Muted on YouTube? Think CC!
Fred Benenson, January 14th, 2009
As you might have heard by now, YouTube has begun to mute videos containing ‘unauthorized’ music or audio. What does ‘unauthorized’ mean? We’ll leave that for the lawyers to decide, but it probably has something to do with negotiating permissions for the right to use music in advance from rights holders.
Instead of dealing with the suits, why not consider using Creative Commons music in your next YouTube video? Here’s a ccMixter playlist of 100 Attribution licensed music tracks that you can download and use freely so long as you give attribution to the original creator. YouTube has even been so kind as to include these tracks inside their AudioSwap feature, thereby enabling you to automatically add a soundtrack to your video even after it has been uploaded to YouTube.
Related posts:
- An Anthropological Introduction to YouTube
- CC Licensed Film is 5th Most Viewed Video on YouTube
- CC Licensed Film Achieves Massive Popularity on YouTube
- CC audio similarity search
You can also head straight to jamendo to find CC music for your videos. over 15,000 albums from the whole world to choose from!
Just make sure you check the licenses before you use the music.
Don’t tell people to use audioswap on YouTube, as soon as you audio swap your video, you give up any chance of “revenue sharing” on it. In other words, you cannot make any money of those annoying ads they put on your videos. They are making all the money on YOUR work!
Another thing about creative commons music is that the license might prohibit you from using it commercially and if you are making adsense money on your video, this might be considered “commercial”.
One last note, if you think “who cares” because your videos are lousy and not many people will watch them, you are wrong! What if your video all the sudden goes viral? What if a million people start watching your video out of no where? If you use audioswap you have already forfeited your chance to monetize that video! Don’t freakin’ do it!
What about adsense in youtube videos? Do we need to remove it? Certain Creative Commons licenses say “No commercial $”, and others no.
Thanks