What can and can’t you do when it comes to copyrighted music in your videos and live videos? Whether that’s your Facebook Livestreams, or uploaded videos to Facebook or YouTube. We’ve got these answers in this livestream featuring Music Publisher and Music Coach Dean Reynolds

🎧Where you can Find Dean🎧

Dean’s YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCRsesLBQD-B6jufltOCqi0Q

Dean on IG: https://www.instagram.com/deanreynoldsmedia/

🕒Timestamps🕒

Why you can’t play copyrighted music: 3:10

Why you need to pay attention to music playing around you 4:32

Royalty music on Facebook 5:26

Music on YouTube 6:11

DMCA: 8:28

Royalty free music in YouTube studio 8:40

Epidemic sound: 9:18

Fairness in music 11:48

Attribution issues 12:56

🔴Get your free Facebook Live Cheat Sheets🔴: https://saranguyenonline.com/special/facebook-live-cheat_sheets/

📓Resources mentioned📓

Epidemic sound: https://www.epidemicsound.com/campaign/invite-a-creator/?_us=Referral&_usx=fp95ch

One time fee music – Lickd: https://lickd.co/

How to Legally Play Music on Facebook Live – Video Transcription

So today’s video, we’re going to talk about a question that I get asked all the time and it’s, how do you add music to your Facebook live streams to your YouTube videos or your YouTube live streams, and how do you do it in a way that doesn’t end you in social media prison? Doesn’t get you copyright strikes and I’ve got quite a few things that we’re going to cover today. I’ve got someone who knows what they’re talking about. Who’s going to answer these questions.

Before we get started, so for those of you who don’t know me, my name is Sara Nguyen, and I help entrepreneurs, coaches and consultants build and grow their business using video on social media. Make sure that you check out the links in the description, because we’re going to add the timestamps to the live stream so that you can go back and watch all the sections. We’ll also add links to all of the resources that we’ve mentioned there.

Here we go. Hi Dean, I’m bringing Dean on now. Hey Sara, how’s it going? Good. Thanks. Dean is a music coach and music publisher, and I thought who better to talk to us about music, music rights than someone actually in the industry.

I’m super excited to have Dean here. Thanks for joining us, Dean. Yeah, I’m kind of like talking over you. Thanks so much for having me, man. I’m in the beautiful state of Atlanta, Georgia and man, It’s so good to be on your show. This for me is just so real because I do, I’m, I’m a subscriber like my notification is on when it comes to your content. So for me to be sitting here to chat with you is just freaking amazing.

I’m excited because this content is it’s real, you know, like for creators and for musicians and artists. And I really like the idea of bringing you on board to talk about it from the perspective of someone in the industry. Because I think it’s one thing to hear, Oh, it’s breaking the law and everyone kind of disregards that, but I liked having it from the perspective of, you know what, this is real. It impacts not just, you know, government and lawmakers, but it impacts musicians and music creators. I’m really excited to hear your perspective on this. I think we’re going to, this is going to be a really good live stream. Yeah, dope livestream.

I’m actually a bit disappointed that I wasn’t organised enough to play some music. But that’s okay. That’s fine. That’s for the next live stream once we sorted it all out I am the music, I can beat box. I don’t think I’ve ever had anyone beat box on the livestream before so that’s a first. I’m just joking. All right, let’s get into it, Dean.

Let’s just say that I’m on a live stream. Let’s just say that I wanted to, you know, get people in the mood and set the scene and get everyone a bit excited and I played some Beyonce’. Why am I not allowed to do that? Alright, awesome. There are two, the main two platforms that we’re talking about Facebook and YouTube.

Each platform treats copyright in a diff– they have a different perspective. Let’s start with Facebook. We’re not allowed to play copyrighted music on Facebook because Facebook signed a deal with major record labels, so anytime you play a song from that catalog or those catalog, then Facebook usually mutes your videos.

If the song is played for 30 seconds or minutes in your video, or in various parts, Facebook mutes those section and then you’ll get that notification, but it’s hard to resolve that. It’s super difficult. I’ve also seen, like people say that they were playing music or music was playing in the background while they’re live ’cause they were out or there was a cafe behind them and there was some music playing and then their live stream also got pulled down. Like it just stopped. I’ve also seen cases of that.

That’s something that a lot of people don’t pay attention to music is music, whether you it’s intentional or not. If you’re out and about, if you’re driving somewhere and you go live and that music is in the background, if it’s copyrighted music, then you’re going to get in trouble on Facebook. Even though Facebook released about two weeks ago, something where they’re trying not to penalize live streamer, especially in the, in the pandemic season.

Let’s say, you go live as long as it’s a live stream, they’re saying that they won’t take your video down, but they’re not saying for how long they’re gonna allow that sort of thing. But for the most part, according to the announcement, you should be okay within a short period of time. But my thing is just forget about that. Like, you don’t have to always play an artist that’s known or popular. You can just play a local artist. You can just get a beat in of itself, has royalty free music. People just don’t know it.

You can just go to, I think it’s business.facebook.com. but it’s Facebook creative studio and right in there, you’ll see royalty free music. Some might not be hot, but there are plenty of them ’cause I’ve used them before and any of those tracks are used, they have tracks with lyrics in their tracks just by themselves and they also have sound effects. And that to me is just super dope. You can just go there, download it, install it in your live, and you’re good to go.

On YouTube now, so YouTube is a different beast. She’s a different beast. That’s the way YouTube because I think YouTube is the big one where, I think Facebook live is one thing, but YouTube, there are creators there who make, try or trying to make or make money from YouTube videos. YouTube has strikes and strikes are like a big deal.

I’ll let you talk more about YouTube and music and its strikes. Alright, so the first thing I would address for YouTube is the difference between a copyright claim and a copyright strike. A copyright claim is, is when YouTube sends you an email just to basically say, “Hey, you know, I have noticed that, we have noticed that you were playing a song that someone claimed the copyright owner claims”, and they will tell you in that email, this is not a strike against your channel. Only there’s no placed ad or ads on your video. In other words, you won’t be able to monetise that video if, you know, if it has copyrighted music in it. Right. So that’s, go ahead.

Let’s break that down a bit because I was listening to some of your content and you were talking about in terms of music and who has a claim to that revenue and there’s lots of layers and it’s very complicated from what I understood. When you are a YouTube creator on YouTube and you monetise, from my understanding is that if you’re monetising, you’ve got music from someone, then you don’t get all of that revenue. You need to share that with the person who created the music, the music publishers, is that right? Yeah.

So the music publishers for the most part control the copyright of the music, and then they distribute that to the song writers or sometimes producers. But on the other hand, if you play a song let’s say you play a song that the artist doesn’t want that song to be on your video just doesn’t want your channel or my channel to represent his or her music then that person could order what’s called a DMCA, Digital Millennium Copyright Act. They will force YouTube to take it down.

On the other hand, a strike is basically when like, three strikes on YouTube you’re out, your channel is banned, but right inside YouTube, once you go to YouTube and you click your profile and you go to my channel, all they have to do is slide over to the left and you’ll see audio library to the left.

Once you click on a YouTube studio, audio library, and that’s YouTube royalty free music as well. Why get in trouble when both platforms provide, you know, a royalty free music? And you said, well, I want hot tracks. I want tracks that’s super dope. And I don’t know if you’re going to put this in there. I think it’s in the description. You can go to Epidemic sound as well. We’ll drop the link to the Epidemic Sound in the description.

What is Epidemic Sound? So Epidemic Sound, oh my gosh, I love them so much Sara, because they’re, they have real artists. There are like artists that are on the cutting edge. They’re super pop artists or reggae or whatnot and it’s just modern beats. The beats are very groove in it, it’s super hot. I use them a lot.

The only thing now, here’s the thing. It’s subscription based. Let’s say you start a free trial, which you can do, and you download 20 songs and at the end of 30 days, you discontinue that service. Here’s the thing. You can still play the music that, that belongs to Epidemic. But if you’re not a subscriber to Epidemic, then you can’t monetise those videos and they’ll send you an email and let you know, it’s tricky. As long as you are a paid member of epidemic, you can use their songs all across the internet.

These are dope, when I say dope tracks, Oh my gosh, they have sting tracks. Like just for commercial, just for 20 seconds, 30 seconds or five seconds. They have full on tracks, amazing singers. I play them all the time. In other words, don’t get a copyright strike, man. Like there are plenty of options out there to protect yourself. Be intentional. If you’re going out and you’re going to go live, make sure that the music you’re playing, you have the rights to it. The only time you can get away on YouTube is most times, you know, they’re going to just put ads on your song and that will be that. But you need to at least know exactly what you’re doing in terms of subscription services. It’s interesting.

Epidemic Sound is one, I guess, one for creators to use and they can download the music, but it’s only valid whilst you are an active subscriber to Epidemic Sound. On a monetised video. Yep, on a monetised video. Okay, what if they, see this is a thing everyone’s like, I don’t want to pay ongoing fees. Let’s talk a little bit about that, right? And talk about why we need to pay these ongoing fees.

So you know these, so Epidemic Sounds, by the way, I like to talk about sites and companies that I actually test, have tested. I’d like to let you know. Epidemic Sound, the reason why you have to pay is because they signed contracts with these artists. These are not just artists that were back in the day. These are current artists that are constantly, performing on tour.

They are active on Instagram with hundreds of thousands of subscribers and whatnot. They sign these deals, so whenever you pay your subscription fee, they get a piece of that. Whenever their revenue comes in off of that video, the artists and the song writer, they get a piece of that as well. They have a system which is, to me, that’s genius. The fact that I can download songs and then I end my contract, and they know that I’m no longer paying and the software picks that up or the AI picks that up, I say, Hey, wait a minute, you stopped paying, so you cannot monetise that video. That’s why they charge because they want you to do that.

Now, there are other services out there that they say it’s free and it’s free. But here is the thing that people get in trouble with Sara, attribution. There are a lot of producers out there that will say you can use my music for free. But the thing is because you don’t read the fine print, you have to give, you have to let the people know who this song belongs to, producer Mike James and if you don’t put those details, they can, they can issue a take down. They can take you to, because it’s in the fine print, it’s in the contract, it’s free, but attribution is important.

In terms of like, paying these subscriptions, I really liked how you emphasize that, it’s not just about paying for the right to use them. It’s about, paying the artist for their work as well. That’s about keeping it fair. So you want to use music, so that you can add mood and ambiance to your track. That’s fine. But you’re using someone else’s work in your work, so you need to respect that and I guess, go through the right channels.

I know, like we talked about Epidemic Sound, but there’s lots of also other, I guess royalty-free sites out there. Why do you prefer Epidemic Sound, compared to Audio Jungle or the other ones where you download it once, and then you don’t have to keep paying them to keep using that? Yeah. Great question. Why do I? Because I’m an artist and I believe in supporting the artists, they’re my people.

I’m a bass player. I really like nowadays music. I really do, modern pop. I’m Jamaican so of course, I’m into dance hall and the reggae, even though I’m into dope, I’m into amazing hip hop I’m into pop, but it just, there’s a modern sound that Epidemic has that always gets me, always grips me in my heart and if it grabs me in my heart, it’s going to grab the viewer’s heart. I just like to use them, but I do use other tracks.

I have a producer that I work with. His name is Caleb. He supplies tracks to me all the time and I make sure that he’s set up to get royalties whenever we play his music or anybody who plays his tracks. I do have that system as well. He’s a dope producer as well.

It’s just all about your choice, man. Any way you want to go, you can go. There’s another company that is called Lickd. I think it’s L Y C I don’t remember how to spell it, but it’s called Lickd. We’ll put it in the description. Now, yeah. So Lickd offers, let’s say you have, you want to play a song from Beyonce’, Rihanna, Madonna. I think they can do these different contracts where you can get to play their song and you play, you pay a one time fee. It’s kinda like a That can’t be cheap to be playing, a one time fee to play Madonna’s song. Like totally, that’s not something that is cheap.

People do it ’cause they want to, they want to associate themselves with known artists so to speak. But for me as a content creator, music creator and whatnot, as long as the song is dope, as long as the track is amazing and it grips your heart, Sara, you have to have a well known, like some of the songs I played from Epidemic Sound, Oh my gosh, they’re very emotional. Whether they’re fast or slow. There’s something about that site that always gets me like, so I just stick with what connects with me. Fair enough. That’s fair enough.

So, we talked about a lot, so we talked about how you can’t just play Beyonce’ on your live stream or any copyrighted music because that’s breaking the law. Also it’s kind of unfair. It’s unfair that you use other people’s work in your work and they don’t get anything from it. We also talked about YouTube and Facebook and how they and how music works with them. You talked about the royalty free music options that they’ve got within both of those platforms. You talked about YouTube claims and YouTube strikes as well.

It was quite, we’ve talked about quite a few things. You also talked about music subscription services that you can use to actually have music in your content if you chose. Is there anything else that you want to talk about in terms of music, the rules, things people need to consider in terms of, you know, creators, what do they really need to be conscious of? Yeah.

I would say, never, don’t be afraid to add music to your content because it does connect with people. Once people hear music, it draws them in, so if you’re playing a song on your live and it doesn’t connect with you, chances are, it might not connect with someone else. Start with what connects with you. Doesn’t matter the style, it could be jazz, it could be soul, it could be country, whatever that song is, it needs to connect with you first as the content creator. Even though it’s, they’re saying you’re making content for the viewers, of course, but if it’s not getting into what you’re making, like what’s the purpose? So I would say do that, but just be mindful of what you’re doing.

You know, there’s a little bit more of a freedom on YouTube, but you still have to be careful because you don’t want to get into the habit of just playing anything, you know, and posting anything. You want to know exactly what you’re doing. The safest way to do it, like I said before is go to YouTube studio and use YouTube library, royalty free music or Facebook Creator Studio, and use their royalty free music and with that, you’re going to be safe.

Safety is important right now. You don’t want to be just going on and going on, it’s kinda used in certain phrase in the pandemic season, which I’m not going to repeat now, because once you’ve used certain phrase of the pandemic season and YouTube tends to not monetise that video. So be intentional, know exactly what you’re doing, but don’t be afraid to use music in your video. It definitely adds value. It adds to the taste and the lightning of your content. It’s just amazing. I am a musician so I can go on and on. Thank you so much, Dean.

I think that pretty much covers all the things that I wanted to hit in this live stream. So we had a comment. Damien said it’s called Lickd. Lickd? Yes. Okay. I’m going to trust you D, I will look that up. I’ll do that later. Thank you so much for joining us today and just giving us your, your perspective and talking about, you know, giving all the advice about where people can get music from.

Now, where can people find you if they wanted to learn more about you and what you do and all of that? Amazing. I just released a course, I would say a month ago called Music Publishing Made Easy. You can go to my website, Deanreynoldsmedia.com and links are in the description as well. Deanreynoldsmedia.com.

If you want to book a free 15 minute consultation with me, you can do that as well. If you want to just go straight and book a paid consultation, you can do that as well. If you want to just go and purchase my course, Deanreynoldsmedia.com, and that’s where you can find me. I’m on Instagram Dean Reynolds Media, you can send me a DM. I’m on Facebook. I’m all over the place. You’re everywhere. All right, Dean. Thanks for joining us. You’re welcome. All right. Okay.

Thanks everyone for being here. I hope that you found that really useful, some good insights there and if you found this video useful, give me a thumbs up and don’t forget to subscribe to my channel. If you’re all looking for more ways to grow your business, you want to get started with Facebook live. We talked about adding music to your Facebook live. Make sure you grab a copy of my Facebook Live Cheat Sheets. It’s a super simple guide to get you up in streaming on Facebook live. I cover all the things you need to know so that you can have a really amazing live stream. I don’t talk about music. I’m going to add that to it now that we’ve spoken to Dean. Thanks everyone for being here and thanks for joining us on this live stream and I will see you in the next broadcast bye for now