- Hey-o, insiders.
We've talked about the recent introduction
of Creator Music on the channel before.
If you're unfamiliar,
we'll leave more info in the description.
As we continue to roll out the product to more creators,
we wanna address questions we've heard
in the hopes of clearing up any confusion
so that creators know exactly what Creator Music
has to offer and how best to use it.
Before we jump into the questions, we want to highlight
that Creator Music offers a growing catalog
of mainstream songs for you to choose from,
which generally aren't available using other music services.
Let's get into it.
First up, we've heard questions about expiring licenses
and what that might mean for creators.
As you know, one of the options you have
when using Creator Music is to purchase a license
to use a song in your video.
The license allows you to get
the full revenue share of your video.
You'll notice in the license details of a song
that the track will have an expiration,
which shows how long the music license is good for.
Music licenses generally fall under two categories.
Number one, a term license where there's a certain amount
of time you can use the track.
In this instance, rights-holders have the option
to set the license expiration for a track
to two, five, or ten years.
And number two, a perpetual license
where you can use the track in your video indefinitely.
So what happens when a license expires?
If your license expiration date is approaching
and you still want to use the track
in your video without any restrictions,
you'll have the ability to renew the license
if it's still available.
If the license is not available to renew,
in most cases, it will be eligible for rev share
with the rights-holders post expiration.
By utilizing this option,
creators can circumvent a potential Content ID claim
and subsequent loss of future revenue on the video,
or you can choose to do nothing
if you're fine with the claim on your video.
Speaking of licensing, you may have noticed
an array of prices song to song.
So what determines a song's licensing price?
Ultimately, the rights-holders decide pricing
for their tracks, not YouTube.
With Creator Music, there are a variety
of price points for tracks,
so you can filter and choose based on your budget.
An alternative option to purchasing a license
for a fee upfront is to use songs in our catalog
that are eligible for rev share with the rights-holder.
Okay, so how does that work?
For certain Creator Music tracks,
you'll see the option to share revenue when using a song.
This means if you use the track,
you can share your video's revenue
with the music rights-holders.
You can also share revenue for tracks
that have a license available for purchase
instead of buying the license
by using less than 30 seconds of the track
in a video that's longer than three minutes.
So how is revenue share calculated and how much do I get?
The 55% that the creators normally get is split
based on the number of rev share tracks in the video.
There's also a small deduction
to cover additional music rights costs,
like performance rights, which can be up to 5%.
Let's take an example.
Say you use one track that's eligible for revenue sharing.
You split the standard 55% revenue share
with the rights music holders,
meaning each of you would be eligible for 27.5%.
Then let's say the small deduction
for additional music rights cost is 2.5% in this example.
From your 27.5% share, that 2.5% is deducted to cover this,
meaning that you earn 25%.
If you'd rather not share revenue,
you can check if the track
has a license available for purchase,
which allows you to get the full revenue share, AKA 55%.
Now, the artists out there may be asking,
"How can I make my tracks available in Creator Music?"
Creator Music is powered by Content ID.
So if you are an artist working with a label
or distributor to make your music available
on streaming services and in Content ID,
they will have the option of enabling your tracks
for Creator Music licensing.
If you're interested, reach out to them
about making your content available.
Lastly, we've heard creators ask,
what's going to happen to the audio library?
The answer, nothing.
We've added all the tracks from the audio library
to the Creator Music tab so you can find
all your music and sound effects in one place.
There will be no change to any of your
previously uploaded videos with audio library tracks.
For creators without Creator Music yet,
you will be able to continue to access
the audio library from YouTube Studio.
We hope this helped answer the tricky questions
we've heard about Creator Music thus far.
If you have additional questions,
leave them in the comments
and we'll try to answer them in a future video.
We'll be back as the future expands to more creators
to cover best practices and when and why
you may want to use Creator Music once available.
The team working on this would love to hear
your thoughts and feedback in the comments,
so make sure to leave them below.
Ciao.