My Beats Are Monetized on YouTube, Why Aren’t I Seeing Earnings?

Submitting your beats to YouTube is the first step to earning extra revenue from your beats, but does not guarantee that they will generate income. If you aren't seeing any results after submitting them, here are a few reasons why that could be:

Time

It takes a while for your beats to actually become monetized after submitting them. Once submitted, they are entered into YouTube's database, then we must wait for YouTube's automatic algorithm to find and claim videos containing your beats, and then for those videos to to be viewed by the public. All of this takes time and will be different for each person. It could be a few days or a few months before you start seeing claims in your Dashboard.

Ads

Just having a claim on a video is not enough to earn revenue from it. Revenue is earned through the ads that are placed on a video - they must be watched or clicked on, depending on the ad type, in order for that video view to earn income for you. If someone skips an add or does not interact with it, you will not earn any money from that view. For more detail on how ads generate income, please click here.

Unpopular videos

Even if your beats have been matched with hundreds of videos, if those videos are seeing little-to-no views, they won't earn much for you. The earnings come from people watching/interacting with ads, so if those videos have no traffic, there's no way those ads can generate income. You can view all the videos directly from your Dashboard, to give you an idea of how popular each one is. And remember, money can only be earned from the day the video is claimed, so if it has had thousands of views before it is claimed, this will not count towards your earnings.

Sales/Downloads

Beats will only generate revenue for you if they are used by people on YouTube. So, if you're not making many sales, or getting free downloads, you shouldn't expect to see your beats being used on YouTube, and therefore not see much, or any income from Content ID.

3rd party content - loops, samples & royalty free music

If the matches being made are based on 3rd party music included in your beats, we will release those claims, as they are invalid, and against both Airbit & YouTube's terms and conditions. If we are made aware of a 3rd party content in a monetized beat, we will remove that beat from distribution, and if we see repeated instances of beats containing 3rd party content, we may remove you from the Content ID program entirely.

Conflicts

Conflicts can arise for a few reasons: 

• If you have submitted your beats to two companies (which against our terms & conditions)
• If an artist as submitted a song containing your beat for monetization
• If you have submitted beats using 3rd party content, which others have also used in their submissions (which is also against our terms & conditions)
• If you have collabed on a beat, and both producers have submitted the same beat for monetization

When this happens, your beat will not be monetized until the conflict is resolved - whether this is done, and how easy it is do, will depend on why it is in conflict: 

• If you have submitted your beats to two companies, we will contact you asking you to clarify which one you want to use
• If your beat is in conflict with an artist, unless they can provide us with an exclusive license to that beat, we will try to claim exclusive ownership, though this is not always possible
• If you have used 3rd party content, we will exclude our reference file (your beat) and it will not be monetised
• If you have collabed on a beat, this will need to be resolved between you and the co-producer, as only one of you can monetise it

Earnings are lower than expected

It may be that you are seeing some earnings, but the amount is a lot lower than you expect. This can be for a couple of reasons:

• Revenue is only earned when an ad is viewed/interacted with. Therefore, if a video is viewed 100,000 times, but only 20,000 of those people view or interact with the ad, you only earn revenue from those 20,000 views. Please see more on ads here.
• Videos can be monetized by multiple partners, if that video contains audio from multiple sources. In this case, ad revenue will be shared, so you will only receive a portion of the revenue earned.
• A video will only earn you revenue from the day it is claimed. If a video has 100,000 views before your submitted beat matches and claims the video, you do not earn back-pay for those views, and your monetization/earning possibilities will begin on view #100,001.

Content ID is available to Platinum members only. If you have a free account, you can upgrade here.