Watch enough content on YouTube, and you’ll inevitably hear a creator talking about copyrighted music and the risks to having it play in the background of their video. One regular viewer of Brian Christopher wonders about it from our perspective:
I noticed some of the people I watch playing slots are worried about “copyright” when music is playing in the casino…but you don’t seem concerned about it (just watched your segment at Potawatomi where the background music got really loud)… What’s the dealeeOh?
Wendy P.
We may not talk about it on camera, but it’s a concern for us as much as it is for everyone else. If a video is flagged for copyright, it means all of the revenue from the video would be deferred to the copyright owner of the material in question.
For channels like Brian’s, it is often just music in the background, but for other types of creators it can be the use of clips in the video and other elements that are owned by outside sources as well.
When content is uploaded to platforms, a check is run to see if there’s any concerns. If a video is flagged for copyright, we generally have an opportunity to edit the video in various ways to resolve the issue. Sometimes it’s the background music at a casino; sometimes it’s the music from a game itself.
You’ll notice some slot creators won’t always play certain licensed games because the music within them are practically guaranteed to flag a copyright match. But we’ve even found some games that use licensed production music, not a song you’d recognize from the radio but someone owns and has licensed to the slot maker. In those cases we’ve had to even snip aspects of a game out to avoid the copyright flag.
Thankfully, with much of what we do recorded ahead of time, we have time to find and correct these issues. The behind-the-scenes filming notes will often include things like “loud background music.” Live streams are harder, and on occasion we’ve had to mute a small portion or make an adjustment to resolve the issue – it’s impossible to completely avoid.
We also take steps to reduce the issues too – at some casinos we visit regularly they’re willing to lower the volume when we’re filming, for instance. You also may notice Brian wearing a mic sometimes – that can assist with reducing the background volume as well.
But it’s just as much a concern for us as everyone else, but with more than eight years under our belts, we’ve also identified various ways of making it easier to manage.
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