How do you define if a track is suited for YouTube Content ID? 

As much as we’d love to accept all the tracks that are submitted by the community into our YouTube Content ID program, we may not be able to do so.  

We’ll tackle here two elements: 

• Creative Commons and how it can affect your eligibility
• Other music related criteria 

Understanding how Creative Commons can affect your eligibility 

One of the most important eligibility factors is the Creative Commons license attached to your tracks. Every time you upload a track, you must choose a Creative commons license for this specific work. This license will regulate what users can or cannot do with it on Jamendo Music. If you need a quick refresh about Creative Commons licenses, here is a good read. 

We can only accept tracks that have always been under CC BY-NC-ND. 

Because CC BY-NC-ND is the most restrictive type of Creative Commons license, it’s the only type of Creative Commons content that will be accepted by YouTube. 

Since November 2018, we’ve made sure that all your uploads are by default under this CC BY-NC-ND Creative Commons license. Unless you change it while editing your track information, all your new uploads are set up so as to be eligible for YouTube Content ID. 

Some of the tracks that you uploaded in the past may be under a different Creative License. If that’s the case, that’s why they may not be eligible for the YouTube Content ID program. 

But why, you may ask. 

Let’s imagine that an artist called Rock-Star-XXX creates a track called We Love You in 2018. During the upload, the track was registered under the following Creative Commons license: CC BY. It means that users can use the song for almost any purpose if they make sure to give credit to the artist. 

In 2019, Rock-Star-XXX wants to make sure that users cannot freely use the music in videos any longer. Rock-Star-XXX switches the Creative Commons License to CC BY-NC-ND. Well, all the users who downloaded the music in 2018 can still keep the track in their video. 

Since YouTube has no way to assess the history of the Creative Commons license(s) linked to each track, they can only accept tracks that have always been under CC-BY-NC-ND. Tracks that were never meant to be used in a video.

Understanding the other criteria affecting the YouTube Content ID moderation process 

Some other conditions should be met to be eligible: 

• The track shouldn’t be a logo, intro or a jingle 
• The track should have a duration of at least one minute 
• The track shouldn’t heavily rely on samples & loops  
• The track should be original (no covers or remixes) 
• The track shouldn’t be a new interpretation of a public domain work 
• The track should have a good production value*  

*We’re working on defining this more precisely and we will shortly release an article dedicated to what we expect from a production standpoint.