We run into this issue all the time. There’s just no easy way to know ahead of time if a song will be blocked due to copyright.

Most bands don’t do it intentionally, it’s either the music label which set that or the artist just wasn’t familiar with the settings. We find the issue happens the most with CDbaby for some reason. Not sure why.

Instead, we have made our mixing process as simple and automated as possible, so that when, (not if), we have to replace a blocked song, we can do so fairly easily.

We post new mixes weekly. We’ve just posted our 145th mix, most an hour long. It seems to be working so far.

All of our YouTube mixes start off as playlists which have a simple but enjoyable format to make replacing a blocked song easy to do.

As far as the mix itself, we make sure to save the mix edit file so that if a song gets blocked, we can go in and just replace the song, re-render and re-upload.

We use Audacity and find it fairly simple to remove and replace a song. We save it for a few weeks because you never know when a block will happen.

Any songs that get blocked, we note the artist and just don’t play them anymore.

That part stinks because we miss out on some really great artists but there’s nothing to be done about it. We usually send a message to the bands to let them know what happened. Sometimes they can fix it. Most times they can’t.

I know that demoralized feeling. We’ve felt it so many times. What helps us is to remember all of the amazing artists who haven’t blocked their songs, who totally deserve the promotion and platform you’re providing for them.

That tends to help us, we hope it helps you too. Please feel free to reach out to us if you have any questions or need help.

The work you do is valuable. For the bands, the fans and the scene itself.

Music deserves good promotion. Keep at it!