Library placed my whole catalogue in YouTube’s Content ID without permission.

[TrackSonix_Music]

Hi MLR’s,

I’m looking for any advice or suggestions please…

A music library that I have an existing non-exclusive agreement with has submitted my whole catalogue (a few hundred tracks) into YouTube’s Content ID system via Source Audio. This was not communicated in advance, agreed on or stated in our contract agreement. I still own all copyright.

Please also note that 90% of my catalogue is already in YouTube’s CID system via CDBaby and some of it via AdRev. Both CDBaby and AdRev have exclusive rights (depending on which tracks they have) to claim content. The music library seem to have overwritten this or have somehow duplicated my content in there.

As soon as my co-writers, clients and I started getting Content ID claims I immediately contacted the music library (a week ago) and asked them to remove my catalogue from YouTube’s CID with Source Audio. They apologised and said they would remove all tracks as soon as possible. A few days later they’re still telling me they’re working on it. I have clients (that have paid for licenses) telling me their videos have a claim from them too and asking if their license is still valid. Of course their licenses are still valid but this is not cool and is causing a lot of issues. This is basically my lifetimes work. Only two video detections have been cleared so far that I know of, but content claims are still coming in, even this weekend.

What would you guys do? Any advice or suggestions would be much appreciated.

Kind regards,
Jon

[Art Munson]

I have had this happen in the past. In those cases they were submitted to Content ID via AdRev. I contacted Adrev directly and they removed them. I would contact SourceAudio directly and you might get a faster response.

[TrackSonix_Music]

Thanks so much for your swift response Art, much appreciated. I’ve contacted Source Audio now too.

Out of interest, once your tracks were removed from AdRev’s CID did the copyright content claims revert back to your original CID? I still want to have them protected and not lost in space.

Kind regards,
Jon

[Michael Nickolas]

Welcome to the club. 🙂 Non-exclusive libraries “inadvertently” placing my music into Content ID has happened more than once. FWIW- I don’t know if it’s still true but about one year ago I was told by Adrev that there was no way to delete tracks from content ID. The best the could do was deactivate it.

“YouTube currently does not have a way of deleting the asset itself but
we do have the process in place of deactivating reference file so content ID won’t be able to make any matches and your clients will be able to upload without any issues.”

[TrackSonix_Music]

Thanks for your reply and further information too Michael. I’d like to say thanks for welcoming me ‘to the club’… but.. ahem! Haha. Hope this doesn’t happen again, or to anyone else, what a hassle!

UPDATE: I’ve been in touch with both the music library and Source Audio. They’re addressing it and I’m gradually seeing claims being released. Clients are also happier of course. 🙂

[Mark_Petrie]

I’ve had non-ex tracks go in and out of SourceAudio’s Content ID half a dozen times at this point. One library did it three times – once intentionally, and then when I explained why they couldn’t do that, they removed it. Then they updated their SourceAudio catalog and it was all automatically ‘ingested’ (love that term) into CID again. This happened twice more, and essentially made me persona non grata with a (at the time) well performing RF site… the owner of that site was not happy with the constant CID issues to say the least. I can’t really blame him, but it’s not always the composer’s fault either.
Another non-ex library got quite argumentative with me about it when I told them they had done the same thing – didn’t see why it was an issue not matter how hard I tried. I ended up pulling all my music from their library.
Don’t get me started on CUSTOMERS claiming the music they license with CID! I’ve had instances like a customer adding music to a sales seminar and claiming all the audio (and any YouTube use of the music). I have had to fight claims where a paying RF customer thought they could rap over the music they licensed and take all the credit, and all the CID income.

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