In the early days of broadcast radio, music creators were furious. Stations were spinning records, filling the air with songs that people loved, but the artists themselves weren’t seeing a dime. The broadcasters argued that airplay was “free promotion,” but the musicians and songwriters recognized what was really happening: they were providing the raw cultural material that others were monetizing.

The solution came in the form of Performing Rights Organizations like ASCAP and BMI. These collectives didn’t just fight for artists’ rights—they built a system. Instead of forcing every bar, radio station, or television network to negotiate separately with every songwriter, ASCAP and BMI pooled the risk, simplified the process, and created a blanket licensing framework. Venues and broadcasters paid a predictable fee, ASCAP and BMI tracked performances, and royalties flowed back to the creators who earned them.

This system has endured for nearly a century. It works because it balances two interests: the creator’s right to be compensated and the user’s need for accessible licensing. Everyone gets what they need without dragging each use of music into a courtroom.

Fast forward to today, and we find ourselves repeating the mistakes of the pre-ASCAP era—only this time, it’s YouTubers and digital creators bearing the brunt of an outdated approach.

The Incidental Music Problem on YouTube

If you’ve ever filmed a vlog at a café, walked through a city street, or livestreamed from a festival, you know the problem. A pop song leaks into the background for ten seconds. You weren’t trying to use it, you weren’t building your video around it, but YouTube’s Content ID system doesn’t care. The algorithm flags the song, assigns it to a rights holder, and in many cases, all of your advertising revenue is diverted away.

This is the digital equivalent of telling a restaurant that because a patron’s car radio could be faintly heard through an open window, the entire night’s earnings belong to the record label. It is punitive, arbitrary, and structurally absurd.

Incidental use is different from intentional use. A travel vlogger isn’t making money because of a Taylor Swift track playing in the plaza—they’re making money because they’re telling a story, sharing an experience, or cultivating a community. But under YouTube’s current system, both uses are treated identically.

What ASCAP and BMI Already Solved

The brilliance of ASCAP/BMI’s approach was its blanket license model. Bars, broadcasters, and restaurants didn’t have to negotiate every incidental use. Instead, they paid a predictable fee that went into a shared pool, from which royalties were distributed based on actual usage data.

• This protected creators: their music was still compensated when it was played in public, even as background.
• This protected users: businesses didn’t have to fear losing everything over one unintentional song.
• And most importantly, this kept the creative economy flowing.

Why should YouTube be any different?

An ASCAP for YouTubers

Imagine a system where YouTubers (and creators on TikTok, Instagram, Twitch, etc.) paid into a collective digital blanket license. The cost could scale based on channel size or revenue—much as ASCAP scales licenses based on venue size or audience reach.

• A small creator might pay a nominal fee—$10 or $20 per year—for coverage.
• A large channel with millions in revenue could pay a percentage-based fee.
• That pool of money would be distributed to rights holders proportionally to actual usage data, using a system not unlike Content ID, but designed to compensate fairly rather than punish.

The benefits would be enormous:

• Creators wouldn’t lose monetization for background music they never intended to feature.
• Rights holders would still get paid, not by hijacking individual videos, but by drawing from a pooled licensing fund.
• YouTube and other platforms would reduce friction and resentment, empowering more creators to thrive without fearing random demonetization.

This isn’t fantasy—it’s how TV, film, and live venues already handle music licensing. We have the blueprint. We just haven’t applied it to the creator economy.

Why the Status Quo Hurts Everyone

The current system isn’t just unfair—it’s shortsighted. When creators feel that rights holders are exploiting incidental use, they grow resentful toward the very artists and songwriters the system is supposed to protect.

Meanwhile, rights holders are collecting pennies from fragmented Content ID claims instead of building goodwill and predictable income streams. And YouTube? It absorbs the blame, caught between its users and the music industry, perpetually patching a leaky ship instead of redesigning the hull.

The result is a culture of distrust, where creators resort to awkward workarounds—muting sections, buying expensive stock music, or avoiding public spaces altogether—stifling the very authenticity that makes digital content so powerful.

A Fairer Future

We are standing at the same crossroads that radio faced in the 1920s. The music industry can cling to a rigid, punitive enforcement model that alienates creators, or it can build the digital equivalent of ASCAP and BMI—one that recognizes incidental use, scales licensing fees, and ensures creators and musicians coexist symbiotically.

YouTubers don’t want “free music.” They want fair music. A system that acknowledges the difference between building a video around a song and accidentally capturing it in the wild. A system that doesn’t turn creators into enemies of songwriters but into partners in a shared creative economy.

The old model worked for nearly a hundred years. With a little vision, it could work again—this time for the millions of creators who are the modern equivalent of broadcasters, and for the musicians who deserve compensation when their work becomes part of the background music of life online.

In short: The YouTube economy doesn’t need more lawsuits or takedowns. It needs its own ASCAP. And the sooner we build it, the sooner creators and rights holders alike can stop fighting over scraps and start sharing in the banquet.