YouTube’s latest educational video is aimed at all creators, not just musicians, but for any artists who like to turn the air blue with ‘industrial language’ it’s worth a watch. It explains how “vulgarity or inappropriate language” affects whether a video can be monetised with advertising or not.
Ads are fine for “light profanity (shit, hell, damn, etc.) or occasional use of strong profanity even if bleeped (‘f-word’ or occasional use of vulgar words)”. Meanwhile, ads can be turned on but “many brands may choose not to advertise” for videos with “strong profanity used during the beginning part of the video; or strong profanity used multiple times throughout the video even for the purpose of comedy, documentaries, news or education”.
But YouTube is warning creators to turn off ads entirely for videos with “profanity in the title or thumbnail image; or strong profanity used repeatedly in a hateful or derogatory way”. Judge for yourself whether your artists’ content falls in to one of the latter two categories… The guidelines are also laid out in YouTube’s support site for creators.
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