The basics of YouTube Content ID

What is YouTube Content ID?

YouTube Content ID is YouTube’s fingerprinting system allowing content owners (you) to monitor and monetize the use of your music made by YouTube video creators. 

In 2017, 300 hours of video were uploaded every minute on YouTube. That’s a crazy number. Most of those videos contain a musical work created by a musician like you. But not all of those videos contain a musical work that was properly licensed (purchased).  

YouTube Content ID is a great tool that allows you to monitor how your work is used. Using YouTube Content ID not only allows you to track down those uses; it also allows you to monetize them. 

So how does it work? 

When you register your tracks to YouTube Content ID, we’ll send them over to YouTube. YouTube will put a fingerprint on them. It means that the track will be analyzed and identified through a unique series of digits. Think DNA for music.  

With the fingerprint, YouTube Content ID can identify your works whenever they are used in a video. Whether the videos were uploaded years ago or just a minute ago doesn’t make any difference, most of them will be spotted. 

Whenever there is a match (an identification), the video creator will receive a "Copyright Infringement Notification", also called a claim. This claim adds publicity to the video in question (you have probably seen them while streaming on YouTube). The revenues of these ads will go to you!

Hold on a sec, what happens if the video creator is one of my customers? 

No worries at all: whenever a claim is received, the content creator has the possibility to contest it. If the customer has a license from an online licensing platform, the claim will be released.