YouTube has announced that short-term video creators will soon be allowed to feature up to one minute of copyrighted music in their Shorts.
(Photo by Robyn Beck / AFP)
YouTube has announced that short-term video creators will soon be allowed to feature up to one minute of copyrighted music in their Shorts.
The video-streaming platform said that its short-form creators will be able to use between 30 and 60 seconds of licensed music “for most tracks”, reports Engadget.
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However, some songs will continue to be limited to 15 seconds, with licensing agreements determining which tracks fall into which window.
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In the YouTube app’s audio picker, creators can quickly see how much time each song allows.
As the popularity of user-created videos has grown over the last decade, aggressive DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act, a 1998 US copyright law) takedown notices have become a headache for streamers across all platforms, according to the report.
Record labels frequently automate their copyright enforcement, resulting in overzealous claims.
For example, creators’ videos have been flagged for including a few seconds of copyrighted audio from a passing car’s stereo, the report added.
The song-limit boost is YouTube’s latest attempt to entice TikTok creators (and therefore viewers and ad dollars) to switch to Shorts.
In September, the company announced an ad-revenue-sharing programme that will give qualified creators a 45 per cent cut of ad revenue, regardless of whether they use music.
TikTok launched a similar sharing programme earlier this year in response to widespread criticism of its previous “static pool of money” approach, said the report.
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