All successful YouTubers know the importance of selecting proper background music for their videos. Sometimes, your video be popular just for the music, not the content. Beginners may ignore the problems like involving the infringement of music.
When it comes to music piracy is discovered by YouTube, your channel will be given a warning. Once your channel received three warnings, it will be closed by YouTube.
If you want to use high-quality music, you need to pay for the copyright owners to get a license.
But if you don’t have a budget, what can you do?
Here are five very reliable ways for you to download copyright-free music, and then you can use music legally without being warned by the YouTube platform.
Audio Library
YouTube has an audio library. You can find a large number of sound is free to download and free to use. And you can filter the music by category.
Steps for you to download sound from the Audio Library.
Step 1: Open your YouTube Studio and click the “Audio Library” in the left sidebar.
Step 2: Then you’ll find all sound here can be downloaded.
Step 3: And you can filter the music by the “title”, “genre”, “mood” and others.
Creative Commons License
YouTube allows creators to mark their videos with a Creative Commons license (CCBY) logo for sharing, and then other YouTubers can reuse the music in these videos for commercial and non-commercial purposes.
When using Creative Commons content, the source video’s title will be automatically attributed appear under the video player.
Steps to find Creative Commons content on YouTube:
Step 1: Search the music.
Step 2: Click on the “Filter” option and select the “Creative Commons”.
Step 4: All the videos displayed in the search results have a Creative Commons license.
However, you must understand there are several limitations of using videos with Creative Commons license that can be concluded into one word:
Free to use for non-commercial purposes. But you’ll be punished or you’ll pay for it if it is used for commercial purposes.
What are the specific punishments?
YouTube’s punishment policies in this case have four results as follows:
1. The video can be displayed but all the income got from the video belongs to the copyright owner.
- The video will be displayed soundlessly.
3. The video will be banned in some specific regions or globally, which depends on the different policies of different places. - YouTube will directly delete your video, and send you a warning email. This usually happens to copyrighted music that is still in a hot promotion.
Even some music was claimed as completely free, you must check their copyright before you use them. Because the copyright owners have right to change the copyright announcement at any time.
Use Music in No Copyright Sounds(NCS)
No Copyright Sounds(NCS) is the largest legal copyright music download platform.
Steps to download music on NCS.
Step 1: Find the NCS channel on YouTube
Step 2: Click the music video that you want to use in yours.
Step 3: Click the description to find the “Free Download” link.
Step 4: Follow the link to the page as follows and login with your Facebook account
or Google account, and then you can download the music from Spotify, Apple Music and other five channels.
The whole process is easy to master, however, you need to notice the statement on NCS’s Facebook page.
It was read as follows before 2020:
If the music on NCS is about to use for commercial purposes, you need to write to NCS for permission. And you have to add the text “NCS Music” in the description of your video. Otherwise, you’ll get a warning.
But according to the content in NCS 2020’s Facebook page, none of that content is available. So it’s not sure whether the statement still should be implemented or not.
Use the Works in the Public Domain
Copyrighted works for a period of time will lose copyright protection, which belongs to the public domain
As a result, public domain music is free for everyone. In the United States, any published song or music before 1922 belongs to the public.
You can visit the Public Domain Information Project website which has a long list of music that has long been out of copyright to find out if the song you need is in copyright protection period.
However, you’d better do a research on the publish date of the song yourself, not rely on the information provided by the site. In addition, if you are not in the United States, you need to check your country’s copyright law depended on reality.
How to use the music that not in the public domain？
You have to obtain a license from the copyright owner of the copyright content.
Steps for getting permission to use copyright music.
- Identify the original owner of the content
- Identify the rights that you need
- Contact the copyright owner to negotiate payment and enter into a written license agreement.
You need to be argus-eyed of the copyright terms of the song. Because in many cases, the copyright is split between the publisher and the record label. The publisher controls the melody and the lyrics in the song, while the record label (the artist) controls the record.
So you need to get both licenses from the publisher and the record label or the artist before you use the song.
Use the Audio Library the Video Editor Provided
Generally, most video editors have a large amount of sound/audio/video/music materials for Platinum Users. They have a material library that platinum users can freely download music, sound, audio and others to use in their video.
Take YouTube Movie Maker and Easy Video Maker, for example, they both have a material library that the resources in it cost $399 but free for their platinum users. And the amount of material is increasing all the time.
What would happen if you didn’t get permission?
If you use a piece of music in a video without getting copyright permission, you may be asked to delete it, which is the best result.
However, you could also face more serious consequences, such as the conditions we mentioned in the beginning. But the worst case is that you may be sued.
