In a recent
post, YouTube said that they will remove the ability for manual copyright claimants to monetize "
very short or unintentional uses of music". According to YouTube, this change is "intended to improve fairness in the creator ecosystem, while still respecting copyright owners’ rights to prevent unlicensed use of their content".
In their manual claim policy, YouTube defines "unintentional use" as:
- The content was not added to the video by the creator.
- AND There is no interaction between the creator and the content.
Some examples of "unintentional use" are:
- Television heard from another room of the creator’s house or office.
- Music from a passing car.
Examples for which YouTube will not consider "unintentional use" are:
- Singing, dancing, or playing along to the music.
- Any content that is added in post-production or editing software.
- Background music in a place where the creator has direct control over the music, or the intent of the video is to capture the audio, such as a concert.
Regarding the "very short" mention, you can expect it to be in the "single digit seconds".
YouTube will start to enforce these new policies on all new manual claims beginning in mid-September 2019. YouTube also added that copyright owners who repeatedly fail to adhere to these policies will have their access to the Manual Claiming tool suspended.
Although these can be good news for creators that make use of short copyrighted clips of music in their videos, as copyright owners may choose not to do anything, YouTube noted that copyright owners can still choose to track with their claim, in which case neither the creator nor the copyright owners would be able to monetize the video, or they can also choose to use the claim to block the content.
The best way to avoid any copyright issues is still not to use copyrighted material unless you have a license or written permission. Fortunately, if you are a member of the Freedom! family, you already have access to our diverse library of music, such as
Music Factory, Uzer Music, Epidemic Sound, AudioMicro, and more, on your shiny Freedom! Dashboard, for free.
To learn more more about YouTube's manual claim policies, click
here.
Note: Freedom! doesn't offer access to AudioMicro and Uzer Music currently.
Updated: 2021-05-14
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