Can DJ's on YouTube Monetize Remixes of Songs They Don't Own?

[StratoPaul]

I've never had a Youtube channel, but I'm considering it.

Years ago I played keyboards and messed around with doing my own EDM/techno remixes. I see there are a lot of DJ's who put a lot of their remixes of popuar songs (sometimes mashups of several songs) on their Youtube channel. I'm vaguely thinking about something doing like this.

But what's the story with ad revenue? I searched on this and most websites tend to take a white-hat view that if the DJ obviously doesn't own a popular song, Google assigns the ad revenues to the owners of the song. But is that really what's happening, or are a lot of these remixes flying under the radar and making some ad revenue for the DJ making them and putting them on his own channel?

 

[Ryuzaki]

But what's the story with ad revenue?

Yeah, the music industry is one of the most venemous and bot driven "claimers" on YouTube. They'll claim videos with titles that are the same as a song without even checking if the song is in the video. Song titles aren't even copyrightable. Google attempts to detect the usage too.

I suspect most of these channels are doing one of two things, much like you see all the bands and girls singing a million covers and then finally uploading some original material. One, they are piggy backing off of other popular stuff to get exposure to their original stuff, and then the DJ's will build up playlists and then take pay from marketing companies to include their artist's videos.

 

[StratoPaul]

Yeah, the music industry is one of the most venemous and bot driven "claimers" on YouTube. They'll claim videos with titles that are the same as a song without even checking if the song is in the video. Song titles aren't even copyrightable. Google attempts to detect the usage too.
I suspect most of these channels are doing one of two things, much like you see all the bands and girls singing a million covers and then finally uploading some original material. One, they are piggy backing off of other popular stuff to get exposure to their original stuff, and then the DJ's will build up playlists and then take pay from marketing companies to include their artist's videos.

Thanks Ryuzaki. Doing more digging I found this quora post which explains a lot of it. So yea, if a band uploads a cover or a DJ uploads a remix the monetization is almost immediately assigned to the songwriter/artist. What the band/DJ can hope to get out of this is essentially brand exposure.

Although I suppose a DJ or band could get a mechanical license to use the song before they put it out there. I guess this is like any other web arbitrage where you hope your online monetization exceeds your licensing fees. (Anyone know better how this works?)

 

[Ryuzaki]

Although I suppose a DJ or band could get a mechanical license to use the song before they put it out there. I guess this is like any other web arbitrage where you hope your online monetization exceeds your licensing fees. (Anyone know better how this works?)

You can clear the rights to sample / remix and a portion of your revenue goes to the original owners to then be distributed to the songwriters / artist, all handled through companies like ASCAP, BMI, SESAC, etc. But this is assuming you're doing things professionally and not some guy at home informally trying to get it done. And even if you do it right you'll still have to battle Youtube algorithm claims and crap like that, prove for each song you got the rights, and then spend time battling claims and marks on your account even though you showed Youtube proof. All of that for some Youtube monetization is not remotely worth it. Much better to just get the exposure, if you ask me.

There are licensing companies now that have pre-cleared samples you can use, but they're not going to be wildly popular stuff. More like old Motown and songs most people have never heard.