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paulears 27 March 2019

I thought I'd experiment with how Youtube compares the music in videos and how it tags them for copyright claims.

I found on Youtube the isolated vocal for Adele's Skyfall, and downloaded it. I then took a track I'd been working on a year or so back of that track, and see if I could use the real Adele vocal track. The song is pretty close, but a different length, and slightly different in the format. It's different in length, some instrumentation, some actual notes are different, the mix is not quite the same and I chopped up Adele's vocals to make it fit. To a human, it sounds pretty much the same song, but with all the differences I figured these would flummox any automated comparison system, unless it was very, very clever. It took 13 minutes to demonstrate it is extremely clever - and I got the copyright claI'm notice.

I know we're only guessing - but how on earth does this analysis work? The key is the same - but if you laid one version on a time line against the other - there really isn't much that looks the same. I picked it because once it gets going, it's a very dense mix - but the beginning intro is just a solo piano - do you think this could have been the trigger?

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pcrecord Thu, 03/28/2019 - 05:18

I got a video banned because a Beatles song was detected. Thing is, it wasn't featured, I used it to test headphones bleedings so you just heard a part of it at very low volume and squashed frequencies.. but still, they blocked my video.. I had to redo it entirely !! :cautious:
For me it was the exact same song but in your case I thing it's a melody detection that got you flagged.
They might be using some algorithm similar to Shazam or Soundhound. (those are apps that tell you the title of a song while you sing the melody to them)

Since that episode, I started to use exclusively copyright free tracks or my own tracks.

The silly thing is for people who own their music and signed in with CD Baby. If they post their songs on youtube, the monatisation will be grabbed/stolen by CD Baby...
Specter sound studio did a video on this... Who still think music can make you rich ?

jamie Lofts Sat, 05/11/2019 - 07:17

With music getting to a point where we could be forgiven for recording a song that sounds similar to something else, would that come under YouTube law too? What about songs that famous people have recorded and ripped off other artists? I think YouTube opened a can of worms on this and it could become a dying site for musicians who don't write and record their own music and maybe for those that do if it's too similar to another famous song.

pcrecord Tue, 05/14/2019 - 10:48

I got flagged again.
One of my customer made a country version of a Brian Adams song. Not a good version at all but I did put it on my channel as a courtoisy.
I received an email for copyright infringement and since it's so different from the original, I guess it's the name on the video that leveled the flag.

The message said I had nothing to do at this point and didn't need to remove the video.
But they could eventually take a old on any money the video would generate from views.

So there you go, the new industry strategy is to steal the revenue of anyone using something in their catalog or even do a remake inspired by one...
I guess they really miss selling CDs..

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