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      YouTube 101

      To understand how royalties are generated when your music is used on videos uploaded to YouTube, please read below.

      Royalties are generated on YouTube when claims are attached to a video by a copyright owner/administrator on Content ID.

      What is Content ID?

      Content ID is YouTube's CMS Dashboard. YouTube fingerprints every video uploaded to the site using heatmaps and by storing any audio.

      The fingerprint can tell if an original video has been flipped; the colours changed, cropped or stretched; and also can tell whether audio has been sped up, slowed down or otherwise manipulated.

      Using this information, claims are able to be generated against all User Generated Content (UGC).

      How are videos claimed?

      Assets

      Before a claim can be created, the copyright holder would need to register their copyrighted content as an asset. 

      Content ID has 6 types of assets which are:

      • Web (Visual)
      • TV Episode (Visual)
      • Movie (Visual)
      • Music Video (Visual)
      • Sound Recording (Audio)
      • Composition (Audio)

      As a publisher, we register composition assets - much in the same way we register works to societies.

      Composition assets are embedded into Sound Recording assets via the ISRC code (usually created by the label/distributor) which are then attached to videos containing usages of the specific work. Uploaded videos can contain multiple assets and therefore multiple claims (an album compilation for example).

      Claims

      The claim is what ties an asset to a video and can be made on any video containing an asset usage of over 10 seconds.

      Claims are made automatically via Content ID and can take anywhere from a few days to 6 months to be generated. 

      Recent Videos

      For a claim to be generated on a video, the asset used needs to contain a policy instructing the claims behaviour. 

      In order of priority, the 4 types of YouTube policies are:

      • Block (Highest Priority)
      • Track
      • Monetise
      • No Policy (Lowest Priority)

      As multiple assets can be attached to a single video, the policy for that video is set on a priority basis with the strictest policy overriding the policies of any other assets.

      For Example:

      If a composition asset (controlled by the publisher) with a ‘Monetise’ policy is identified on a video, but the Sound Recording asset (controlled by the label or distributor) has a policy to ‘Block’, the video would be blocked as this is the prioritised policy.

      Alternatively, if the Sound Recording asset has no policy, the video policy would be set to monetise as this takes priority over no policy.

      Will monetising a video cause adverts to appear?

      Although YouTube uses adverts to generate royalties, it is not guaranteed that an advert will be placed on a monetised video. Despite this, if a monetise claim is applied, the video will still generate royalties as usual for all of the attached assets via the income produced from adverts on other videos.

      Advertisements are placed on YouTube videos automatically depending on the:

      • Video Demographic
      • Video Channel Type
      • Number of Views 
        etc…

      YouTube Royalty Information

      For composition assets, the average royalty rate for YouTube streams is £300 per 1 Million Streams.

      With claiming, all royalties generated are split equally per asset. For example, if there were two assets on a video and Asset 1 was used for 11 seconds whilst Asset 2 was used for 10 minutes, both assets would receive the same amount of royalties for that one video.

      Removing Claims from a Video

      Composition claims can be removed from YouTube videos for the following reasons:

      • The usage of the asset is less than 10 seconds
      • The usage qualifies as fair use
      • The uploaded video has been set to private
      • YouTube has identified an incorrect asset usage
      • A sync license has been agreed between the copyright holder and the video uploader

      Some uploaders like to credit the music used within the video which is great, but this does not mean that the claim should be removed. 

      To Note:

      It is important to remember that a claim does not guarantee that adverts will be placed on the video. Removing the claim however, will mean that the composers of the asset used in the video will lose out on generating a royalty for their music.