• YouTube has added AI to its Remove Song feature for creators.
• This will make removal of copyright protected music which appears in a video easier to remove.
• The feature will remove offending music but not dialogue and other audio.

At the end of January, TikTok and Universal Music Group failed to reach an agreement regarding licensing. This meant that millions of videos featuring music from Taylor Swift, Billie Eilish, and other artists went silent.

It was annoying, especially as videos using music from those artists were rather popular and as such, were recommended by TikTok’s For You Page algorithm.

Seemingly in a bid to avoid a similar problem for itself, YouTube has a solution for creators who get a copyright strike for music they use.

Truthfully this feature – known as Erase Song – has been in testing for a while, but it’s now getting an upgrade with what else, but AI.

Now creators can select to have just the song that has triggered the claim removed from their video or opt to have the audio in the video muted for the duration of the song. Importantly, no other audio including dialogue and audio effects will be removed unless the Mute all Sound option is selected. We’re curious to see how this works as we suspect that inevitably, some audio will still be audible.

There are, however, some caveats. For one, the tool may not be able to remove all copyrighted music from a video. Changes to audio for videos with over 100 000 views from creators in the YouTube Partner Program also won’t be saved.

Should this tool work as intended, YouTube says that Content ID Claims against the video will be removed.

As many folks have pointed out, any YouTuber worth their salt is going to avoid copyright protected music like the plague. This feature may help vloggers who visit public spaces where a radio may be playing. We also suspect that this feature will assist Shorts creators who may be using music to gain traction on YouTube.

It may also prove handy should music which is currently accessible by creators is removed in future.