Battle of the YouTube Overlords

It seems like YouTube changes their copyright policies more frequently than some of us change our underwear. And if you feel called out by that intro, you should probably go shower.

I haven’t been too active as myself lately, seeing as how my alter ego is signing record deals and actually getting some industry attention after just two short years. However, when I start receiving emails from fans about YouTube videos being taken down because they contain my music, that catches my attention. And not in a good way. So let me give you the latest, as far as I know it, on how not to piss off the YouTube robots.

For the record, I wholeheartedly support using my music as background to your videos. I think it’s awesome.

The Nickel Version of How This Works

I own all my own copyrights as Matthew Ebel Entertainment, but that doesn’t mean I’m the one tracking my intellectual property (or IP, in this case music). Because I distribute my songs and albums through CD Baby, they actually handle all of the royalty collection on my behalf. My job is to make music, their job is to manage things like YouTube’s shapeshifting policies.

Usually this means if you use my music in a video, you’ll get a notice saying CD Baby has claimed a portion of that video. Cool… your video stays up, I get a little ad revenue, everybody’s happy. Unless you dispute the claim for some reason— and believe me, I have seen some of the stupidest counter-claims since I became a YouTube partner:

  • I found this song on the internet, so it’s copyright free.
  • I’m not charging money to watch this video so you can’t claim it.
  • This is my original song. (Yeah, plenty of people tried to claim “Everybody Needs A Ninja” was their IP and not mine.)

In most cases, you don’t need to do anything when you get a notice from YouTube and CD Baby, just don’t try to claim you own IP that you don’t. Your video will stay up and will sound as awesome as my corny songs can make it.

What’s Changed?

Sometimes things get messy when YouTube moves faster than CD Baby can keep up. Lately, for example, they changed policies so that if you play more than one of my songs in a video, it considers it an “album video” or something to that effect. Apparently this changes how YouTube and CD Baby treat the video.

And, frankly, I don’t fully understand the interaction myself. All I know is that CD Baby has posted a lot of info about their interactions with YouTube on their site. A good place to start is this article about allowing people to use music in videos.

The IP world is a thicket of changing policies and regulations, but at the end of the day I want to make one thing clear: I am absolutely cool with your use of my music in your YouTube videos unless it’s a direct advertisement, political video, or offensive. If the YouTube overlords have changed something that CD Baby hasn’t ironed out yet, don’t hesitate to contact me and see if we can sort things out.