Content ID

What is Content ID?

Content ID is YouTube's automated system that identifies copyright-protected content in uploaded videos. Every upload is scanned against a database of audio and video files submitted by copyright owners, and when the system finds a match, the video gets a Content ID claim.

The system lets rights holders manage how their music, footage, and other material is used on YouTube without checking videos by hand.

What a Content ID claim can do

What happens next depends on the settings the copyright owner picked. There are three possible actions:

• Block — the video cannot be viewed.

• Monetize — ads run on the video, the revenue goes to the copyright owner, and in some cases it is shared with the uploader.

• Track — the owner follows the video's viewership statistics.

Each action can be geography-specific: the same video can be monetized in one country and blocked or tracked in another. Shorts between one and three minutes long are blocked whenever they carry an active claim, whatever policy the owner set.

Claim vs copyright strike

A Content ID claim affects the claimed video and usually nothing else — your channel and account stay untouched. A copyright strike is a different mechanism: it happens only when a copyright owner submits a valid removal request and YouTube takes your video down.

A claim on one video also does not switch off YouTube monetization for the channel. What changes is who collects the revenue from that specific video.

How to check who claimed your video

YouTube emails you when a video gets a claim. You can also find it in YouTube Studio:

1. Open YouTube Studio and go to Content.

2. Click the filter bar and choose Claims.

3. In the Restrictions column, hover over the claim and click See details.

4. Under the content used, open the claim details — the rights holder is listed as the claimant.

A video can carry several claims at once, from different owners or for different segments.

Your options when you get a claim

YouTube gives claimed videos four official ways forward:

• Leave it as is — if the claim is fair, you can keep the video up with the claim on it and change your mind later.

• Remove the claimed content — erase the claimed song, trim out the claimed segment, or replace the audio with a track from the YouTube Audio Library. Once the edit succeeds, the claim comes off automatically.

• Share revenue — members of the YouTube Partner Program can share revenue with the music publisher when the claim is on a song.

• Dispute the claim — if you hold all the necessary rights. The claimant then has 30 days to release the claim, reinstate it, or file a removal request; if they do nothing, the claim expires. A rejected dispute can be taken to appeal, where the claimant has 7 days to respond.

For a step-by-step walkthrough, see our guide to fixing a copyright claim on YouTube.