If you’re in the habit of releasing music, you know about the YouTube Content ID function.
Because nobody buys music anymore, musicians have to make sure they get every few coppers possible through streaming. The idea of the YouTube Content ID is that the platform identifies your music when somebody includes it on a video. Therefore, you receive the appropriate few coppers.
I had a long gap in putting out music videos, so I never paid it too much mind. But, when I decided to do some videos for a project, it was nice to see it pinged. It makes your work feel kind of legit.
Why does YouTube Content ID need a whole blog post?
In short, there are terms of use regarding the Content ID. I want to highlight them so you don’t get spanked.
Why? How do I know about this?
Because, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls… I got spanked.
I worked through it with Amuse’s support staff, and we’re good now. But, holy sweet mother of Jesus and the bananas… it’s a perfectly avoidable ballache, and if this saves one person the time and energy that went into it, I’ll pour myself a fancy beer.
You scallywag. What did you do?
Way back in 2014, I started a project called The Dirty Immigrant. At the time, I lived in the UK, UKIP was on the rise, and I was politically raging. However, I didn’t want to bring my political angst to Nerve Centre.
So, I started this new project. But, because of my commitment to Nerve Centre, I kept instrumentation minimal – just guitars, vocals, and percussion.
I put out an EP and a single. And that was that. Although the single sucks, I’m proud of the EP.
Dude, that was almost a decade ago, and what does it have to do with the Youtube Content ID?
Sometime after uploading all of my past works to contemporary music distribution channels, I noted that the vast majority of my monthly coppers were coming from The Dirty Immigrant. So, when I had a few new politically charged tunes, I figured I could try and make a few more coppers by releasing them under the name.
An important part of The Dirty Immigrant is that it doesn’t have social media channels. But, I had ideas for videos for these new songs, so I made a YouTube channel for them.
I uploaded a few videos and watched them get pinged for copyright by my music aggregator, Amuse. Lovely! I thought to myself, “If the videos get 784 million plays, I’ll make three cents!”
But then I uploaded a video that received no pings. What gives?
Tangent
Well, in between the first videos getting pinged no problem, and the latest video that didn’t get pinged, I undertook… kind of an odd subproject.
Have you heard of a thing called TikTok? I’ve been using it since before it was cool. Regardless, with its increasing popularity, I figured that on social media channels only, I could release some bits of generic, mostly instrumental music that were put together for various projects, and weren’t doing anything else.
My line of thought was that making them available in such a way would let me make a few coppers.
However, when I uploaded a video using one of these pieces of music, I received no pings.
I duly queried Amuse, explaining what I was trying to do. A very patient lad named Johan – a YouTube specialist at Amuse – explained to me in a nutshell that because it wasn’t getting a proper release, it couldn’t get a Content ID for it. It was essentially stock music, and that isn’t allowed to get a Content ID. It’s clearly stated in the eligibility guidelines on their website, which of course I never read.
Fairy snuff.
Back to the main narrative of this blog post
Now going back to The Dirty Immigrant release that I wasn’t getting a copyright ping for the video…
When it didn’t get a ping, I again, duly queried Amuse. After a bit of back and forth, customer support led me back to my old pal, Johan. It transpired that the previous section’s tangent resulted in a ban from Content IDs.
Lads, I 100% did not see that coming.
I basically asked Amuse to assign a Content ID to music that wasn’t eligible for Content ID. Therefore, I asked them to circumvent YouTube’s Terms of Use. In doing so, I breached Amuse’s Terms of Use.
*facepalm*
What happened? Did you get your YouTube Content ID back?
In summary, yes.
Firstly, I explained that it seemed harsh for an innocent mistake, but I appreciated that rules are rules.
Next, Jonas said that it had been a while since the issue. With that, he said that if I could explain what happened in a way that showed that I understood the problem and that it was an honest mistake, they’d review the ban. I thought that was super-reasonable.
Consequently, I sent a grovelling email, acknowledging that I was indeed a scallywag, but not on purpose though. I also explained that what I did was like walking into a bank to rob it, then complaining to staff that the vault was closed.
Thankfully, Johan and his team accepted my explanation, as well as my promise not to do it again.
As a result, they started working on restoring my Content ID.
Conclusion
When this episode was coming to an end, I told Johan that I’d write a post about it. He asked if I could highlight two very important points about the YouTube Content ID. He’s a reasonable guy and doesn’t need any more dumb shit like I put on him, so it seems the least I could do.
- A good example that helps explain YouTube’s circumvention policy:
If your video contains other copyright-protected content blocking you from monetizing, you’re not allowed to add one of your own tracks for the purpose of getting a revenue share yourself through Content ID - Regarding production music:
It’s technically possible for someone or a company to have a license agreement and distribution setup with YouTube that allows production music to be monetized through Content ID – but Amuse does not have that (at the moment)
And there you have it.
Go forth and create. But at least skim-read the Terms of Service of services you intend to use for distribution.
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Feel free to shoot me a coffee