YouTube introduced a powerful new tool for creators on July 4th. This “Erase Song” feature allows them to easily remove copyrighted music from their videos, without harming the rest of the audio like dialogue or sound effects.
YouTube CEO Neal Mohan announced the update on the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, stating:
Good news, creators: our updated Erase Song tool helps you easily remove copyright-claimed music from your video (while leaving the rest of your audio intact).
According to the YouTube video above, the company had previously tested a version of the eraser tool, but it wasn’t always reliable in removing copyrighted music. The new iteration utilizes artificial intelligence (AI) to precisely identify and remove the specific song, ensuring the rest of the video’s audio remains untouched.
However, as with most AI tools, their outputs are not always perfect. YouTube warns that:
This edit might not work if the song is hard to remove. If this tool doesn’t successfully remove the claim on a video, you can try other editing options, such as muting all sound in the claimed segments or trimming out the claimed segments.
The “Erase Song” tool isn’t the only option for creators facing copyright issues. They can also choose to mute specific sections of their video flagged for potentially copyrighted music. This offers a simpler solution for silencing those portions, but it comes at the cost of losing all audio, not just the music.
Following a successful edit, YouTube will remove the “content ID claim” on the video. This claim is YouTube’s system for automatically detecting copyrighted content within uploaded clips.