Three days after signing a deal to stream exclusively with YouTube, streamer Ludwig has been banned from the platform for playing a few seconds of copyrighted music.
The streamer who made a name for himself back in April when he streamed his life non-stop for over two weeks, was banned from streaming by YouTube. Ludwig, who used to stream primarily on Twitch, made the switch to YouTube gaming on November 30, after signing an exclusivity deal.
However, on his third day of streaming, he accidentally played a couple of seconds of the copyrighted song Baby Shark which saw his stream get taken down. He then stopped streaming saying he would be back the next day.
After the ban, he uploaded a three-minute video explaining why the stream was down and what policy rules he had broken. He said that while he was scouring the website for “50 greatest videos of classic YouTube” he played a few seconds of a Baby Shark video with over nine billion views.
Ludwig said “I’m sure the corporate overlords who own Baby Shark have an iron fist over YouTube, and so they took me down. – Apparently, DMCA is going to be more of a concern than I had originally imagined.”
Ludwig assumed that playing copyrighted music would result in a “classic rev share” where he would split the monetisation with the copyright owner. However, in Baby Shark’s case, his stream got immediately taken down.
He put the misunderstanding down to “growing pains”, sharing with viewers YouTube’s response stating he can stream again once the copyrighted music is removed.
