YouTube have added musical credits for over 500 million videos giving artists and writers their deserved acknowledgement in the millions of videos they are used.

YouTube have added a new section to the descriptions of videos which credits the songwriters, artists, labels, and publishers involved. The new ‘music in this video’ section will be added to over half a billion videos and will give viewers an instant look into the creatives and people behind music in videos.

The new section will offer a comprehensive list of everyone involved in the creation of music used in videos that they are capable of crediting. Where possible they will also provide links to the artist’s official channel and the song’s official music video. ‘Music in this video’ credits will be added to official channels as well as fan-uploaded content.

This comes as YouTube prepare to launch their new dedicated music subscription service next week: YouTube Music. Their new service will offer up all of the music content available on YouTube including music videos, songs, albums, covers, remixes, live performances and more in one collated space. It will be available for free with ads or for $9.99 a month without ads with extra benefits like background listening and downloads.

This is all part of YouTube’s move to increase the value of music on their platform after repeated criticism from the industry. YouTube’s issue with music primarily was that it made lots of music readily available on a free platform that pays out considerably less for video streams than the payout per stream on more traditional music streaming services like Spotify. They are rectifying that with their new service which will ensure artists get paid more. Their new credits show that they are taking more steps to give artists the respect they are due.