why can you receive a copyright claim?
Content creators can receive a copyright claim if they failed to attribute the copyrighted content in a correct way. Usually, when you want to use someone else’s materials, you can find an instruction on how to place credits in your content to avoid any copyright problems.
However, sometimes authors don’t leave any comments on the way they want their materials to be attributed. That is the case when content creators receive copyright claims most of the time.
In this article, we will talk about YouTube as the main platform where content creators receive copyright claims on a daily basis.
5 ways how you can manage YouTube copyright claims:
- Dispute the claim
- Replace a song
- Use royalty free music platforms
- Trim out segment
- Use YouTube library tracks
1. Dispute the claim
If you’ve already received a copyright claim, you can access the flagged content through your Content Manager dashboard. Sometimes it can be a real file that you used but forgot to attribute correctly.
However, there are plenty of cases when YouTube would flag your content even though it is just a track in a shop that you made a clip at. In that case, you can dispute the claim as you actually didn’t use any copyright files yourself.
2. Replace a song
Most of the time whenever content creators receive a copyright claim, it’s really hard to dispute it. However, even in that case, you can solve the problem with copyrighted content.
You can replace a song!
In the YouTube Creator Studio, you will have a choice to replace a song or a melody you’ve received as a claim. The process is easy enough, but the main concern of many is ‘how to find a replacement song without receiving a claim again?’.
That’s when royalty free music platforms can help you to find a way out of this situation!
3. Royalty free music platforms
If you are still in the process of editing, make sure the music you use in your video is fully royalty free. Not only that but you need to check if the platform you use also has all copyright ownership rights.
Royalty free music platforms are online music libraries with a huge range of tracks, sound effects and files that are copyright claim-free. The platforms usually allow you to use a few trial tracks and afterwards you must pay for a monthly subscription. Although sometimes you can find free platforms with stock music that you can use in your projects. These platforms usually state that if you use a music track from one of these websites, you shouldn’t receive a claim.
But the sad reality is stating that sometimes it doesn’t work this way!
Most of these so-called ‘royalty free’ platforms don’t have copyright ownership for a long period of time, hence you can receive a claim a year after using their music. Quite a bittersweet situation, especially when you pay money for their services.
Therefore, whenever you found a perfect royalty free music platform, make sure to find as much information as possible. Do they have any problems with claims or do they have a support centre in case you receive a claim? Make sure that the answer is ‘no’ and ‘yes’ accordingly.
4. Trim out segment
If you’re not ready to complete huge research on royalty free platforms, you can always just trim out the copyrighted segment. Usually, it works if the clip is not affecting the whole concept of the video and you won’t lose any valuable information.
5. Use YouTube library tracks
At the end of 2013, YouTube implemented Copyright ID – software that automatically checks every uploaded video on any copyrighted content. And it was the start of a new era for the whole content community because, with this new rule, every single piece of work has to be done differently. However, YouTube prepared everything in advance and came up with YouTube copyright-free library tracks that every creator can find in their dashboard.
It was quite easy to use these tracks back in the day and no one would be suspicious over it, because the library is huge. However, today most of the users on YouTube can easily identify if the track is from a free YouTube library or it’s something more unique.
Although if you’re only starting on your channel, YouTube music library is a great choice because you’re definitely free of any copyright claims and strikes. It also helps you to worry less about a great sound for your project. However, be ready that your audience might already know some of these tracks and they can assume that your content is not special.
These are the main ways to keep your content and channel copyright claims-free. Follow our guidance and worry only about the content that you want to create.
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Tunetank is a royalty-free music library for content creators.