HOW TO SEE IF A SONG IS COPYRIGHTED?

However, there are three cases in which you can use songs on the Internet without worrying about copyright:

Under Public Domain

If it’s an old song (more than 70 years old) it’s fairly possible that it’s under Public Domain and then you can use it without any problem. However, you must be sure about it. We wrote a full article explaining the details of background music under Public Domain.

You can also fidn a big list of songs of this type on the PDInfo website.

Under Creative Commons licenses

If you have downloaded the song from any website that offers free royalty-free music, it is most likely to be under one of the several Creative Commons licenses.

What you will have to do in this case is go to the download website and read its section on licenses carefully, to make sure that this is so and to know what kind of restrictions you have when using it.

Royalty-Free Music

Without any doubt, this is the best option when it comes to using background music in your videos or projects. These are songs that are not famous or well-known, but they have nothing to envy to those ones, since their quality and variety are the same.

A good place to download them is Epidemic Sound, as we will see further down the article.

In all other cases, especially if it’s famous music, you can be sure that the song is copyrighted and, therefore, you cannot use it.

How to know if a song is copyrighted when using it on YouTube?

Until recently, a good way to see if a song was royalty-free was to go to the Music Policies section of YouTube.

However, the platform has discontinued this service, at least for now.

This way we can ensure that if we see any notice related to copyright once we have put the video in hidden or private mode, it will be better to edit it again and change the background music.

The best thing, in any case, is not to risk your project using songs that you are not sure of. Otherwise, you expose yourself not only to your video being blocked or monetized by another person – the author or the record company – but even to have legal problems afterward.

What you can do to prevent this from happening?

To have peace of mind when it comes to using background music in your videos and ads, what you’ll do is use Royalty-Free music.

With this type of music and sound effects you ensure that you are always complying with Copyright guidelines.

Before, you had to consider the so-called attribution, meaning that, if you used that particular song or sound effect, you’ll be required to explain in the video description who is the author of that music you’re using. But thankfully, not anymore!

But what happens if you want to place this video outside Youtube?

Well, they don’t let you use this music outside of it, so you will need another option:

Music without copyright for commercial projects

Alternatively, if you want to use high-quality music for commercials, video games, radio, television or even movies, you can always acquire the relevant licenses.

The two best options are the following:

Epidemic Sound is a platform dedicated to the distribution of royalty-free music and has a song library with more than 300,000 tracks.

They decided to launch to the market a monthly subscription directed to any vlogger or Youtuber that offers the following:

Another good option is Envato Elements, where you can find thousands of songs and sound effects classified by genres at a very affordable price: 14.50€ per month for all the music you might need!

CONCLUSION

In conclusion, YouTube helps in the task of verifying if a specific song is copyrighted, by uploading your videos in hidden or private mode. And, on the other hand, it also makes things easier when it comes to getting free music.

However, if you want to access quality music and never have problems using background music, it’s best to purchase a monthly subscription to one of the two services mentioned above.

If you want -or need- to know more about the topic, we wrote an in-depth guide about what is music without copyright. Worth reading!