Solving YouTube Content ID Claims for Stock Audio

The soundtrack you choose for your video sets the mood and elevates the emotional elements of your piece. With Audioblocks, our goal is to provide an extensive library of stock music, sound effects, and loops at a great value to accommodate both personal and professional needs. With your subscription, you secure a license to use our royalty-free audio in our library for both commercial and non-commercial purposes.

Since our music is 100% royalty-free, there is no need for YouTube to collect royalties for the copyright holder—we’ve already taken care of that. Our licensing gives us a distinct advantage in quickly removing any claims that might falsely arise. A small segment of our customers does, unfortunately, experience the occasional Content ID claim from YouTube. If you’ve ever received a “Matched Third Party Content” message in your Video Manager, you know how frustrating it can be. Fortunately, we are here to help you dispute these claims. Before we explain the solution, we want to explain what causes the problem in the first place. If you want to skip straight to the solution though, click here.

What is Content ID?

All songs that aren’t in the public domain have a specific copyright holder: the composer, a record label, or a songwriting organization such as ASCAP. When musicians and composers sell their work to different companies (like Audioblocks), they retain the copyright, and the company gains the licensing rights. In our case, our subscribers obtain the licensing rights as well. If everything goes smoothly, you should never receive the dreaded “Matched Third Party Content” message.

Often though, composers will also submit their music to a third party who specializes in obtaining royalties. YouTube will then uses an algorithm called Content ID to find videos that use content from these third parties. When YouTube gets a Content ID match, that third party will then monetize the video to ensure that the royalties go to the copyright holder on record.

While copyright holders do not exclusively hold the licensing rights once they sell their music to Audioblocks, they still own the copyrights. YouTube’s Content ID algorithm picks up on copyright violations but does not take into account any licensing rights.

YouTube’s algorithm is a rather blunt instrument, not a surgical tool. It identifies commonly used files and not the licenses behind them. Because of this, many songwriters have had their original material mistakenly identified by Content ID, and the same goes for public domain content. We’ve even spoken with a customer who received a Content ID flag for music made available by YouTube itself.

Erroneous Content ID claims are a widespread issue in the audio community, but it’s a necessary sacrifice to ensure that legitimate copyright holders receive payment for their work.

How to solve Content ID Claims

When a claim appears on your video, YouTube provides two options. The first is to do nothing and let the ads on your videos collect revenue that goes toward paying royalties. For users who use a Katy Perry song in a video without permission, this option is ideal because they don’t own the rights; the audio is not royalty-free so the imposed ad revenue will collect any necessary royalties.

Another option is to dispute the claim. When submitting a dispute through YouTube, we recommend providing the reviewers with a link to the track from Audioblocks you used in your video along with a copy of your custom royalty-free license agreement. Your license agreement is available to download on your member dashboard by going to “My Account,” in the top, right-hand corner of your screen, clicking on the “License Agreement” tab, filling out any necessary fields, and then clicking “Generate Personalized License” at the bottom of that page. It will download the agreement as a PDF document that will provide documentation of your license to use our content commercially.

You should also place the following sentence in the notes of the disputes: “I purchased this audio from Audioblocks and received a commercial license to use their content.”

Claimants have up to 30 days to respond. During that time, monetized videos will continue to earn revenue, which YouTube will hold until you can resolve the claim. YouTube will pay out the held revenue to either the video creator or the claimant based on the resolution.

We understand that sometimes life can get busy. Instead of getting dragged down by details, some of our customers want assistance with claim removal so that they can get back to doing what they do best—creating awesome content. We are happy to be one of the only stock media sites to offer claim removal assistance for our customers. This white glove service is a benefit that comes with a premium Audioblocks subscription.

To take advantage of this service, you’ll need an active premium subscription with Audioblocks. With a premium account you’ll have access to these features:

• Dedicated customer support to help remove YouTube claims on your behalf
• Add up to 5 sub-members with individual logins
• Batch downloading files from Project Bins
• Save files directly to Dropbox

YouTube has a standard process for disputing claims that can take weeks to resolve. As an Audioblocks premium subscriber, however, you can send an email to support@audioblocks.com with the following information, and we’ll take care of the claim for you:

• A link to the YouTube video with the claim (Make sure the video isn’t set to “Private”)
• A link to the Audioblocks track used in your video
• The name of the third-party claimant
• The email address linked to your premium Audioblocks subscription

As soon as our support team receives your email, we will contact the claimant directly to have the claim removed. The process typically takes about 72 hours—this is much faster than YouTube’s publicly available options.

The important thing to remember is that Audioblocks content is created by artists, for artists. We purchase and curate this music for you direct from musicians and composers and eliminate the need for royalties from Audioblocks customers so that you can create more without worrying.

Getting your claims removed quickly is so important to us. Our goal is not just to provide you with high-quality royalty-free music, but to make sure your experience using our music is the best it can be. Sign up for a premium plan to get royalty-free music and Content ID support.