How Copyright Strikes Helped Boost my Freelance Music Career

Hey, I hope you are healthy and happy. The pandemic has a big impact on a lot of lives but, for me, it was a really good time. For the first time in my life, I touched my milestones of $100 and $500. So, here is what I learned from the pandemic as a freelancer.

I am a Music Producer with over 5 years of experience in creating EDM, Trap, Hip Hop, and many other genres. At the start of my career in music, I have got a lot of unnecessary advice on why music is just not right for me. I was always told that the income coming from music is really unstable and the career is really short-term. Thanks to me that, I didn’t listen to anyone back then (lol).

So, My first step in music production was in 2016. It was really a big year for music and I was kinda influenced by mainstream music to learn about how to create some sick EDM drops like Skrillex and Avicii. It took me nearly 2 years to master and learn the software and have a unique skill set.

In 2018, I created my own brand under the name “Alex Keston”. It was really cool at first. I was so glad at the small attention I was getting in my high school for being a music producer. I created various EDM tracks that year. None of them were solid hits but, I was glad for being called cool in class.

In 2019, everything was fine until a thought came to my mind. I was really glad that I was getting attention but, attention was not everything. That was the year when something inside me was telling me to start earning money. And Yep, I put my gig on Fiverr.

My net worth of 2019 was $10. Yeah, I didn’t even get reviews for that order. I decided not to waste time marketing and advertising on Fiverr.

Until 2020 happened to me.

My emails were flooded with orders. I got various amazing customers like Romeo Kumar, priceline11 who helped me reach my financial goals (while educating).

It was a year with my net worth nearby $480

2021: By researching an analysis on why I got a lot of orders, I figured out an issue with the music industry. It’s called “Copyright”.

Many content creators work a lot on editing great videos and the best content possible on YouTube. But, due to a small piece of a copyrighted song, the whole video gets dragged down/ demonetized.

This is where I found an opportunity to create a company (startup) where; the instrumentals (background music) of the copyrighted song will be created without using any samples from the original song. And Boom… You can now use the non copyrighted version of the song anywhere you want without fearing copyright strikes.

A user on Reddit told me "..Not a lawyer, but I think you can still get copyright strikes for using the recreated instrumentals from copyrighted songs."

I named it “RedVilla”. I am building an app which lets user order a copyright-free version of their desired song.

In copyright policies, Most of the time a sample or same instrument with the same structure is responsible for an algorithm to go and copy-strike a video. If we can add the same structure with different instruments then it might help save us from these algorithms. However, I still need to work out the full copyright laws behind this project, so stay tuned for more.

Please wish me luck…

Disclaimer: Nothing in this article constitutes professional legal advice. Please do your own thorough research regarding copyrighted music.