Bypass, Fake and get rid of Youtube’s audio copyright infringement

To make things clear: I do not support the use of copyrighted material on Youtube or anywhere else. Musicians and all other artists should be payed for their work. But the measures Youtube has recently taken to prevent the use of copyrighted audio just don’t work. Youtube analyses the audio in the video’s you upload and when the system matches it succesfully to copyrighted audio, all the audio get’s muted. If so, Youtube will show you the following copyright message:

Your video, Video with copyrighted music , may include audio content that is owned or licensed by WMG and audio content that is owned or licensed by UMG

As a result, the audio track of your video is muted.

The problem is, when you have put a lot of time and effort in editing your video’s and the audio is a mix of copyrighted material and source (non-copyrighted) audio, all your audio gets muted! In example, when uploading a Ferrari video with an intro that contains a song from Guns ‘n Roses and the main part with Ferrari scenes you have filmed yourself all the audio gets muted because of that intro. Now, everybody knows watching a Ferrari video is a lot less fun without the audio.

I don’t know exactly what deals Youtube has with different labels because with some songs the audio isn’t muted. You do receive a copyright message but by showing an iTunes ad of the song in question the video uploader/author doesn’t have to undertake any actions. Seems like the perfect solution for me. But since this is not the case for all copyrighted music we need a solution for the audio that does get muted.

The Solution

What you need to do is pitch the audio just a little bit. Your viewers probably won’t even notice but Youtube will not recognize your music as copyrighted. So how to do that? I’ll explain it for one application, which free of charge. The method is the same for almost all other audio/video editing software.

Audacity

1. Download and install Audacity.

2. Open your music file.

3. Go to: Effect –> Change pitch…

4. Enter -0.5 semitones (half-steps)

5. Press OK.

6. Export your audio.

7. That’s it! You’re done Youtube probably will not recognize your music. If it does, try pitching the audio a bit more.

Video Tutorial

An Example

GNR – Welcome to the Jungle (original audio)

GNR – Welcome to the Jungle (pitched audio)

To honor the King of Pop a beautiful version of Billie Jean. Performed on 3FM dutch radio show “Giel” in 2008 by Jason Mraz and Nikki:

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