YouTube is testing a tool that lets creators generate royalty-free music for their videos

YouTube is testing a tool that helps creators deal with copyright claims, and it could upend the industry centered around royalty-free music. In YouTube Studio, creators can now respond to a piece of claimed audio by generating a sound-alike, royalty-free track and inserting that piece of music into the contested video.

The instrumental track generator is currently available in the U.S. for desktop users. YouTube is positioning the tool as an asset for creators who inadvertently use copyrighted music in their videos. When resolving those claims, a new “Create” button generates four pieces of instrumental music. Creators can then swap in the alternative track that best suits their video.

The precision of YouTube’s Content ID technology has frustrated individual creators for years. There are numerous examples of videos that have been claimed because a copyrighted song is heard for a few seconds in the background.

YouTube has developed several solutions to that persistent problem, including an Erase Song tool that strips copyrighted music without affecting the rest of the audio track. The royalty-free song creator is an AI-powered evolution of that feature; according to longtime YouTube exec Rene Ritchie, who discussed the new “Create” button in a Creator Insider video, the experimental option will roll out more widely “later this year.”

The ability to replace copyrighted audio with royalty-free music is a useful function for many creators. The big question, however, is how this change will affect companies that provide royalty-free music to creators.

Years ago, the search for cost-efficient background tracks turned unassuming composers like Kevin MacLeod into household names. Around the same time, multiple companies popped up to provide creators with all the royalty-free music they could ever need.

Right now, YouTube is letting users create tracks to avoid copyright claims, but what if it let creators generate free-to-use music for any purpose? Would that move upend the industry that’s currently centered around royalty-free tracks?

That potential scenario is a reminder that major social platforms have the ability to reinvent the third-party companies that pop up around them. We saw that phenomenon in the realm of link-in-bio companies; those firms arrived to address an area where Instagram was falling short, but Instagram isn’t falling short anymore. YouTube could do something similar in the royalty-free world, but for now, it’s just making those pesky copyright claims a bit easier to negotiate.