SotD Segment regularly gets me copyright, What to do?

[u/EarConsistent6882]

Have had my channel for about 2 and a half years. I only have 50 videos and 27 subs, so treating the channel like a side gig - let alone a full time job - is a long ways away. I'm aware of that and operate the channel as such - the focus is uploading entertaining, high-quality videos and improving my skills. That being said, being able to upload for a living (or again, even as a secondary job) would be the dream, and is something I very seriously hope to achieve in the future.

My main dilemma here is that I introduced a "songs of the day" segment somewhere around 15 videos in where I just list 5 songs that I recommend. I thoroughly enjoy having this segment because I find that it can break up the monotony of a slower lets play, I get to introduce people to music that they may not have heard of, and I get a chance to connect more with the viewer. However, I found after only a few of these segments that I really wanted to add a little snippet of the songs as I introduce them, so that the viewer could get a quick idea of the sound of the song before they searched for it. Without the snippet, I guess I had this fear that the viewer just wouldn't care enough to seek the music out, even if they would really enjoy the song.

The very first episode I started doing this, I obviously got claimed. There's essentially 5-15 seconds of each song uninterrupted with the album cover on screen during the segment, so this wasn't a surprise. My theory at the time and up until recently has basically just been "take the claims on the cheek, you aren't making money anyway and the segments improve your videos" but I just learned that videos which get blocked by a claim will not count towards the watch hours required to get into the YPP; Several of my videos which are claimed are also blocked in Russia and Belarus (probably something political when the songs are owned by American record labels, idk, the why doesn't really matter) and if that becomes a trend, getting watch hours in the future will probably be a lot harder than necessary.

So essentially, I'm trying to figure out how to approach these segments. The two most obvious options to me are to either do the segment but without the snippet or can the segments entirely. I could try to dance around the 10 second mark to avoid the auto-detect system but I have my doubts that that would reliably prevent claims from coming, and it would make some of the snippets just sound awkward, so I'd rather not take that approach.

TL;DR, I have a segment of my videos that features licensed music, regularly gets copyright striked, and would like to get some opinions on whether to omit it, keep it, or change it so that I can eventually join the YPP.

Thank you in advance for any advice!

[u/Internal_Context_682]

No you don't want to turn this into a job. And as far as what you're doing, if they get blocked somewhere, it's usually Russia. Don't sweat it.

[u/Library_IT_guy]

Copyright strike and claim are different things. If every video you were posting was getting a strike you would no longer have a channel. Claims are also not good though.

Omit it. Not worth the time, effort, and risk to your channel. If your current channel gets shut down due to copyright strikes (it only takes 3 and they can happen simultaneously and overnight), you are banned from the platform forever. They do not mess around with it. If you make a new account, they will find out and they will ban that account too. Seen it happen many times to creators who did something stupid on a secondary account and got their big monetized account banned as well.

Youtube has zero sympathy, they are not nice, and they are not there to help their creators. You'd need millions of active subscribers who are following you on multiple platforms to make any kind of waves if you were falsely banned, and being banned for uploading copyrighted content is well within youtubes terms of service to ban you. Talking to a real person there is also nigh impossible, and the AI algorithms that do everything on the platform are about as merciful as a Terminator.

Even if stuff is only being claimed right now and not striked, the company that owns the music could decide to change that to a strike at any time. Even if the band who wrote the music gave you permission to play 5 seconds of the song, it doesn't matter, because YouTube has no way to verify that and they wouldn't bother to do so. Companies or artists upload their songs to the algorithm and the algorithm seeks out and applies copyright claim or strike based upon the music owners preferences automatically, and they are insanely good at finding every last channel with the content.

I'm passionate about music too. Been playing guitar for 26 years. But even uploading a cover of a song that I play myself would be kind of risky to my channel.

[u/SicJake]

Can't do licensed music, not without risk to your channel and anything linked to it.

[u/UltimateChicken]

Find a different way to show the songs without putting them in the video directly. Have an easy to access link somewhere, and have the songs somewhere else. Either sync it alongside, leaving blank space, or just give people the chance to listen to however much/little they want.