DON'T GET BANNED - Copyright on YouTube Explained

In this video, we're going to be going over the different levels of copyright on YouTube and how they can negatively affect your channel.

So in this video I'm going to talk about copyright and whether you're someone who uses music in the background or your videos, or you're someone like me who's a music teacher, you're going to find value in this lesson. Now, I am a full time guitar teacher here on YouTube, so I am no stranger to the copyright system. I've gotten hit with lots of copyright notices from YouTube, but my channel is still here and growing. So what I want to do in this video is I want to go over the three levels of copyright and whether or not those negatively impact your channel. After that, I want to go over some of the practices I use to avoid getting hit with copyright issues on my channel. So the first level of copyright is what we call demonetization. Now this will only matter if you are part of the YouTube Partner Program. So the YouTube Partner Program is if you have a thousand subscribers and 4,000 hours of watch time, you're able to make money off of the videos you upload to YouTube. Now when you get a demonetization, you'll get a little message from YouTube that says, hey, the copyright owner has recognized a piece of their copyright in your video and they're putting a claim out on the video. Now this does nothing to negatively affect your channel and it does nothing to negatively affect the video. The video will still be able to play, you will still make some money off of that video. But the majority of the money, probably 80 to 90% of it is going to go to the copyright holder holder, whether that's, you know, Sony, you know, WarnerMedia, those are some of the kind of the bigger copyright holders out there for music. So if you're someone who is depending on YouTube ads for monetization, you can see how that can kind of be a pain in the butt. Now the second type of copyright is what we call a copyright block. Once again, this does not negatively impact your channel, but it does negatively impact the video. So a lot of times what happens if you go and you share out that link, there's going to be a black box that pops up that says, hey, this content is no longer available. And it's not that the content is no longer available. The copyright holder is saying, hey, you're using a piece of my content. I don't want this video shown unless you remove that content. Now in demonetization and a copyright block, say you have a video that's 20 minutes long and you only use a 30 second sample, it will demonetize the entire 20 minute video or it will block the entire 20 minute video. Now if you're like me and you put a lot of time and effort into recording, editing and uploading, your videos really stinks when you get a block. I think YouTube knows how much work we put into creating these videos, so they are nice in allowing you to remove the part parts of the video that have the copyright issue. Now if you can do that and it doesn't negatively affect the video, then that's great, it's an easy fix and the copyright issue is gone. But if you're someone like me who's a guitar teacher and it's a guitar lesson and you take it out and it's totally going to ruin the lesson, you might have to go and redo that lesson. This happened to me on Hotel California by the Eagles. Even though I hadn't been playing the track in the video because I have been singing along to the song, I got hit with a copyright block. I redid the video, I just played the chords, I didn't sing any of the lyrics and I was able to get the video to go through without any copyright issues. So you can see the first two levels of copyright really aren't that bad. The copyright block is a little bit of a pain if you've put a lot of time and effort in. But the most common one, the one that I get hit with all the time, is demonetization. I've only been hit with a copyright block twice in my four and a half years of making guitar lesson videos on YouTube and so far I've never gotten hit with the next one. So the last and final copyright, and this one's actually the bad run, is what we call a copyright strike. Now fortunately, with copyright strikes there is a three strikes in your out rule. This means if you get three copyright strikes in a 90 day period, your entire YouTube account can be completely deactivated and shut down. So you can see why this is a huge issue for people like me who are music teachers. Now. The sad thing about these copyright strike issues is that sometimes a video that was okay copyright wise a few months later or sometimes even a year or two later can all of a sudden get start hitting with copyright issues. I think this happened to Rick Beato recently with a Simon and Garfunkel song where the song was fine and then all of a sudden out of the blue he got a copyright strike. Notice about this Simon and Garfunkel song and I think he got like two copyright strikes within a matter of a couple weeks. So you can see why someone like me, who's the music teacher or other music teachers out there are really concerned about the copyright issues on YouTube. So what I'm going to do next is go over some of the best practices I use to avoid copyright issues on my YouTube videos. But before we do that, if you guys are finding this video helpful, make sure to subscribe and turn on your notifications. This way, YouTube will let you know when I release more videos just like this. Now if you're someone who's doing a video like this where you're just talking to a camera and you're providing an educational benefit, you're not doing anything music lesson related, the best thing to do would be to find and download copyright free music. Now there are some websites that offer copyright free music, but there are also some YouTube channels that focus completely on copyright free music where you can go and click on a download link to get a file of that sample. One example is Vlog no copyright music, which seems to have more upbeat songs in its catalog. Another one is audio library music for content creators. And one that has a little bit more of a chill vibe is chill out records. You can go check out some of those channels. You do have to search through and find something that meets the look and feel the sound of what you're going for. But it's a surefire way to avoid any of these copyright issues. Now again, if you're a teacher like me, how do I go about avoiding these copyright issues as much as possible? So for me, I fortunately can play an instrument and sing. So I, I tend to self accompany myself. So if I get hit with copyright issues, the majority of the time it's a cover copyright, meaning that I get a copyright demonetization. And YouTube is saying that's okay because it looks like you're covering someone's song, you're doing a live performance of someone's song, which is essentially what I'm doing in the middle of a lesson as I'm performing someone's song. Now I've tested a couple ways to see if I can not get demonetized at all. So I've experimented with some singing in my lessons versus not singing. I find if I don't sing, I'm less likely to get hit with demonetization. But still, sometimes I think it was against the Wind by Bob Seger. I didn't sing at all. It was just playing the chords, the strumming pattern and the chord progression. And that was enough for me to get hit with the demonetization. So you just never know. It really depends on the copyright holder and how strict they are. Where I find a lot of people, particularly music teachers, get into trouble is when they're using backing tracks or actual recordings of the music. That's a surefire way to get demonetization and a very good way to get some of your videos blocked. So I would highly recommend, if you're going to use backing tracks, try to make them yourself or just don't play over them at all. Now, another thing music teachers ask me all the time when it comes to copyright is, Lauren, I know you sell guitar courses. Like I said, I do YouTube full time now. I make a lot of my money selling courses, but I do not include any copywritten materials in, in my courses in order to do that. If you're going to sell something as a course, you do need a copyright license from the copyright owner to do that. So what I do in my courses is I actually teach the technical aspects you need to know to play the music. And then I use a hosting platform like Kajabi. I'll put a link to that in the description below if you guys are interested in checking that out. But within the course itself, I will say, hey, here are some songs to these are going to be a bunch of links and they link out to YouTube videos. They're my YouTube videos, my lessons. And you guys can go and apply the things you're learning in these lessons to these songs. Now, I know what you're saying, Lauren. These are people who are paying for a course, but you're sending them over to a free resource, YouTube. Aren't they going to get pissed off? Well, the answer is no, because I am basically holding their hand and telling them specifically what songs I want them to do. I have hundreds of videos on YouTube and even my own students going through my course may not know which videos are appropriate for them. And that's the whole point of the course is it's really that hand holding. So, you know, we'll go through, you know, the first five lessons and I'll say, great, we learn these skills in these first five lessons. These are the songs you can go and play on YouTube that will allow you to feel good about yourself and get you going. And then when we learn the next set of skills, I recommend another set of songs. Now, this is a great thing too, because YouTube really likes when you send viewers over to the platform instead of start new sessions. So this is going to send some great positive signals to YouTube. It's also going to help with building and growing your YouTube channel. Now if you guys are interested in learning more about the things that YouTube likes and how to grow your YouTube channel faster and maybe even do YouTube full time like me selling courses, then I would highly recommend you go check out my YouTube course. I'll put a link in the description below, but I go over, you know, the SEO, the analytics, what to do before, during and after you upload your videos. What happens if you upload a video and it's crap? What can we do to fix that? What can we do to try and maybe rescue that video? How to promote your videos for free? So I go over a lot of that information in my course. So again, go to the description below, check that out and if you guys find this video helpful, leave a comment below, say hello, YouTube's going to pop up a couple more videos over there. Go check those out and hope to see you guys in another video real soon.