YouTube Content ID - Problem Solved!
Hey everyone! Thanks for your patience in dealing with this very frustrating issue. The long story is that because of my participation in an upcoming Google music service, my music was entered into the YouTube Content ID system. This is fine for most artists, but since my music is free to use in your videos, this caused all sorts of problems.
As of February 20th, I'm happy to report that thanks to YouTube's help, everything should be good to go from here on out. As long as you list me in the credits in the description box (which has been a requirement since the beginning), you won't have any problems whatsoever. You can use my music for your videos, free of charge, even if you monetize your videos. Again, and this is important: the credit needs to be in the description box, not just in the video itself!
One frustrating thing I discovered after YouTube started scanning videos for my music: the vast majority of videos using my music (95%+) are not giving the required attribution. I won't know the full count for a few months, but some math shows there are hundreds of thousands of videos, at the very least, in this camp. And that kinda sucks. The new system brings the best of both worlds - legal uses can continue as before, and I'll get some coins from the scofflaws who use my music without giving the required credit. For this reason, the whitelist system that was here is gone, as the new system makes it redundant. If you received a claim, you can go back and added the required attribution to your video's description box, and remove the claim on this page.
There's one other big advantage to this, as well. Frequently, other musicians have taken my music, remixed it, and distributed it themselves (or, in a couple cases, outright stole it and uploaded it as-is as their own). If they submitted it to YouTube's Content ID database, any of you who used my song got hit with a copyright strike, and there wasn't anything I could do about it. With control over my songs, I'm able to prevent this from happening, so you can be sure you won't be hit with a copyright strike.
Let me know if you have any questions or problems I can help you with. Thanks as always for using my music, and cheers!