Copyright, Music & YouTube

The use of Music which makes many Machinima come to life, can be a thorny issue.

Music tracks that you have bought for example from itunes, or from cd's that you have on your computer, does not grant permission for their use in 'derivative works'.
It sometimes results in the video having its music removed by YouTube,
and may in the worst case scenario result in having your account closed,
your uploads deleted....
I read further that they do not address only the offending account, but the ISP ie your internet user addres, so to try making a new account would not necessarily work, unless you can also change your ISP.
This applies IF the music used is under copyright to a publisher which has agreement with YouTube to identify the infringement....

One of the systems used for the purpose of identifiying and managing Copyright control is Digital Rights Management(DRM) which are Access Control technologies used by hardware manufacturers, publishers, copyright holders and individuals to limit the usage of their digital content.
We tend to refer to this method as Audio (or Digital)FingerPrinting embeded in the audio (and other) files.

Some machinima films clearly do have music that is not made by the film producer and is not from Open Source or Copyright free sources.
In this case, it may be that they have avoided issues because the music is published under a small company without the youtube infringement scheme in place.
Alternately they may endure possible blocks in some countries,
Or an itunes advertisement (displayed below the film at the you tube page), as is the case with aidenwitrial's excellent machinima film
'And the Gods Made Love' which samples a Jimi Hendrix track, enjoy...



To identify wether your music has infact contravened these copyight reguations by a registered publisher with youtube, you would either find your video music blocked (sometimes only in a limited number of Countries)
and/or you may find on your youtube account page the following details...


When you go to the details about this video may find something like this...



YouTube do helpfully offer an Audio Replacement facility whereby you can select from music tacks that they make avaliable for use,
although in this case you would lose any sound effects that you may have worked on and would also experience advertisements along the bottom of your film...
To acccess this option, select Audio Swap via the drop down menu arrow beside the film on your videos list page..





If this option does not suit you,
You could consider hosting the same film at other sites which may have less astringent copyright controls in place, some say Vimeo might offer the solution here although I cannot guarantee as I have not tested this option there.

Alternately, you might research and make use of some of the vast array of OpenSource, Creative Commons and Copyright Free music that is shared online specifically for creators and others to take, use and make 'derivative works' from and with...

Here are a few of the sites online which share such music;

Stonewashed has an index of the various sites sharing Creative Commons free to use music sources (check which licence applies to your piece of music)...

CCmixter has an excellent indexed method of finding music by genre and style.....

Jamendo Discover the 40992 albums available for free and legal download on jamendo....


Incompetech.com by Kevin MacLeod.
Incompetech hosts music which Kevin MacLeod has made himself for various purposes and is happy to share with the world for their use, requesting only acknowledgement of his source by way of courtesy.

The Internet Archive which contains a vast range of music from diverse sources, not tending to be particularly modern tho..
(be warned with this one that you must select music which is specifically licensed under the Creative Commons as in The Public Domain


Note on Creative Commons;



Musopen.com which provides a good range of classical music tracks from ancient to more modern pieces.

Freesound is a good source for sound effects and samples.

SoundCloud has more modern pieces made by up and coming musicians of various genres and many of these allow download for derivative works also...

I am certain there are many more, and if you know of some please do add them below so that others may use them also.


You could also consider making your music yourself, in whole or part, either entirely with multi track editing software, or by mixing refrains and etc that you have made with copyright free pieces and sound efects as I have done in this piece..

I robot in snow crash remix by celestialelff

On my Windows XP I use
Mixcraft5 multitrack audio editing software for this purpose,
Mixcraft is a recording studio with effects, featuring Reverb, Delay/Echo, EQ, Compression, Flanger and Chorus, as well as resonant filters and a powerful loop editor.
The high performance 32 bit sound engine supports broadcast quality WAV files and will even import compressed MP3, OGG & WMA files.
Use it to record your own music, your band or even a remix for a dance recital.

If you are using a MAC OSX computer, their version of Mixcraft5 would be
Garage Band, which is very similar and provides a home mini music studio.

Whilst I prefer the above two softwares to create music with, If you want to record your voice to include prose or etc in your work, I recommend
Wavepad with which you can create and edit music, voice and other audio recordings.
When editing audio files you can cut, copy, and paste parts of recordings and, if required, add effects like echo, amplification, and noise reduction and etc..

And to convert any downloaded audio files such as sound effects or etc that may not be in wav or mp3 format, I use
Switch Sound Converter.


In a nutshell then, whilst you may use music that you already 'own' your ownership generally extends to use for yourself only, and not derivative works.
To avoid difficulty such as loss of music
(you may have synched film movements to sound for example)
you might use Copyright Free sources of music from the outset of your machinima project, mix these with your own music, or rely entirely on your own sound creations..

I made a tongue in cheek machinima film discussing these problems,
in which the summary is that at the end of the day we own nothing haha....



Happy Machinima making :)