We’ve talked about YouTube before. It’s a powerful platform that billions of people around the world use every day. To not try and find new clients/customers and gain some brand awareness from it would be a tremendous waste. At the same time, to keep people from using the property of other people, YouTube has an incredibly restrictive and automated copyright system that will flag, block, and/or demonetize videos at a moment’s notice. Use a clip of a film, show, or song just a bit too long and you can see your video demonetized. If your video hits too many flags, you could see your channel getting a strike. If only there were ways to avoid YouTube copyright strikes.
What if I said there are ways to avoid copyright strikes? What if I said I’ve learned and found ways to avoid copyright strikes from being on YouTube and interacting with the community for years? Don’t be afraid to experiment with your video or some personality to them. Here are some ways to significantly reduce your videos’ chances of getting flagged by YouTube.
#1: Use These Substitutes for Music
Nothing is flagged as much or as quickly as music. Music is key to a video, even if it’s just background music. It sets the tone and pace, whether your video content is informational, humorous, or serious. Not having music can leave a video feeling bland and rhythmless, but at the same time, music leads to copyright strikes more than anything else. What should we do?
Use these alternatives. These three music sources not only provide quality background music for videos, but they also have a much lower chance of being flagged if at all for multiple reasons.
- Video Game Music – Video games aren’t for everyone, sure, but their music is. Their music can be anything from slow and methodic, to loud and bombastic, and even calm and soothing. More importantly, most video game companies don’t bother registering the soundtracks to their video games with YouTube’s copyright registry like film and television do. This means, you almost never get flagged, rarely get demonetized, and avoid that YouTube copyright strike.
- Song Covers – Never forget that this isn’t a team of people at Youtube flagging and approving your content, it’s an automated system. The good thing about automated systems is that they can be tricked, and they’ll never know it. Sure, the human ear can tell when a familiar song is being covered, but an algorithm doesn’t. Then, like with video game music, cover artists don’t register their music with YouTube’s copyright registry.
- Kevin Macleod – An American composer and musician, he has been a godsend to YouTubers for years. He has created over 2,000 various, tone-setting music, perfect to be the background for YouTube videos, and doesn’t register any of them with YouTube’s copyright registry. In fact, he makes them available under a Creative Commons copyright license so anyone can use them. We guarantee that you have heard one of his songs in the background of a video a hundred times over without even realizing it.
If you need music to keep your channel from getting the dreaded YouTube copyright strike over one of your videos, try using any of these three options. They’ve worked for ENX2 Marketing when we needed it.
#2: Never Use Video Clips Longer than 30 Seconds
This is another example to prove that your videos are being flagged by the algorithm and not a team of people. YouTube’s copyright strike algorithm typically doesn’t recognize that a clip from a film or television show is being played unless it hits over 30 seconds. This rule is a bit more loose than others. Many suspect that YouTube has improved the algorithm to identify and flag clips longer than 25 seconds.
For your use, if you want to use a clip from a film or television show to break up parts of your video, use video clips that are no more than 25 seconds straight in length. From our experience, it doesn’t matter whether you use the clip’s sound or not, YouTube’s algorithm flags your clip based on visual recognition.
#3: Place Your Logo in the Corner of a Video
YouTube lets you place a small version of your channel’s logo in the bottom right corner in every video. It’s this automatic feature that’s helpful with tracking if someone else is using your video footage.
It does not, however, in any way help you avoid YouTube’s algorithm catching you when you use clips. The YouTube algorithm scans your video while it’s uploading and checks your video again when YouTube updates the algorithm. Your video(s) will also be scanned again if YouTube gets a report about your video or channel.
This means that they don’t add a little logo to the bottom right corner of your videos until after it’s scanned. Add your channel/company logo to the corner of your video yourself. This will cover a portion of the screen and throw off the algorithm, letting you use clips that toe the line around 25 seconds in length.
#4: Use Subtle Filters
Like putting your logo atop a video, another good way to throw off the algorithm is to make the visuals more unrecognizable. You don’t want to add vibrant and blatant filters to any clips you use, that’s distracting in a bad way.
Use filters such as:
- Brightness
- Three-way Color Corrector
- RGB Curves
- Saturation
- Tint
- Chroma Key
- Horizontal Flip
Even the most basic of video editing software has one or more of these basic filters. Each of these filters provide a subtle difference to the clip’s imaging. They work to create differences that viewers won’t recognize and create a clip that the algorithm won’t recognize either. If the algorithm doesn’t recognize the clip, then your channel has avoided the YouTube copyright strike.
Don’t Be Driven Off YouTube
YouTube may be one of the few platforms that actively fights against those who post on it but don’t let that drive you away. There’s too much to gain from the platform to abandon it. Use these tips if you ever find yourself trying to avoid your YouTube getting flagged, demonetized, and copyright striked.
If you need help, there’s no better team to talk to than ENX2 Marketing. Social media marketing is the future for every industry that needs marketing, including law firms. Contact us to help you turn your brand around.
