How to get your music on YouTube Music (formerly Music Key), YouTube s music subscription service. Move over Spotify and Rdio. YouTube Music is here. After much anticipation, YouTube has just announced the launch of its subscription streaming service: YouTube Red. YouTube Music, a component and app within the YouTube Red service, will let subscribers listen to ad-free music (including full albums in high quality audio) AND watch music videos — even when offline — for $9.99/month. And YOUR music (and Art Tracks videos) could be available on YouTube Music too! As a CD Baby artist, if you re distributing your music to streaming services such as Apple Music and Spotify, your albums and singles will be delivered to YouTube Music automatically. We will also deliver to YouTube high quality album art videos, or what YouTube is calling Art Tracks, which play audio while displaying an image of your album cover. These videos are available not only to YouTube Red subscribers, but also as ad-supported content accessible for free on Ad revenue from these videos will work the same as any other video on YouTube. Revenue for streaming activity through YouTube Red will be paid to you by CD Baby, and you ll be able to view details in the accounting section of your member account. As a YouTube Red subscriber, all of this listening and viewing will be ad-free, and content will keep playing even if you lock the screen, start using other apps, or disconnect from the Internet. Oh, and they ll throw in a subscription to Google Play Music too, giving you access to 30+ million songs. Are you excited about this new subscription streaming service from YouTube? Let us know in the comments section below. [ Take your YouTube presence to the next level with Illustrated Sound. Click HERE. In this article. is the Editor of CD Baby's DIY Musician Blog. I write Beatlesque indie-pop songs that've been praised by No Depression . KCRW, The LA Times . others. My poems have appeared in Poetry Magazine . Prairie Schooner . The Poetry Review . more. I live in Maine and like peanut butter chocolate chip cookies, a little too much. All comments are approved manually. I try to moderate comments twice daily, but hey, weekends and crazy times happen. If you don't see your comment go live right away, it didn't evaporate; it's just waiting for my attention. Thanks for reading, sharing your thoughts, and being a part of the CD Baby community. When you create these art videos and someone has not opted into sync licensing with you the YouTube revenue will still be collected and distributed. Also, I m already creating my own art videos and collecting ad revenue from them without anyone else taking a slice is it possible to opt out of having you create them. YouTube Music Key should definitely be a distribution option free from Sync Licensing program. This way you are leaving out musicians licensing their music for use in media. Those have to opt out Sync Licensing. Also, YouTube does not split revenue between the video creator and audio owner, all goes to the one who claims copyright on audio. So, many indie artists opt out Sync Licensing and prefer to be credited for a wider reach. This way they can get in popular money making channels in YouTube without cutting channel revenues. YouTube Music Key is a stream service with content coming from distributors such as CD Baby. No random user can upload a video with our songs on them. So, it should be a Distribution option, not a Sync Licensing option. That will be pretty harmful to many indie musicians. I hope you ll be able to solve this one soon. Shame, I would be interested in Music key but not the sync licensing program as it interferes with my own licensing efforts. If I m a Canadian artist will my music be played on Music Key in this beta version, or will I have to wait until Music Key comes to Canada. Love it ! Well done the cdbaby team. You guys rock ! You get us in everywhere. I d recommend a time delay of at least one week until Topic Art Tracks show up. Christopher, once again thank you for the article As of this point I have not signed up for sync licensing because I do a lot of covers. Technically, a different license is required to sync music to pictures. For download and streaming services I can get a mechanical license (through Limelight) and avoid haggling with individual rights holders and pay one standard fee. But Youtube is different monster legally because of sync licenses and the fact that there is not a statutory rate to pay the rights holders. Youtube is a little scary because they allow a lot of violations to be unenforced i.e. the rights holders have to troll the site and ask for music to be taken down instead of not letting up there in the first place. But, if they add a subscription service, they are likely going to meet a lot of lawyers because there will be a lot more money in the pool to fight over. Has there been any discussion on this. I am VERY excited about the tech, but I am not sure if what they are proposing is strictly above board legally. (Much like their current practices). They kind of have a better to ask for permission than forgiveness business model. But, that is a little scary with copyrights. To be honest, the realm of cover songs on YouTube is still a very gray area in my mind (and I think in most peoples minds). Hopefully there ll be some standardization across the industry for covers on YouTube soon. So, if I use CD Baby + YouTube Music Key: will YouTube upload my band s album s art tracks inside an auto-generated topic channel specifically dedicated to my band? Or in which topic channel. I ve recently used another distributor (I won t say its name, but it doesn t exactly stand out for its customer support) and my album s art tracks got uploaded inside a YouTube topic channel called Various Artists , which has hundreds (or thousands) of art tracks from different artists. I don t know why it s on this Various Artists topic channel instead of getting a topic channel specifically dedicated to my band. It makes me wonder if this is normal (maybe YouTube doesn t consider my band important enough as to have its own topic, or maybe it s because we already have an official YouTube channel), or if it s our distributor who messed it up, I don t know but we re not happy at all about this. Maybe it s because our artist info wasn t on the MusicBrainz database which I think YouTube uses? I ve now submitted the info there but our art tracks are still on that Various Artists topic channel. The art tracks are fine, it s just this various artists topic that doesn t make much sense to us. And it s not like we are a complete unknown band, our official YouTube channel has over 12K subscribers. Any help or advice? Thanks. It s still so new that I m not exactly sure how they re organizing content, but I ve heard that the art tracks will supplement official music videos (which will have been uploaded by you to your channel). Then for any songs that don t have official videos, they ll use the art tracks to complete the album when a user wants to stream the full album. I ll pass your question on to our digital distribution manager and see if I can get more details for you. OK. I heard back from him. He says: Yes, your Art Tracks should exist inside your own band’s auto-generated topic channels. As for Various Artists, there is a known issue where some content is being identified as Various Artists but shouldn’t be. You should talk to your distributor who can notify YouTube of the error. Thank you very much, Christopher. Finally my distributor replied and this is what they said: This is actually a bug on YouTube’s end which they’re aware of and working on a fix for. I hope this is true and not just a way of telling me to relax and shut up 🙁 anyway, maybe I ll just have to live with this Various Artists auto-generated topic thing, I guess it s not that bad, it could be worse. By the way, this has got to be a MASSIVE issue, because the Various Artists auto-generated topic channel in which my art tracks are has literally one million art tracks already: and there are more auto-generated topic channels called Various Artists which have more and more art tracks that are being uploaded every day. Haha. I don t think they re sending you subtextual shove-off messages. We ve heard the same thing from YouTube for some titles in our catalog too. It s my understanding that when we get reports of sync revenue, the quantity column refers to ad impressions and ad click-throughs, not actual plays of the video. So Music Key would base the pay per-stream, albeit a floating amount. Do I have that right. It s my understanding that when we get reports of sync revenue, the quantity column refers to ad impressions and ad click-throughs, not actual plays of the video. So Music Key would base the pay per-stream, albeit a floating amount. Do I have that right. Yes, MusicKey works similar to other streaming services where there s a per-stream payout. Yes, MusicKey works similar to other streaming services where there s a per-stream payout. Heather W. Reichgott. I d also be interested in having my music sent to Youtube Music Key, but I m not going to opt into the sync licensing program because I don t want to be used in commercials and stuff without the chance to say no or negotiate. (After all, being an independent artist is all about having a say in how my music is used. Youtube Music Key sounds more like a streaming music service, which I m happy to have my music on, and it really doesn t sound like the same thing as offering music to be put into unspecified other projects. Unless it is. Like other commenters I d be interested to know when/if that becomes an option. I d also like to know how to submit actual videos that aren t just a cover art picture. Will it become possible to take videos that I already have uploaded to my youtube channel, and port them over to Youtube Music Key. I m not sure how they re going to do it, but I ve heard that YouTube will favor official music videos in its Music Key service (which means, if they can correctly identify the official video in your channel, that video should get preferential streaming. And then they d fill in missing songs that don t have videos with the album art videos that we ll send them. Also, right now the only way to get into Music Key through CD Baby is via our sync program, but this was just the easiest way to start the partnership and work through the processes. It may be possible that at some point we ll simply add Music Key as a digital partner (and not a sync partner). We ll definitely send an announcement if that happens. Hi Chris has this been sorted out yet? I don t like the Topic videos all popping up day of release, and distracting from an Official Video. I m not sure how much of a distraction they are. I my experience, when I search for something, they only come up AFTER the official videos, or in the event that it s the only video containing that content. Are they coming up ahead of your official videos in a search. I can t see that happening. Though it would be an awesome way to engage listeners, I agree.
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