Impending Problems For YouTube Creators

For those creators who depend on YouTube for fan outreach, 2020 could be throwing some serious curveballs. Here we break down three major changes to that platform that spell trouble for artists.

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Guest post by Bobby Owsinski of Music 3.0

If you depend on YouTube for all of your social interaction and audience outreach, things might get a lot tougher in 2020. There are three things that the service is getting tough on creators that could cause you to lose some sleep soon. Let’s go through them.

Accounts Are Being Deleted

YouTube announced recently that it changed its terms of service, and as a result would begin to delete accounts that it deemed “longer commercially viable.” What that basically means is that if it can’t make money on you, then it’s not interested in having you on the platform. This primarily pertains to accounts that don’t have a lot of subscribers, which are now subject to being deleted. It also means that YouTube has the power to delete a creator’s account if they upload or livestream video that might not pull in enough advertising revenue.

You might be thinking that you have a lot of subscribers so that doesn’t apply to you and maybe that’s true, but your subscriber count may take a hit if many of your subscribers have their account deleted.

For Children Labeling

In those same changes in its terms, YouTube began requiring creators to label their videos if they might appeal to children. While this won’t be a problem for most creators, it might be if you’re a pop artist with a strong pre-teen audience. If you keep your content squeaky clean and child-safe you shouldn’t have any problems, but you might incur the wrath of the service if a random objectionable lyric is discovered or a scene in a video is deemed as too sexual.

Here’s the big worry –  if you fail to comply fully with the “made for kids” mandate, the burden is on you and the liability can be as high as $42,000 per mislabeled video!

The problem is that we don’t always know who’s watching our videos, but we have to now be aware if our content might be objectionable in any way to the below 13 age group.

Be Careful Of The Music That You Use

Many creators are discovering that music they thought was royalty-free was actually not, and as a result, there are copyright strikes against them that gets their channel demonetized. That’s pretty harsh if you have millions of followers and earn your living from YouTube, but that’s not most artists.

But here’s where it gets dicey. You really have to be careful of the music you use, even if it’s your own. The reason why is that your label, publisher, or the publisher of a co-writer (especially) can issue an automatic copyright warning without a human being involved making a connection that the use is actually authorized. That’s why you have to make sure that everyone is aware of your channel and your use so you don’t have to go through the torture of appealing a copyright strike, or even worse, having your channel demonetized or suspended.

As you can see, YouTube is now in big-time cover-your-ass mode, and that means that means more concerns for creators in general. Be careful out there.