Fair Use for Music on YouTube

AcademiCode

AcademiCode

Active Member
One of the key problems I have with my channel right now is that the music I use for outros and ambiance is frankly really boring and cheesy.

I have yet to find some quality free-to-low-cost royalty free music (I know that's really asking for quite a bit, ha!) to use in my outros. I was wondering if I could incorporate fair use and to use a very popular electronica song, but only 10% of its length. Would this be a clever way to have a sexy outro? Or would it be a fast way to losing partnership?

Additionally, does anyone have any good sources for low cost royalty-free music they would like to share?
 
I agree with "NIP" here, incompetech.com/music/ is definitely the best place for royalty-free music
The 'Fair Use' argument is often used amongst YouTubers, who claim it is a right and set-in-concrete law that exists. The problem however is that 'Fair Use' is determined by a judge's own perception of the work. There is no law that says exactly what you can use as 'Fair Use'. If I were you I would steer clear of it as YouTube does not hesitate to ban entire channels from monetization (forever) because of a few seconds of copyrighted material on a bunch of videos (this has happened).
Usually, electronica is made by independant artists, and if that's the case you might just be okay, but I would suggest you steer clear of it and look for something alternative. You can find a lot of good electronica music on Newgrounds, and often the artists allow you to use it in videos (even with monetization) as long as you mention them.

There, rambled on a bit but I hope that helps :)
 
Hey Folks, thanks for the input! Yea, I've been browsing incompetech, I'll just have to dig deeper and find some nice tunes. Additionally, I hadn't thought of using newgrounds before, great suggestion Tom!

I'm wondering how many big name YouTube channels are able to use popular songs in their outros? Do they have agreements with the owners? I have a sneaky suspicion it would be very hard to get permission to use a popular song as a small channel because frankly nobody would care enough yet. Have any ideas?
 
Also check out RoyalTrax channel on YT. They have epic royalty free music. I listen to their dubstep playlist all the time. If you are willing to pay a little bit check out Pond5
 
Oh wow! Just checked out RoyalTrax - this is surprisingly professional for royalty free music! Yea, this is exactly what I was looking for - I'll take a look at Pond5 soon, too.
 
Muserk might be worth checking out too. You can actually drop your video into their video player and see / hear it with different tracks playing. It's neat!
 
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