YouTube creators’ music woes many finally be coming to an end. For more than a decade, creators have struggled to soundtrack their videos with anything other than instrumental or stock music and still make money. If they wanted to use a pop song — popular or not — they’d have to do so knowing that all the revenue from their video would go to the rights holder for that track.
Today, Sept. 20, at its inaugural “Made on YouTube” event, YouTube announced Creator Music, a new marketplace for creators to browse and license music with clearly defined terms and rates all spelled out. They can also elect to share revenue with music rights holders.
A screenshot of the Creator Music site where creators can search music by genre and artist and by top revenue sharing tracks
Credit: YouTube
The marketplace is free to use, much like YouTube’s longstanding but outdated Audio Library, which offers free stock music and sound effect options to creators from within the Creator Studio.
It’s a huge step forward in a content creation landscape that has evolved faster than copyright laws have been able to keep up with it. Creator Music is in beta in the U.S. and will expand to more countries in 2023.
