YouTube has announced a new feature to help recording artists get the proper credit they deserve whenever their music is used within the platform.

A More Efficient Way To Detect Copyright Offenders

The video-hosting site introduced a new description feature that provides the names of the artist, songwriter, record label, and publisher listed conveniently on the page under "Music in this video."

The new feature will also link the artist's official YouTube channel or available music videos. Both official music videos and fan-made content will offer the option.

According to YouTube's blog post, the site uses a system called Content ID to scan a video against a database submitted by copyright owners. If a fan-made video, for example, matches with content within the database, the copyright owner will be consulted to decide whether the offending video will be blocked from the platform, track the video's viewership statistics, or share the revenue from ads with the uploader.

However, unfortunately, only artists who already have exclusive rights to "a substantial body of original material that is frequently uploaded by the YouTube user community" will be granted permission to use Content ID. In addition, YouTube will continue to monitor how the artist or record label uses the system to dispute the offending content.

If the copyright holder is caught exploiting the system, their partnership with the video-hosting site might be terminated.

YouTube also employs copyright notification web forms and its own Content Verification Program to police the unauthorized use of copyrighted material on the site.

YouTube Adds More Ads To Music Content

This is not the first and likely not the last modification that YouTube will install on its website. The streaming giant also announced in March that people who use the platform to listen to music might see an increase in advertisements in the coming months.

This is to encourage people to pay for the upcoming music streaming service that the company is currently developing to compete with Spotify and Apple Music.

"You're not going to be happy after you are jamming 'Stairway to Heaven' and you get an ad right after that," said Lyor Cohen, the Global Head of Music for YouTube. "There's a lot more people in our funnel that we can frustrate and seduce to become subscribers. Once we do that, trust me, all that noise [criticisms] will be gone and articles people write about that noise will be gone."

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