Ambient music in public places: beware copyright

[babyteeth4]

I recently made a video of my daughters shopping for each other for Valentine's Day at a thrift store. The store was blaring music very loudly through the speakers. In a few places if you were standing right below the speakers it was hard to even hear each other talking. As I was recording the kids shopping, I wondered if this would lead to copyright issues.

I edited the videos and took out the parts where the background music was playing the loudest. I also put in my own usual background music track. I thought this would be enough and uploaded the videos as scheduled videos rather than making them go public right away. Within seconds I got the notification that the video contained copywritten material and it said where it started and ended, so I muted that part of the video and put in my own music.

I tried the new version and this time it was another different song, this one wasn't picked up the first time but this time it was. So, I took that video down and re-edited and tried again. Third time was a charm!

Luckily none of these counted as strikes, they were just the notification that it contained copywritten music that could be claimed (and also that the videos would not be available in Germany). Regardless, I took the videos down and fixed the issues with some editing. I am posting my experiences just to let people know that ambient music that's playing on someone's radio, etc is still enough to trigger YouTube's copyright detection software, even when you lay your own music over and have dialog and other sounds. Hopefully this saves someone some extra work!

 

[Munchito696]

I recently made a video of my daughters shopping for each other for Valentine's Day at a thrift store. The store was blaring music very loudly through the speakers. In a few places if you were standing right below the speakers it was hard to even hear each other talking. As I was recording the kids shopping, I wondered if this would lead to copyright issues.

I edited the videos and took out the parts where the background music was playing the loudest. I also put in my own usual background music track. I thought this would be enough and uploaded the videos as scheduled videos rather than making them go public right away. Within seconds I got the notification that the video contained copywritten material and it said where it started and ended, so I muted that part of the video and put in my own music.

I tried the new version and this time it was another different song, this one wasn't picked up the first time but this time it was. So, I took that video down and re-edited and tried again. Third time was a charm!

Luckily none of these counted as strikes, they were just the notification that it contained copywritten music that could be claimed (and also that the videos would not be available in Germany). Regardless, I took the videos down and fixed the issues with some editing. I am posting my experiences just to let people know that ambient music that's playing on someone's radio, etc is still enough to trigger YouTube's copyright detection software, even when you lay your own music over and have dialog and other sounds. Hopefully this saves someone some extra work!

Crazy, I wondered about that.

 

[Lloydo]

Hey there,

How long does the music actually have to go on for before it's copyrighted? Is there a length or will it be a few beats? Curious to know just

-Lloyd

 

[XXLRay]

@Lloydo there are no fix values. If It's noticeable it's also protected by copyright law.

 

[Tarmack]

Interesting. @babyteeth4 if you felt like it, I think you could have appealed and won. Just cite Lenz vs. Universal.

 

[offbeatbryce]

I recently made a video of my daughters shopping for each other for Valentine's Day at a thrift store. The store was blaring music very loudly through the speakers. In a few places if you were standing right below the speakers it was hard to even hear each other talking. As I was recording the kids shopping, I wondered if this would lead to copyright issues.

I edited the videos and took out the parts where the background music was playing the loudest. I also put in my own usual background music track. I thought this would be enough and uploaded the videos as scheduled videos rather than making them go public right away. Within seconds I got the notification that the video contained copywritten material and it said where it started and ended, so I muted that part of the video and put in my own music.

I tried the new version and this time it was another different song, this one wasn't picked up the first time but this time it was. So, I took that video down and re-edited and tried again. Third time was a charm!

Luckily none of these counted as strikes, they were just the notification that it contained copywritten music that could be claimed (and also that the videos would not be available in Germany). Regardless, I took the videos down and fixed the issues with some editing. I am posting my experiences just to let people know that ambient music that's playing on someone's radio, etc is still enough to trigger YouTube's copyright detection software, even when you lay your own music over and have dialog and other sounds. Hopefully this saves someone some extra work!

Your example is fair use under "incidental use of music." It's the same thing as going to a car show and filming the cars but behind you is a car stereo playing music. One of the reasons why that huge Dancing Baby lawsuit was ordered as "Fair Use" The baby was dancing to music that the judge said was "incidental use of music"