As a musician or manager who is present on YouTube, you have probably heard about the term Content ID, mostly when it comes to royalties generation. You may have a fair idea but what really is Content ID and how does it work on YouTube for musicians and record labels on the platform?
Content ID is an excellent feature on YouTube, in this post, we will look at how it protects your songs and how any musician can benefit largely from this feature.
What is Content ID?
Content ID is a copyright system built by YouTube to help musicians track videos which contains their songs so they can either generate revenue from it or take it down.
This $100 million dollar investment by YouTube is available to all musicians who meet a certain criteria on the platform, but using distributors like Muskid gives you an opportunity to get a Content ID for your release regardless of your standing on YouTube.
This is entirely free without additional payments and right from your dashboard, you can track the earnings from your YouTube Content ID.
Muskid offers a free music distribution service which also comes with YouTube content ID, click here to sign up.
How Does Content ID work for Musicians?
- As a musician, your songs or videos are used as references with YouTube’s Content ID. Major distributors like Muskid have deals with YouTube as ‘content managers’, all the revenue from your release are then paid to you through your ‘content manager’.
- YouTube’s Content ID registers a fingerprint from the original files submitted to them by the musician through a music distributor. This becomes a refenrence in the Content ID database.
- Almost everytime, Content ID scans videos on YouTube with the fingerprint to find a match.
- Content ID is able to recognise a match through audio, video or even melodies.
- When Content ID detects a match, there are 3 options available to the music distributor;
- Block the video. In some cases, you can block based on viewer location and exclude certain territories based on the musician or record label’s choice.
- Monetise the video. The video, audio uploaded to YouTube will remain there for viewers to see but all the earnings from it will go to the owner of the Content ID.
- Track viewer data to get detailed analytics on the territories the video is generating most views.
Muskid automatically monetise all the matches on YouTube. This means that the video remains live, but YouTube will advertise on it so that revenue can be generated and paid to the musician as royalties.
What if I want to stop matching for a particular video?
The matching process by YouTube’s Content ID is automatic and not possible to make manual adjustments to how it works on matching fingerprints to audio and videos on the platform. However, using distributors like Muskid, you can request to stop a match from occurring if you intend to upload your songs to your own channel or get permission for someone to upload your songs or videos containing your songs to their channel. To achieve this, you can contact your distributor’s team where they will be able to ‘whitelist’ channels and not show as a match through Content ID.
YouTube says I need 1000 Subscribers and 4000 hours watchtime to be eligible for monetisation, when I deliver my music, will I still get paid through Content ID?
If your deliver your music through a distributor like Muskid, you will still be eligible for YouTube’s content ID and matching will still take place to generate revenue for you.
