I had several situations where I would make a cover (be it chiptune or other) of a popular song. I would use stock/free for commercial use/my own instruments and create the song from scratch (put every single note by myself, no remixing/using other people's samples). Still thanks to Google's broken copyright ID system big/small record labels and other unknown web scammers were able to claim money for my music videos. Among those are UMG, Cobalt Publishing, Sony Music, INgrooves. Their "musicians" (mostly rappers) also can take other people's music (like mine or yours), use its sample loops in their "productions" and when we get copyright strikes on our own compositions claiming that they made the song first.
It happens to Kevin MacLeod's Music. He is kind enough to let people use his music for free in their videos but "companies" like INgrooves use that music and claims all other videos that are not their own earning other people's money.
I feel like it's a growing problem and some day not only YouTube but Bandcamp and other sites where money and adds are involved will succumb to this bad practice. Big YouTube channels (Boogie2899, Classic Game Room, Angry Joe) have dealt with it using social media uproar and won. If we can't file a class action lawsuit we can at least use Facebook, Twitter, etc. to fight with this kind of scam. How to fight scam? You visit https://www.facebook.com/INgrooves (or other site of a scam "record label" that steals your work), look for ●●●, click "report page" and select "scam" as a reason for reporting. There are ways to do that on other sites.
If any of you ever need me to upvote a post/video/anything that talks about a specific theft of your music by some "record label", go ahead and send me a link to it (or to report their page). I'll gladly help out a fellow independent musician/music producer. 
See this thread, and especially my posts: http://chipmusic.org/forums/topic/14290 … us-or-not/
The bottom line is, it's likely an automated copyright request that matched your song based on the notes in it, which likely were similar enough in pitch and volume curve to look like the original song.
Yup. I know all that. I read all of this on many sites. Google copyright bot is one thing and people clicking the claim button and refusing to release the claim is another. They have 30 days to respond (that's 30 days of them earning money from your work) and after you refuse to acknowledge their claim 3 times you get strikes and account suspension.
In simple words: you make a music piece - they mix it into their music - they earn your money - you get suspended (unless you say: "ok, ok, my music is yours and I'm sorry for saying it was mine, here take all my add revenue").
That's why I'm trying to raise people's awareness. Like I wrote earlier, big YouTube channels deal with those scammers by telling people to raise a social media uproar and it works for them. Also I upload, any "claimed" content of mine, to DailyMotion. They don't have that kind of system but at the same time have a monetization option.
Last edited by MotionRide (Jul 15, 2014 11:33 am)
I uploaded an ORIGINAL noise composition (my own sounds, my own everything, spent a long time "writing") to soundcloud a while back, received some copyright request bullshit, saw the stacks of red tape and decided "fuck it, I'm not doing this for anybody other than myself, I don't have to prove dick" and deleted my soundcloud and bandcamp accounts. Yet, SOME people can blatantly steal others work, sell it on amazon for couple of years and the "industry" does NOTHING. To hell with the music industry, and fuck internet greed. From now on I'm releasing on home copied cassette or CDR only, and distributing by hand.
Sorry for the rant, it's been brewing for a while and I had to get it out. This was the perfect thread for that, so THANK YOU, I guess.
If the songs are covers then the content claims aren't invalid.
That said, the automated system has 3 times flagged my own original music and it can be a massive pain to deal with. Luckily, after dealing with it the first time I kept the contact information from the employee who finally assisted me and they made it much easier for subsequent issues.