Stock Music Report - What's
the deal with Content ID?
by Aaron Saloman
Hello again to all the readers of
HowToLicenseYourMusic.com. I'm Aaron Saloman, co-creator of the audio course ongetting started with stock music libraries.
It's been a while! I've been busy
composing lots of new music for licensing, which you can check out here
(http://www.reverbnation.com/tvmusic/songs)
I've also been helping other artists with mixing, mastering, and
meta-tagging their music for stock libraries. And amidst all that, I finished
up producing and recording a record for Lukas Grant, which I'm pretty happy
with. You can stream that album here. (http://lukasgrant.bandcamp.com/) So
it's been a good year!
I thought I would check in on the
blog with another update on the always-evolving subject of stock music.
Commercial length edits, stem mixes, gratis licenses, blanket licensing,
exclusive vs. non-exclusive - it can be a lot to wrap your head around all
these new terms and concepts. I highly recommend you search through the blog
for my other posts on these topics, as well as my appearance on Aaron D.'s
"Music Money & Life" podcast, where we talk about many of these things. And
naturally, we go in-depth on these subjects in the course.
Today I
want to talk about Content ID. This is something that's increasingly coming up
as an issue in stock music, as internet royalties start to contribute to the
overall picture. Content ID programs, on YouTube and elsewhere, can be a great
way to find and monetize uses of your music when it's only being licensed from one place.
Yep,
that's in bold for a reason.
As I've
talked about before on this blog, stock music is a bit different from other
areas of music licensing. The upfront payouts can be small or nonexistent, and
the performance royalties build up over time through hundreds of little
placements in TV shows. So it's very difficult to make it lucrative unless your
tracks are represented non-exclusively in several places. That means the same
tracks are being licensed by different libraries on your behalf, sometimes
under different titles so each library can collect publishing on their
placements.
If you've
seen that app that lets you hold up your phone in a bar and identify a song,
you have a basic idea of how Content ID works at this point in time. In other
words, it recognizes the music, and doesn't always do a great job of it. Sometimes
it will mistakenly hear two different songs that used the same software drum
loops as the same song. Even if it gets the song right, there's no way for it
to know where the music came from; the song sounds the same to the algorithm no
matter who the licensing company was. So Content ID becomes, sort of by
definition, something that can only work well in exclusive deals. If a library
includes your music in a Content ID program, sites like YouTube will send
copyright violation notices to people who have legitimately licensed the song
from any other vendor. After this happens, they will have to send copies of
their licensing agreements to the video site's administrators to get their
videos re-activated. You can imagine how much paying customers love this (hint
- they don't).
Unfortunately
the only viable option right now is to opt out of Content ID if your music is
in several libraries. Many large libraries have an "opt out" checkbox somewhere
in your profile, or in the contract when you're signing up. For those that
don't, I carefully read the contract, then cross out and initial any Content ID
sections. Make sure you're upfront about doing this; e-mail the library first
and politely outline the reasons you can't participate in Content ID. Most people
running libraries understand the issues and should be OK with it.
There
is hope though! I've been hearing that some Content ID algorithms are being
developed that can recognize the source of the music, so the money can be
directed to the appropriate library. This would be a great development for the
further monetization of stock music used in online platforms. Maybe by this
time next year, this blog entry will no longer apply! In the meantime, always
read your contract carefully. Make sure that if you want to work
non-exclusively, you're not signing up for something (like Content ID) that can
really only apply to exclusive music. If you're not sure, it's always a good
idea to ask questions or run the contract past a lawyer.
****
For an
in-depth intro to the world of stock music, check out "How to Make Money With
Stock Music Libraries". We talk for two hours about strategies to get
started, show you screenshots of how to make seamless commercial-length edits,
and give you a list of libraries. As a bonus to everyone who purchases this
week, I'm offering a free 20 minute Skype consultation where you can ask me
any questions you have.
More info here:
http://www.howtolicenseyourmusic.com/stock-music-course.php
Comment on this post here:
http://www.howtolicenseyourmusic.com/blog/what-s-the-deal-with-content-id-
Thanks for reading!
Aaron Saloman
http://www.twitter.com/aaronsaloman
http://www.facebook.com/aaronsaloman8
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