YouTube has introduced a new tool that will allow video creators on its platform to easily replace copyright protected music in their videos with AI-generated instrumentals, making it simpler and quicker to deal with any music related Content ID copyright claims.
It’s the latest move by YouTube to employ generative AI to help simplify things for creators. For the music industry, it poses some interesting questions, including regarding what training data YouTube has used when developing its generative AI for music creation.
And what impact this will have in the longer term on production music companies that have been a core part of the music ecosystem for YouTubers, such as Epidemic Sound.
Many YouTubers experience copyright issues because of music that appears in their videos, often due to short snippets of music that is audible in the background, or in clips of films or TV shows that they have featured.
YouTube’s Content ID rights management system automatically spots the music, and then music rightsholders decide if they want to block or monetise the video, which impacts on the YouTuber’s ability to monetise their own content.
Over the years YouTube has added tools within its YouTube Studio product to make it easier for creators to deal with Content ID copyright claims. The new ‘create’ music feature, currently available to US users within the YouTube Studio desktop app, is the latest.
In a video introducing the new tool, YouTube’s Rene Ritchie explains that “to resolve audio copyright issues, US-based creators can now generate instrumental tracks right in the YouTube Studio editor. The ‘replace song’ tool will now include a new ‘create’ button. Hit it and YouTube will generate four royalty-free instrumental tracks that you can use to replace copyrighted audio”.
YouTube has tried its best to position itself as an ally of the music community when it comes to developing generative AI tools, aware that its long-standing partners in the music industry are busy criticising and sometimes suing AI start-ups that train generative AI models with existing music without getting permission first.
Though, at the same time, YouTube has often been a little vague about how it has trained the various different AI features that it has piloted and launched.
The YouTube creators using tools like ‘replace song’ are probably not including commercially released music in their videos anyway, because of the impact doing so has on their ability to monetise their content.
However, they may well be customers of production music companies like Epidemic Sound, which early on spotted a gap in the market for library music that could be easily licensed for global use on YouTube.
As YouTube creators increasingly use generative AI tools - especially within the YouTube platform itself - it seems likely they will need third party production music less and less, especially if music generated within YouTube can then be used in videos on other platforms.