Content ID, YouTube's footprint

Digital streaming services have turned the music business upside down in the 21st century. One of the first and most popular was and is YouTube, the video platform. And those videos often include music, songs.

This whole phenomenon has caused thousands of claims related to the legal ownership of these contents and, to manage this avalanche of disputes, the Content ID was created, a kind of unique digital fingerprint to identify who was the first user to upload a content to its service. creation in particular, which in principle will be considered the original.

Origins

YouTube was created in 2005 by three former PayPal employees and just a year and a half later, at the end of 2006, it was purchased by Google for a whopping $1.69 billion. Since then it has become the most used video-on-demand platform in the world. And not only that, but audio content, whether music videos, concerts or other formats, whether as protagonists of the image or just as a complement to it, have been part of this journey to the future, to creation. and popular dissemination in the creation of audiovisual content. The first years were an oasis of permissiveness and anyone could upload a video set, for example, to original music by any artist, although, of course, they did not have the legal rights or any type of permission to do so. Over time, the companies that own the copyrights of these sound works began to understand the new streaming business and realized the money it was generating and that they were not able to raise. Thus began the claims, disputes and trials, and thus also arose the need for YouTube to control the use of these copyrighted materials and intellectual rights.

The Content ID

Starting in 2007, YouTube began to implement a system to mark, identify and manage the content that was added to its platform and its associated copyrights. And it received the name Content ID. The basic operation is simple: each piece of content uploaded to YouTube is compared to a kind of digital fingerprint previously registered by the legal owners of both the visual and audio content. If a match is found, an alert is activated that can lead to different consequences depending on the specific case in question. If no match is found, the video is suitable for consumption on the platform.

Music streaming services

Disputes

A match found translates into copyright infringement, the owner of which is informed and, from that moment on, has the power to basically do 3 things:

Block the video (which will not be available and cannot be seen) Analyze statistics display that you may have force ads to appear during the playback of the video in question and perceive the benefits that these ads generate. This, which may seem clear and even fair, also has its dark side. For any author to use the Content ID system, YouTube requires that a series of requirements be met. Some of them are: Comply with YouTube policies and guidelinesHaving at least 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 hours of valid public viewsHaving an AdSense advertising account These and other impediments mean that, in fact, not everyone can enjoy this protection on their creations, no matter how original and quality they may be.

Independent music and YouTube

In short, if you are starting out in the world of audiovisual creativity or you are an amateur composer but you want your work not to circulate freely in the virtual space, it is not easy for you. What we call publishing today, that is, spreading our content everywhere at a devilish speed, means exposing in a wild way what we have created. Copying is the easiest thing in the world if we talk about digital content or any content that can be digitized.

Digital music distributors. So what do I do if I want to broadcast, for example, a video with my original music on YouTube and protect it at the same time? Well, the most common thing for independent artists, without current publishing or record contracts, is to turn to digital distributors. These companies specialized in providing music streaming services such as Spotify, Apple Music and other music and songs, are also in charge of collecting the money that can be generated by advertising, basically, the reproduction of these musical works. These companies do have access to Content ID and will thus make it possible that if someone uses your work, your music in other YouTube content, the system will recognize it and tell you how you want to proceed in each case. The variety of distributors and their conditions for working with them will be the subject of another article, since they deserve special and in-depth attention.

Conclusions

Yes. In the end, copyright, intellectual property, the most philosophical or metaphysical part of artistic creation is going to run into the mud of business, advertising and money. The harsh reality where the most authentic purity will be tempted by material and commercial pleasures. If you compose songs, or only the music of those songs, or only write the lyrics of those songs or participate in the recording of musical works, whether you like it or not, you will be involved in these matters, to some extent. As you can see, YouTube's Content ID is not a panacea either, nor will it solve all our intellectual property or copyright problems once and for all. Even if we get access to their protection tools, which you have already seen is not easy and/or usually costs some money or transfer of income, it must be said that it is one more way we have to add to our arsenal of anti-plagiarism tests. or unwanted use. Let's think about it a little. Let's investigate the possibilities we have. Let's assess what we want to achieve and how we can do it. Let's not be intimidated by the big machinery of the music industry. #mailpoet_form_3 .mailpoet_form { } #mailpoet_form_3 .mailpoet_column_with_background { padding: 10px; } #mailpoet_form_3 .mailpoet_form_column:not(:first-child) { margin-left: 20px; } #mailpoet_form_3 .mailpoet_paragraph { line-height: 20px; margin-bottom: 20px; } #mailpoet_form_3 .mailpoet_segment_label, #mailpoet_form_3 .mailpoet_text_label, #mailpoet_form_3 .mailpoet_textarea_label, #mailpoet_form_3 .mailpoet_select_label, #mailpoet_form_3 .mailpoet_radio_label, #mailpoet_form_3 .mailpoet_checkbox_label, #mailpoet_form_3 .mailpoet_list_label, #mailpoet_form_3 .mailpoet_date_label { display: block; font-weight: normal; } #mailpoet_form_3 .mailpoet_text, #mailpoet_form_3 .mailpoet_textarea, #mailpoet_form_3 .mailpoet_select, #mailpoet_form_3 .mailpoet_date_month, #mailpoet_form_3 .mailpoet_date_day, #mailpoet_form_3 .mailpoet_date_year, #mailpoet_form_3 .mailpoet_date { display: block; } #mailpoet_form_3 .mailpoet_text, #mailpoet_form_3 .mailpoet_textarea { width: 200px; } #mailpoet_form_3 .mailpoet_checkbox { } #mailpoet_form_3 .mailpoet_submit { } #mailpoet_form_3 .mailpoet_divider { } #mailpoet_form_3 .mailpoet_message { } #mailpoet_form_3 .mailpoet_form_loading { width: 30px; text-align: center; line-height: normal; } #mailpoet_form_3 .mailpoet_form_loading > span { width: 5px; height: 5px; background-color: #5b5b5b; }#mailpoet_form_3{border: 1px solid #fcb900;border-radius: 40px;text-align: center;}#mailpoet_form_3 form.mailpoet_form {padding: 20px;}#mailpoet_form_3{width: 70%;}#mailpoet_form_3 .mailpoet_message {margin : 0; padding: 0 20px;}#mailpoet_form_3 .mailpoet_paragraph.last {margin-bottom: 0} @media (max-width: 500px) {#mailpoet_form_3 {background-image: none;}} @media (min-width: 500px) { #mailpoet_form_3 .last .mailpoet_paragraph:last-child {margin-bottom: 0}} @media (max-width: 500px) {#mailpoet_form_3 .mailpoet_form_column:last-child .mailpoet_paragraph:last-child {margin-bottom: 0}} Please leave this field emptyDo you write songs or would you like to?

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