Can I exclude someone else’s video from being claimed by CD Baby, if I’ve allowed them to use my music?

Unfortunately no. YouTube’s content ID is a system so it is designed to match any video using the sound recording references it’s been provided, ie: your music. Once it’s found a match it places our claim on that video and our match policy to Monetize. It's perfectly fine if you gave a video owner permission to use the song, there is no conflict with that. However, we will be collecting the monetization for the video on your behalf because you have opted in for the program that does just that. The claim on the video will not prevent them from continuing to use the song and have that video available on YouTube.

Now, if you have allowed a video creator to monetize the video, using your song, on their own you have a few options:

1. You, as the copyright holder, can contact us with the request to release the claim on the video. You’ll want to make sure you contact us with the email address associated with your account, username, the song featured in the video, and the video ID. You can also dispute our claim inside your YouTube account, but it is very important that you include your CD Baby account username and a statement, “ I am a CD Baby artist, my username is ________and I would like to have you release your claim on this video.”
   
   
2. You can provide the video creator with a license and/or receipt, that they can provide when submitting a dispute against the claim within their YouTube account. Lots of people use a google document for the proof of permission, then share the link in the body of their YouTube dispute.
   
   
3. You can opt out of the YouTube Monetization program and allow ALL creators who use your music to monetize on their own. The purpose of the sync program is to monetize any and all videos that contain your music, if that is not what you would like, you can opt out of the program entirely by cancelling it from within your account.

*Please also note: In order to qualify for monetization on YouTube, You must have more than 4,000 public watch hours in the last 12 months. You must also have more than 1000 subscribers to your channel.