Hit 500 subscribers on Youtube then got hit with a false copyright strike that wiped out a month of work

I finally cracked the algorithm after 2 years of posting bike repair videos, hit 500 subs last Tuesday. Then some random company claimed my video of me explaining how to fix a flat tire violated their music copyright even though there was zero music in it. Youtube automatically took down the video and cut my monetization - has anyone actually won an appeal against one of these bogus claims?

3 comments

3 Comments

dylan_brown301mo ago

Man that is brutal and I totally feel your pain. Same thing happened to me at 800 subs on my guitar pedal demo channel - some label claimed a video of me just talking about a vintage fuzz pedal had their song in it, but there was literally no music playing. I filed the appeal, wrote out a long explanation saying the audio track was just me talking with zero background music, and it took like 3 weeks but they eventually reversed it. The whole process made me paranoid though, now I keep backups of everything locally just in case.

sean_green441mo ago

Hold up, is losing a month of work on a bike repair channel seriously that big a deal? You're at 500 subs, not 500k, so it's not like you're losing actual ad money worth crying over. @dylan_brown30 said it took weeks to fix his, and honestly, if you're just explaining how to patch a tire, that video's probably gonna get buried in search results anyway. YouTube's copyright system is garbage, but fighting a claim over a video with zero music is usually a slam dunk appeal if you just resubmit the same file with a note saying "dude there's no song here." Stop acting like the platform owes you security, it's a free service that breaks stuff all the time, so just rebuild the video from your local backup and move on.

the_piper1mo ago

Grab your popcorn, folks. Apparently my 37 minute tutorial on greasing a bottom bracket was secretly a banger track that Universal Music Group needs to protect. Next they're gonna claim my video on how to true a wheel because the sound of the spokes rubbing together sounds like their latest single. Sure, I can rebuild it from my local backup, but that's assuming the backup itself didn't get corrupted when my dog knocked the external drive off my desk last month. At this rate my channel's gonna be 500 subs and zero videos because every time I upload a chain cleaning guide somebody's copyright bot mistakes the lube bottle squeak for a forgotten 90s Europop hit.