Cover videos are all over YouTube, with artists showcasing their musical skills and recreating popular, trendy songs. However, the original song owner has every right to claim these music videos, resulting in a loss of ad revenue for many YouTubers. Well, fortunately, there’s a loophole to work around these music claims. If you’re a music artist, here’s what you need to know about monetising cover videos.
The legality of cover videos
There are thousands of aspiring YouTube singers who start their channels making covers of existing songs. Unfortunately, many videos are posted illegally, as these rising artists do not have permission from the song’s copyright holder to publish the song. The more similar the cover is to the original song, the more likely it is to get content ID claimed. These claims are auto-generated when your video, or part of your video, matches any other video in YouTube’s Content ID system.
What happens if you get a Content ID claim
As soon as you get a Content ID claim on a video, you will receive an email notification from YouTube. You can also check the Content page in the YouTube Studio. Here, any claimed video will be labelled as a “copyright claim” in the “restrictions column”. You can hover over this label to see more details about the claim.
It is now up to the copyright owners to decide if they want to block your video or share the ad revenue. You can either leave the video as-is or cut out/replace/mute the audio for that part of the video. Conversely, you can also dispute the claim if you think that it is incorrect.
Monetising a cover song video
If you’re a monetised channel on the YouTube Partner Program, you might notice that a cover song is no
longer monetised. Here’s what you need to do:
- Go to the Content page in YouTube Studio and check the video properties.
- If the video has been claimed, you will see a copyright claim in the Restrictions column and the monetisation status will be off.
- Hover the mouse over the monetisation status. This will state if the video is eligible for sharing the ad revenue.
- If it is eligible, just switch the monetization status to “on” and you’re good to go!
Now you can continue making cover song videos without worrying about losing out on ad revenue. Sing away to glory!
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