I realised it’s been more than 10 YEARS (!) since I uploaded my first ever video on YouTube.
Back then, there was little awareness of copyrights on YouTube and many people, myself included, simply added our favourite songs to our film clips.
In the last decade, YouTube has come a long way. I remember about a year after that, I got my first “copyright infringement” notice from YouTube. I’d made a slideshow of photos and I think the song I used was “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” by Israel Kamakawiwoʻole. YouTube blocked my video but gave me options of free music, and I chose one (which is still on the video now).
The majority of my personal videos were just home movies so I didn’t need music, but I often wondered about the covers that went viral. When I did use music, it was often from the free music library on iMovie but you get sick of that pretty quickly! I saw various sites selling music to use in videos but didn’t really need it, but recently looked into this issue again.
It seems that now, YouTube has three main options for the use of music in videos:
- YouTube Free audio library: you can browse and download a decent selection of music
- YouTube Music Policies search: here you can search for and view copyright information on recorded music.
- Use music that you know you have the rights to, or acknowledge in the text
To make it perfectly clear, I am not giving official advice here, you should always make sure you are well informed with the most up to date information when you choose to use and upload content onto social media that you didn’t create yourself.
However it does seem that there are options to use recorded music on YouTube – and if you do, and they identify it, then they have the right to monetise it with royalties going to the original creator. I’m sure that for a large majority of videos, that means there will be no (or limited) ads, but should your video happen to “go viral” then by using someone else’s music, any advertising revenue goes to them. Fair enough right?
Zestee 