To up-load 1st public performance to You Tube, or not? "In a quandary!

A few weeks ago I jumped in and performed 2 songs, playing and singing, with past instructor at a Music Festival at a local mall. My performance was somewhat of a “crash and burn” for a couple of reasons that I won’t go into now. At least I got my nerve up to do it! When I am 100% prepared, I’ll probably do it again (perhaps alone next time). Yes, it feels kind of cool once, you do it. My wife recorded it on a ZOOM Q3 and I was thinking about uploading (some parts of it) to You Tube. Besides learning how to edit and upload it, I find myself in a quandary regarding the copyright Laws and even You Tubes rules. One of the songs has been “covered” thousands of times and one is a relatively recent Country song. I’ve read and re-read what Wikipedia has to say about it, including “covers”, “parodies”, “tributes”, “licensing”, “permissions”, etc. I even “tried” to read and understand the copyright laws themselves. You Tube rules seemed to be exactly in agreement with what I read in Wikipedia and the Laws. Simply stating ”cover of song ‘such and such’, original artist ‘so and so’” doesn’t seem to exempt one from the laws. I kept looking for a
foot note, or some type of caveat, regarding financial gain or no financial gain, but didn’t find one. Are there any “gray areas” or are the laws all “black or white”? I must be missing something!
“Theoretically speaking” (of course), if you/someone you know, upload songs to You Tube how would you/someone do it?

I would check with YouTube. This isn't a good rationale, but a LOT of people upload covers of songs on YouTube all of the time, so I have to think that the YT people have something written down that explains their stance on it and if you can or can't be held liable.

I've seen vids using this disclaimer . . .

Copyright Disclaimer Under Section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976: allowance is made for "fair use" for purposes such as criticism, comment, and teaching. Fair use is a use permitted by copyright statute that might otherwise be infringing. Non-profit, educational or personal use tips the balance in favor of fair use.

Click to expand...

Youtube has its own automatic system to match song name and soundclip's "fingerprint", if your content is copyrighted and by the time you upload, you should be blocked. Or your content will be taken down 1 or 2 days after you finish uploading.
The faster way: Just upload it, no news is good news.
The safer way: check with YT guys who I have no idea who they are. Maybe you'll just talk to a bot.

You're young. You will still have plenty of time to enjoy life after you get out of prison. What could go wrong?

(All spoken in jest).


I don't think they are going to crack down on covers, just on using copyrighted stuff like a published music video in your upload.

I remember worrying about this when I first uploaded to You Tube. When I read their terms and conditions, their main concern was that you were uploading a video you had actually made yourself or, if it had been made by someone else, you had their permission to use it. I suspect the latter is most commonly found when the subject of the video has got someone else to actually hold the camera.

Their terms did not seem to touch on case of covers of songs and I have a vague memory of reading that You Tube had come to agreement with the copyright organisations in several countries about payment of royalties to cover the issue of covering songs written by someone else. In my own case, most of the material I have uploaded is out of copyright anyway, but there are two songs of recent composition and the songwriter knows about them and is quite happy as it means his songs are being publicised. I suspect that is true of many songwriters. I remember Tom Paxton, in a signing after a concert, when asked about using his songs saying something like "Of course, my songs are meant to be sung!"

If you look through the info on YouTube, there's somewhere that says that they don't have a problem with people posting their own performances of cover tunes. Sometime they will put up a little bit of writing in blue that the song matched copyrighted content. They will only remove those if the owner of the song requests it. However, if you don't own all of the content YouTube will put an advertizement across the lower portion of the screen.

YouTube is more strict about you using copyrighted video content, like using a scene from Star Wars but putting your music over it.

If you're nervous about the performance quality and you only want friends and family to be able to see it, you can post the video as "Unlisted" instead of public. Then people can only find it if they have the link. So you e-mail the link to everyone you want to have look at it.

I've posted several covers over the last couple of months and only had one problem - and as uke4ia said, it contained copyrighted video. The video was blocked - which is ironic, since I pirated the video from another You Tube video posted by someone who doesn't own the copyright either. I think they posted it years ago, before You Tube had their fancy, automated system that looks for copyright infringement. It would seem they only scan a video as it's uploaded, so all the older videos with blatant copyright violations were kind of grandfathered in.

One of my other covers received a little notice that the owners of the copyright on the song 'noticed' but didn't mind. They 'monetized' my post by placing a small add to the original artist just beneath the video. No big deal.

Like others have said, just as long as it's just a cover without any copyrighted video or images, you should be fine.