# How does YouTube detect copyrighted soundtracks?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-does-youtube-detect-copyrighted-soundtracks/582529
**Category:** Factual Questions
**Created:** [May 20, 2011, 1:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-does-youtube-detect-copyrighted-soundtracks/582529 "2011-05-20T01:54:13Z")
**Posts on this page:** 11
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@CookingWithGas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CookingWithGas)
#### Post date: [May 20, 2011, 1:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-does-youtube-detect-copyrighted-soundtracks/582529/1 "2011-05-20T01:54:13Z")
I made a video of some little league players, and I used John Fogarty’s “Put Me In Coach” as a soundtrack. I got an email from YouTube that my video “[FONT=Arial]may have content that is owned or licensed by UMG,” although it does not happen to mention WTF is UMG.
Anyway, there are billions of songs out there. How does YouTube figure this out? It can’t possibly do an exhaustive search, not every version of a song will match bit-for-bit. I had a similar experience when I made a video of my son’s laser tag birthday party and used a \*portion \*of a song by Joe Satriani.
Edit: I am asking this out of intellectual curiosity, not to figure out how to circumvent copyright law.
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### Author:  [@kanicbird](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kanicbird)
#### Post date: [May 20, 2011, 1:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-does-youtube-detect-copyrighted-soundtracks/582529/2 "2011-05-20T01:56:26Z")
I don’t know but just wanted to say I always though the lines of the song was ‘put me in cold’ as in no warm up.
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### Author:  [@jz78817](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jz78817)
#### Post date: [May 20, 2011, 1:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-does-youtube-detect-copyrighted-soundtracks/582529/3 "2011-05-20T01:56:38Z")
waveform analysis. the same way you can have the Shazam app on your phone “listen” to a song playing and identify what it is.
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### Author:  [@Dewey\_Finn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dewey_Finn)
#### Post date: [May 20, 2011, 1:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-does-youtube-detect-copyrighted-soundtracks/582529/4 "2011-05-20T01:59:02Z")
UMG means Universal Music Group. (And BTW, the song is properly called Centerfield.)
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### Author:  [@Reply](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Reply)
#### Post date: [May 20, 2011, 2:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-does-youtube-detect-copyrighted-soundtracks/582529/5 "2011-05-20T02:06:00Z")
Check out [acoustic fingerprinting on Wikipedia](https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Acoustic_fingerprint) and this [illustrated explanation](http://www.csh.rit.edu/~parallax/).
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### Author:  [@Reply](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Reply)
#### Post date: [May 20, 2011, 2:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-does-youtube-detect-copyrighted-soundtracks/582529/6 "2011-05-20T02:14:25Z")
And here’s a [better article about the detection process](http://www.soyoucode.com/2011/how-does-shazam-recognize-song) (the previous one was about circumventing it).
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### Author:  [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)
#### Post date: [May 20, 2011, 1:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-does-youtube-detect-copyrighted-soundtracks/582529/7 "2011-05-20T13:58:34Z")
From what I understand, it’s really the copyright holder who does it, not YouTube (although they may use YouTube provided tools). And it’s a pain in the neck to try to use YouTube’s built in soundtracks, as they are organized poorly, fill up the whole video, and you can’t do anything about length differences.
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### Author:  [@Sateryn76](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sateryn76)
#### Post date: [May 20, 2011, 2:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-does-youtube-detect-copyrighted-soundtracks/582529/8 "2011-05-20T14:12:36Z")
I recently pulled a YouTube of Stephen Colbert appearing on Jimmy Fallon, singing “Friday” with Taylor Hicks. It was obviously not from NBC.
It was also flipped - i.e. the “film” had been reversed, so all the letters, actions, etc., were mirror images. I assumed it was to escape some kind of filter/scan that identified protected works.
The audio was okay, though.
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### Author:  [@Alka\_Seltzer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alka_Seltzer)
#### Post date: [May 23, 2011, 2:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-does-youtube-detect-copyrighted-soundtracks/582529/9 "2011-05-23T14:36:18Z")
> [@BigT](#):
>
> From what I understand, it’s really the copyright holder who does it, not YouTube (although they may use YouTube provided tools).
No, it is YouTube that performs the scan these days. [Here](http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2010/09/youtube-vs-fair-use.html) is an article that explains what is happening every time you press submit on a video (the main thrust of the article is copyright vs fair use, but it links to more technical articles that go into more detail). The copyright holder gets to decide what should be done with any content that matches their submissions.
I was gobsmacked when I heard about this system. It’s not technically difficult to compare video files to see if they are similar. What amazes me is that they can do this against a vast database of copyrighted content in an efficient enough manner to make it economical.
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### Author:  [@mhendo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mhendo)
#### Post date: [May 23, 2011, 5:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-does-youtube-detect-copyrighted-soundtracks/582529/10 "2011-05-23T17:02:53Z")
> [@kanicbird](#):
>
> I don’t know but just wanted to say I always though the lines of the song was ‘put me in cold’ as in no warm up.
No, the line is “Put me in, coach,” as the OP said.
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### Author:  [@TNWPsycho](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TNWPsycho)
#### Post date: [May 23, 2011, 5:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-does-youtube-detect-copyrighted-soundtracks/582529/11 "2011-05-23T17:24:10Z")
Its not perfect. My record label deals with a few original metal bands. We posted up a music video we just shot with their original song on it, and WMG flagged it.
The song was most definitely not the property of WMG.
You can however dispute the claim, which we did. Two minutes later the audio was back up.