YouTube, Copyright notices and YouTube Safe Music4 min read

In an ideal world there would be a way to provide License information at the time when you upload your video to YouTube, but so far that is not the case. So the process is: (1) You upload the video — (2) YouTube automatically finds our music in it and generates a “copyright notice” — (3) You use the Dispute link on the YouTube page to provide documentation that you have licensed the music — (4) The copyright notice is removed from your video. It’s a little bit of a hassle, but takes less than 2 minutes, and it’s not dramatic.

If you still have trouble with this, fill in our contact form and let us know (A) the link/URL to your video, (B) details of your license order, such as order number or customer name so that we may find the order, (C) information from the copyright notice screen on YouTube which displays the track title being found in your video, the artist and the company claiming administration of the track. We will help you to look into the matter, possibly contact the artist to get them to help as well. If you are a paying customer, we will definitely get the copyright notice removed from your video(s).

Classical music copyright notices

With classical music recordings, the situation is messy. The thing with classical music is that the actual composition is in the public domain (it belongs to no one and everyone), but whoever makes their own performance and recording of a piece of classical music automatically owns the copyright to that recording. We have the rights to our version of Chopin’s Nocturne. But another company may have made their own version of the same composition, and they may have put that recording into the YouTube audio recognition system. And that fully automated system often cannot tell the difference between one version/recording and another.

If you received a “copyright claim” message when using classical music that you licensed from us, most likely some company, somewhere, has made their version of the same composition, and they own the rights to that recording. They don’t own the rights to the version that we sell, but YouTube’s automated systems cannot tell the two versions apart from each other, and the track that you licensed from us is wrongly being matched to a recording of the same classical composition made by somebody else.

It’s a real mess up there at YouTube with classical music, and in some cases, several big music publishing companies are claiming the rights to the same piece of music, even though that recording doesn’t even belong to any of them. This thread over at Google Groups illustrates some of the problems people are having with companies claiming rights to public domain and classical compositions that they don’t own the rights to.

There’s not really much we can do about this, other than to recommend you use the “Dispute” feature and, if necessary, provide the license documentation that you got from our site when you made your purchase. You may explain during the dispute submission process that this is a case of mistaken identity and that this recording is licensed to you via Shockwave-Sound.com and it is not the same recording as (what ever company is claiming the rights to it). With a bit of luck, this process will lead to the claim being removed from your video.