How to contest a Content ID claim from a - free licensed - song you’ve made

Hi ! Here is a how to to contest Content ID, the Google bot, from a free licensed song you’ve made. That tutorial is also relevant if your music is not under a Creative Commons licence but copyrighted.
If I write this, it’s because I’m a free licensed music composer under Public Domain Creative Commons 0 license and I’m experiencing a lot of Content ID and Audible Magic claims. And if you have to read this to get your free stuff get free again, I’m sorry and I hope you’ll find an answer here. If you didn’t find a way to contact the distro, don’t hesitate to contact me, I’ll help if I have time.

Quick important notes :

So we will see everything in few parts. First “How does this happen”, then “How do I remove the claim definitely”, then “Can I prevent this to happen again” and finally “What can we do ?”.
Go to “How do I remove the claim definitely” if you don’t care how it works and how we can organize as a group to fight back on that struggle.

How does this happen ?

So you got notified, somehow, that your music was claimed by Content ID. What happened ? Someone - we will call them a “Content ID abuser” from now on - took a file of your music, has created an account on a distribution service (I will define it in a few), told that distribution service the file was their music, uploaded it on the distribution service and activated Content ID. Now, everyone using your music receives claims.
Those claims can :

Obviously, it means that you too got those claims and limitations.

Quick definition of a distribution service : A distribution service (or distro) is a platform that can bring the music people makes to online shop or streaming services like Amazon Music, Spotify, Youtube Music, Deezer, Tiktok… Those shops and services are not available to be freely upload on otherwise, unlike Bandcamp, Soundcloud or Youtube (not to be confound with Youtube Music). You can access the services of distro via creating an account on their platforms, and paying a fee. There are multiple types of fee, sometime you pay for a band name (or multiple with a bigger fee) every year, you pay for an uploaded album, or a percentage of the money you make from your music on the streaming websites. Because, yes, distros give you access to music money. You upload and you just watch the money coming. It’s rarely a lot, but it’s always something you gain without doing anything more.

Quick perspective on who are the Content ID abusers : Sometimes (I mean by that less than 40% of the time) they don’t know they can’t use Content ID over the music for several reasons. Sometime the music is claimed because your music was used in a remix given to a third person who is the Content ID abuser, not knowing there is music made by someone else in the mix. Sometimes it’s also someone buying a Private Label Rights music pack where your free music managed by bad luck to fall in there like I describe it in my investigation here. Sometimes it’s someone just ripping everything from FreePD or Free Music Archive trying to make a lot of “little money” here and there. It’s most of the time people who don’t understand anything about the use of the Content ID tool, copyright, free culture, and sometime human decency.

You might ask yourself how they got access to your music. Most of my experiences of the Content ID abusers come from platforms I uploaded my music where it is told it is “free”. I got some music claimed that appear on the FreePD website, but mostly it's from the music appearing on the Free Music Archive. Not all my music is there even if it is CC0 licensed, the rest is on Bandcamp, but the Bandcamp only music is less targeted by those Content ID abusers. So beware if you upload your music on the FMA. It was an incredible platform to be on for the easy reach with creative people but it is also a place where Content ID abusers are active.
If you are interested to learn more about it, I wrote an investigation on a little network Content ID abusers are on, on Fiverr mostly. I won’t go in more details here.

How do I remove the claim definitely ?

OK, so it’s the big part. Our goal here is to contact the distribution service that activated Content ID on your song to deactivate it. So we need to identify the claim, identify the distribution service, contact the distribution service by using this simple argument : Content ID is not usable on music with non exclusive license like every Creative Commons license. It is mentionned by Google which own Content ID in there FAQ.

And I need to do an important note here : The example I will use and develop right now is a “lucky” example. There are situations where every step is more complicated. If the distro is a language different from yours, if there is no e-mail address in the terms of use page of the distro, if this is a distro that doesn’t answer you, if there is no mention of distro but just a vague and impossible label to find… I will try to be the clearest and see every problematic situation and give you, if I can, a possible solution. But keep in mind that there is no real rules and respect in the fight for free culture, those people are kind of jerks here and you will mostly have to discuss with bots when you are confronted with the biggest distro, that big industries really like to be professional about the secret of their clients but not really respectful for everything else.

So here we go. I start this article assuming you got a notification that you got a claim on your music. That notification could be you seeing on Soundcloud/Youtube or other platforms scanned by Content ID that one of your song got a claim, or someone using or enjoying your music who has uploaded it or remixed it getting a claim and notified it to you. There might be an other way, but those are the only two I got.

Identify the claim.

First of all, you need to identify the claim. I mean by that that you need to understand which of your song got a claim and which is the song and the Content ID abuser that is striking you.
There are two ways depending on how you got notified. You can ask the person who got the claim to screenshot you the claim pop up on their Youtube Creator Studio (see screenshot below) and send it to you.
Or you can upload your own song on Youtube and see for yourself in your Youtube Creator Studio.

Screenshot of Loyalty Freak Music Youtube Creator Studio, language is in french, we can see that every videos got “None” restrictions for copyright except for the video called “Monplaisir – Draft” which got a “Copyrighted”.

Screenshot of Loyalty Freak Music Youtube Creator Studio, language is in french, we can see the pop up when we click “More details” on the copyrighted mention from the last screenshot. We can see that there is no consequence on the use of the video, but also a timecode where it is shown that the song Do not Forgive from Layne McDonald appears.

In this example, we can see that one song (Don’t Forgive Me) from the album Draft – which is in public domain under the Creative Commons 0 license - is copyright claimed by the Content ID abuser Layne McDonald under the name Do Not Forgive.
From here we can start investigating what is the distribution service that has the power to activate or deactivate Content ID on this song.

Identify the distribution service

Here is the shittiest stage of this situation. Sometime you will get lucky like in this article, sometime you will be in a real mess. Why ? The easiest solution to find a distribution service is to search the artist and the song on Google and find a Youtube video generated by the distribution service. Here, we can go with this particular research (and you will need to remove the [] from the research but keep the “” to avoid to show mispelled results):
[“artist name” “name of the song”], here [“Layne McDonald” “Do not Forgive”].
In my situation, I find a result on Youtube, a video generated. You need to check the description of the video.

Screenshot of the Youtube page of the video “Do not Forgive” by Layne McDonald. The description of the video is open and it show the number of views, the date of upload and those metadatas : Provided to Youtube by Distrokid, Do not Forgive – Layne McDonald, Melody, (p) The LIDIE Foundation, Released on : 2005-01-07, Auto-generated by Youtube.

What is shown in those metadatas ? That the music was provided to Youtube by Distrokid, a distribution service. We got the name of the song, the artist name of the Content ID abuser, the name of the album “Melody”, the name of something looking like a label “The LIDIE Foundation”, a release date (that you can custom how you want in the distribution service, the upload date is the only thing exact here which testify the period of upload on the distro) and that is was autogenerated by Youtube providing those metadatas. From here, we can find the distribution service which is DistroKid. In this lucky situation, we have found our distribution service. If you are in this “easy situation” you can skip the next chapter called “The Long Way” and go to “Contact the distribution service”.

The long way

It was the easiest situation. It is easy because there is a description providing metadatas, but some platforms have not, and it is possible for Content ID abusers to ask distros to not upload music on Youtube. And this is in those situations you’ll get real troubles contacting someone. Like on Apple Music here on this screenshot.

Screenshot of the album Melody by Layne McDonald on Apple Music, language is french. We can see the tracklist and in the bottom of the page some metadatas like the date of the release, the number of tracks, the length in minutes and the mention (p) 2023 The LIDIE Fondtation.

The Apple Music page shows only metadatas that don’t help identify the distribution service. And most of the time, it’s that way, you got the name of a label and nothing else. Even if you look for other metadatas like in opening the page of the song, you will not find more. No distribution service mentioned.
Here, you got only three solutions to get an answer about the distro : Find a way to contact the Content ID abuser, follow the lead of the Label name, contact the streaming service. Nor ways are fun.

Find a way to contact the Content ID abuser :
This way doesn’t work most of the time, you’ll see why, but it can ends in some results. Content ID abusers will use generic or hard to search artist name, album names, song names, to avoid being found. But sometime they are just not really careful. In your search engine, search for their name and words like Instagram, Facebook, Youtube, Website.
It will happen that they have some social medias, like an instagram page, a website, a linkedin account, a youtube page, a lot of ways to contact them. If so, try to send them an e-mail, a direct message, a comment. You got two ways to contact them :

Most of the time, they don’t have socials. And when they have some, most of the time there is just no answer from them.

Follow the lead of the Label name :
Here you will need to work your skills on search engine manipulation and social media platforms AND organization repertoires. If we didn’t get the distro on the Youtube page, we should have to work with the Label name. In our example “The LIDIE Foundation”.
the LIDIE Foundation lead doesn’t seem to go somewhere except on the releases of Layne McDonald, no Linkedin, no address. Thou we can find some new metadatas via the streaming service Qobuz link to a release by Layne McDonald showing “Label : 849937 Records DK” - “XXXXXX Records DK” is also a reference for DistroKid hosting. Nothing if we are looking for [“The Lidie Foundation” address] or [“The Lidie Foundation” linkedin]. It happens a lot that the labels are fake and add in the metadatas for the distro to avoid giving a link to the distro. For example, I also use Distrokid, and the part where you can see the label is filled by “749074 Records DK” indicating Distrokid.
If you find a link to a social media page, a website, a linkedin, something that can help you contact the Label, try here. Sometimes, it’s easier to get in contact because it can be managed by someone else than the actual Content ID artist abuser. Here, just play direct and ask for the distribution service to contact. Asking them to remove the Content ID is not a good idea because you have to trust their words for that. Always try to get the name of the distro.
If the label name lead still don’t work, the last thing to try is to contact the streaming service.

Contact the streaming service :
I had to go through this process once and it was tedious. It is tedious because you will likely go through a tunnel of questions and answers via bots before reaching a possible human in the end. The streaming services are known to be quite hard to communicate with, some are easier than other. I was never able to communicate with a human through the Amazon Music platform but I had the possibility with Spotify through a long process.
Here, the thing I suggest to you is to find the e-mail address for legal actions or copyrights infringement so it can be easier to find a human in the end. They will likely not understand your demand, because they will start the discussion by if there is a copyright issue but your situation is not copyright issue but to know which distribution service has uploaded the music on their streaming service. If you find a human there, it might also be hard for you to get the information you need. I had to insist with the human I got on Spotify to get a distribution service to contact because they can be a bit suspicious of you. This process is not fun, so yeah, sorry if you have to go through that.

If you still don’t find the distribution service, I’m sorry, I don’t have other solutions to give to you. If you are in this situation, don’t stay alone, contact me and we will see if there are ways to go through that together.

Contact the distribution service

So here we are. We know which distro we have to contact to prevent Content ID to claim the music. Now, we need to reach them, and it can be quite hard. What I usually do is to search for the Terms of Use page of the website to find a “legal” or “copyright” e-mail address.

Screenshot of the Terms of use page of the distribution service DistroKid. The research tool from Firefox is open to check for the word “infringement”. The screenshot shows that the word infringement is found in the sentence “Our designated Copyright Agent for notice of claims of copyright infringement is :” with the address of the Copyright Agent and an e-mail address.

In our example, we go to the Terms of Use page of DistroKid and search for words with your browser search tool. Check the words :”infringement”, “copyright”, “legal”, “claim”, and see if you can find an e-mail address or even a phone number if you are in the state of the distribution service.
Sometime, the distribution services have no real Terms of Use page, it is just a copy and paste from an other website, without an e-mail address. But because they are businesses, they might have social medias you can find and contact here. The same if you see that the website is all in a language or an alphabet you don’t understand or is hosted in a situation that don’t force them to have a Terms of Use page.

This is the moment of the article to tell you to have no mercy. Be kind, be respectful, but have no mercy. The more e-mail addresses you can send your request too, the best it is. The more social medias you have to send direct messages and commentaries, the best it is. They don’t have a real Terms of Use page and just social medias like Instagram and they don’t answer ? Flood the comments of every posts, make stories explaining your problem and tag them everyday if necessary. If they don’t answer you, have no mercy, make them ashamed. Those people give access to a really powerful tool like Content ID to people they don’t background check because they blindly trust anyone who give them money. Have. No. Mercy. Obviously, be kind and respectful if you finally have the possibility to talk to a human being, you won’t go anywhere in this struggle without that, but leave no choice to answer you. Be there, everywhere so they don’t have the choice but to finally answer you.

Here is an example of e-mail you can send. Change the stuff in [] to go with your own situation.

Hello [DISTRIBUTION SERVICE NAME],
someone has put Content ID on my Creative Commons music and is blocking the use of my music to me and to other people who are in their rights to use it. It is stricly forbidden to use Content ID on Creative Commons music license because it is a non-exclusive license.

The song using Content ID is [TITLE OF THE SONG OF THE CONTENT ID ABUSER] by [ARTIST NAME OF THE CONTENT ID ABUSER] :
[LINK TO THE SONG OF THE CONTENT ID ABUSER – can be Youtube, Amazon, Spotify, whatever where you found that music]


My original song under [LICENSE OF YOUR SONG] is [NAME OF YOUR CLAIMED SONG] [LINK TO YOUR OWN SONG, better if there is the mention of the license like on Free Music Archive/Archive.org...]


Google telling you can't use Creative Commons for Content ID :
https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/2605065#zippy=%2Cexclusive-rights


Can you do something, please ? Or at least put me in relation with someone in [DISTRIBUTION SERVICE NAME] who can do something ?
I would appreciate, at least, that it could be noted in the section when you can activate Content ID on [DISTRIBUTION SERVICE NAME] that using Creative Commons content is not compatible with Content ID. It would save to you and me A LOT of time.

Best,
[YOUR NAME]/[YOUR ARTIST NAME]

Then, you wait. It can be long, like, reaaaally long. Like several weeks. If you don’t get an answer in the week, send a new message, or send a message through an other mean, like a direct message on a social media. When you get an answer, don’t hesitate to repeat what you just wrote until they deactivate Content ID.
They should let you know when it’s done. After this, you can try again in a few days to upload your music and see if you get a notification on Youtube or Soundcloud. If not, then it’s done.
What you can do now, it’s to archive the e-mail address of the contact that answered you on that distribution service. You might need it again.

Can I prevent this to happen again ?

The honest answer is : you can’t. Just because you remove that one claim from this specific Content ID abuser doesn’t mine other Content ID abusers will not come to do the same and you will have to do this again. It will happen again, on different platforms, sometimes so obscure you won’t be able to contact them or via twisted method. The first one, I needed to contact them via Linkedin, an other one from Russia via their instagram page because none had e-mail addresses about infringement. This is more of a systemic problem that come from the globalized capitalist society we live in, where there is no restrictions and regards what so ever on the use of a powerful tool like Content ID.

What you can do to, at least, to be easily aware when a claim happens :

What can we do ?

There might be some things we can do, but individually we can’t do nothing at all. This problem comes from decades of capitalist pressure on the copyright, from the DMCA and the constant renew of laws to reinforce copyright (like Disney never wanting their Mickey Mouse to elevate in public domain).
What I, as a free music composer, think we need to do is to talk together, as composers, as free licensed stuffs users, as consumers, to act on the politics. In Europe, we can do pressure, we have in France some lobbys like La Quadrature du Net, there are several more in Europe who contact the politics to prevent or even to propose new laws in favor of a more free use of culture and patented stuff.
So I urge you, if you want to, to contact your free music comrades. You can also contact me if you want to, if you don’t know anyone and want to talk about it. We need to organize, we need to unionize, this is a matter of survival of the free culture. Don't be alone in this.