In this article, we’ll look at some resources that you can use to find royalty-free music to use in your YouTube videos. We’ll also explain how you can make sure the music you use doesn’t get you a copyright claim, and what happens if you get one.
Hopefully by the time you’ve finished reading this article, you’ll have a clear understanding of how music copyrights work on YouTube and how you can keep it up and running to ensure your videos are monetized.
Table of Contents
How to Search Copyright Free Music
To get started, let’s take a look at the best ways to find royalty-free music for YouTube videos. There are tons of sources online, so it should be pretty easy to find music that matches your videos and preferences.
Here’s a quick overview of what we’ll cover in this section;
- Copyright free music through YouTube search
- YouTube offers royalty-free music
We will start with the safest option and that is to use royalty-free music provided directly by YouTube. Just navigate to YouTube.com/audiolibrary/music and you’ll be able to browse through thousands of free music and sound effects.
Not only are these tracks royalty free, but you can use them in your videos without worrying that they might be mistakenly copyrighted. YouTube specifically offers the audio on this site to creators to avoid copyright claims.
While you may not find exactly what you’re looking for, you can use this page to filter your music by genre, instrument, duration, and even mood, which makes it a must. A powerful tool to find specific music for your needs. The sound effects tab is also a great addition. You can sort by sound category and all of these sounds are free to use.
Next, we have free copyright provided by various channels on YouTube itself. Doing a simple search for ‘copyright free music’ can often return some helpful results.
You can even include specific terms like ‘copyright free piano music’ or ‘copyright free musical comedy’ to find more specific tunes. Remember that just because a video’s title is copyright-free, doesn’t mean it’s free to use on YouTube.
Carefully read the description of the video and see what rules apply. In many cases, it will say that you are allowed to use the song for free, as long as you credit the artist. In some cases, the video may say that you have to pay up front on their website to use their songs – avoid these.
In rare cases, using these songs, even if they are marked as non-copyrighted, may expose you to copyright claims issues. At any point, artists can sign or copyright their content, and this could make an older video that promoted it invalid. We’ll talk more about how you can avoid this in the next section.
How to make sure your music doesn’t make you money
If you don’t want to take the risk, you should always use the music and sounds provided by YouTube on the music library we linked earlier in this article. However, if you’re willing to go the extra mile to get the music a little more interesting, you can make sure your videos don’t have monetization turned off by following the steps I’ll show below.
Step 1 – Make sure you read description of any video you want to use music. Make sure it says in the description you are free to use their song no monetization feature.
Step 2 – Make sure you go through the appropriate route to confirm the music was provided free of charge. Usually, this can be a third-party link or hosted on a music site like Soundcloud. Don’t just extract music from video.
Step 3 – Add music to your video, making sure to save the project file in case you need to remove the music in the future. Next, upload the video to YouTube, let the process process, but don’t upload the video.
Step 4 – Fill in all the details you normally would, such as the video description, tags, title, and thumbnail. No press release. Instead, make the video unlisted and then hit finish. Don’t worry, you can still switch it from unlisted to public in the future and your subscribers will still receive notifications.
Next, you will need to wait a little while. Best bet is to wait about 2 hours. If YouTube’s Content ID system detects copyrighted material in your song, you’ll be notified via email. You can then delete your uploaded unlisted video, go back to the original project file, and choose a new song.
However, if you have followed the first steps, it is very unlikely that your video will be copyrighted. However, this ensures you don’t get stuck in the rare cases that happen.
For example, once I use a song on a royalty-free channel, but the artist is contracted by the record label after publishing to that channel, it means that the information they provide about the use Free apps are outdated.
By following the steps above, you make sure you have your system checked first to make sure you don’t fall victim to something like this. This then allows you to publish your video knowing it’s safe to monetize and without the risk that you might have to reload and lose views.
What if you receive a copyright claim against your video?
If you receive a copyright claim against your video for using music, don’t worry. It will not affect your channel. In most cases, any revenue you make will go to the original artist only. In some cases, the video will be blocked from publishing.
Copyright claims like these are completely different from channel strikes, which can get your channel banned. Channel warnings usually only apply when you’ve blatantly plagiarized content without any fair use measures, such as uploading an entire movie and a company sending a DMCA notice manually. When using audio, this happens very rarely, especially if you follow all the steps in this article.
Summary
Thanks for reading this far. If you’ve read this far, you’ve learned the following:
- How to find music that is safe to use on your YouTube channel.
- How to check that music won’t destroy your video.
- What if you get a copyright claim and why shouldn’t you worry.
I hope that this article has been helpful. Do you have any questions about YouTube’s copyright or content ID system? If you do, leave your questions below and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.
