If you intend on uploading videos to YouTube, you ought to get clued-up on what a copyright claim is. Stick around to learn all about them!

Coming across assets, whether audio or visual, that are truly copyright free can be trickier than you think. Unless assets are public domain or the owner has explicitly stated they are copyright free, you may receive a copyright claim on your video.

What is a Claim & What Triggers Them?

When you upload a video to YouTube, it doesn’t only get watched by other people. It also gets watched (sort of) by YouTube itself. Specifically, the content ID system. This system uses sound assets and matches them to any video on YouTube that is using the same asset.

The video featuring a copyrighted sound asset will receive a copyright claim (note: these are different to copyright strikes). This can be done automatically or manually by the company that the copyright holder has registered their assets to content ID through. If not already, the video is then monetized and the earnings will be paid to the copyrighted asset owner.

Many content creators opt for royalty free music in their videos in order to avoid claims. However, royalty free is often confused with copyright free, and claims are still generated.

How to Release Copyright Claims

You do not have the power to release a claim if you’ve received one on a video after using someone else’s asset. Only the copyright holder of the asset that’s generated the claim can do this. If you know the copyright holder or can contact them, you can ask them directly to release the claim. However, this is only really works when smaller scale artists are involved (e.g. we don’t recommend using a Beyoncé track then asking Sony to release a claim. This is more likely to result in a copyright strike than a claim).

When you subscribe to an asset licensing service like Synchedin, you can get access to claims control. This means you can relax and not worry about contacting artists to release claims. We’ve got an agreement with all our contributors, meaning we have the power to release claims on their behalf. So, if you use a royalty free track and receive a claim, it can be sorted very easily in two ways.

• Release it yourself – We have made it possible for you to get the license key for any assets you use, so that you can release claims yourself on YouTube.
• Ask us for help – If you don’t feel confident releasing claims yourself, then just ask us for help. If you email support@synchedin.com and let us know the URL of the video in question, we can get the claim released for you.

So, if you’ve got lots of great content ideas then we’ve got the audio. Sign up to Synchedin today, and spend more time creating!