YouTube will, in the coming months, allow video creators to add licensed music through copyright sharing.
On Tuesday, YouTube announced many new features at a creator event, highlighting its Partner Program, Shorts, and content monetization revenue. Music, always subject to debate, was also a key element of “Made on YouTube”, with a system of revenue sharing and choice of music which will be extensively revised in the coming months, to satisfy both creators and rightholders.
Creator Music, the future YouTube program to use licensed music
The year 2023 (we should not expect a deployment of new features immediately) will be the year of revenue sharing for YouTube. The platform has pushed, in recent years, not to use content (video and / or audio) protected by copyright, depriving them de facto of monetization. This will change.
Most notably, YouTube on Tuesday introduced what will soon be a new YouTube Studio page (the Creators Dashboard): Creator Music. This program will allow content creators of the service to access a catalog of licensed music.
Today it is not possible to use copyrighted music. When importing the video, YouTube’s artificial intelligence automatically detects the title and formalizes a claim for copyright infringement, systematically demonetizing the posted video. Tomorrow, the possibilities will be different.
Creators will have a choice: pay to keep the revenue, or share it with rightsholders
The Creator Music page will work like a traditional music bank, but with licensed titles. It will be possible to use them for long videos without the sword of Damocles above the head, without unfortunate consequences for the monetization of its content.
YouTube mentions agreements concluded with about fifty labels, publishers and distributors (a data likely to evolve by next year), and hundreds of thousands of songs available under Creator Music license. We do not know for the moment the precise contents of the catalog. But there is obviously a whole economic model around this future system.
Licensed music will not be “free”. They will be accessible against a price, assumed for the moment, of 4.99 dollars. By paying this sum, the YouTube creator will be able to reuse the music and, above all, keep all the revenue generated by the video. A particularly interesting option for channels with strong views. Today, YouTube takes 45% commission for its rights holders (the remaining 55% goes to the creator).
If the creator does not wish to pay the cost of the license, he can still use the same music, however protected, but he will then have to resolve to share the income from the monetization of his video. This option will undoubtedly be favored initially by small creators who do not want to incur additional costs in their videos. In this case, the holders of the musical rights and the creators will share the remaining 55%: 27.5% for the author of the video, 27.5% for the artist, production house of the piece used. And of course, YouTube will keep its 45% commission.
Sources: Clubic, YouTube, Neowin
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