Update: The Mark Rober team has finally credited me for using my music in their videos.
On March 19, 2024, I received an email from one of Mark’s producers explaining that my music was somehow flagged as “cleared”, as in “cleared, or approved, for use in videos”. He apologized for the lack of credit given and wanted to make things right by retroactively crediting me in their videos and crediting me in any future usage of my song.
He was very polite and we had a great conversation about everything. Ultimately, we decided that they would link to my YouTube channel, where [massive irony incoming] the only longform video I have is the video where I call out Mark Rober for not crediting me in his videos.
Anyway, all of this made for a great story in my book. Thanks to Mark’s team for making things right, and thanks to all who encouraged and supported me along the way.
Original post begins below.
These days, I am mostly known for my silly songs on Instagram and TikTok channels. But I have written a lot of different styles of music over the years.
For a stretch, I was writing background music for videos and released some of them here for royalty-free usage. I have only asked for attribution, and I think people have respected that for the most part.
That is, until recently. Someone let me know that popular engineering YouTuber Mark Rober had used my song, Circus Minute, in one of his videos. I was very excited! To have him use my music – and credit me – might win me some followers, or even a gig writing music for someone’s project. Unfortunately, Mr. Rober did not credit me in his video. And he has used my song at least two times, and in both videos, no mention of me. Sad face. Oddly, he did credit other songwriters for the use of their songs in both videos. So it seems I fell through the cracks. Or he has some method to who he does and doesn’t give credit to.
I did reach out to Mark Rober, and at the time of writing (over 1 month later), I haven’t heard back from him. I’m sure he’s very busy and can’t read all of his mail, but how else is someone supposed to get in touch? Well, if you are a silly-song writer, you spend way too many hours recording music and video to tell Mr. Rober about his glaring omission. So that’s what I did.
Feel free to tag Mark Rober and link him to my video, if you like. I’m still on the lookout for that attribution, and maybe an apology.
“Fallen through the cracks” is no excuse. Never was. Seems that if a channel got a certain size, people think they are allowed to do anything. Puts a stain on Rober’s work. Hats off to you for taking it so lightly.
Years ago I used your royalty free Yakety Sax alternative in a completely non-commercial fun video but still credited you. First of all: Why not? Second of all: You never know where those vids end up.
Keep up the good work and kudos for providing royalty free music to the community. Highly appreciated!
I’m just now seeing this. Speaking of “falling through the cracks”. I don’t think my website has been sending me comment notifications. Not that I get that many anyway.
I just wanted you to know that I appreciate you taking the time to comment (as well as give credit for the song you used). Happy New Year, but the way!
What’s up Orion?
Dude I stumbled upon your website with the Routenote thing (I sent like 5 songs to routenote and a week later still not approved) but yeah I think its an awesome website! Keep up the good work and I hope mark credits you soon! 🙂
Yo! Mark finally credited me! It took some 10 months or something, but we won!
RouteNote has been slammed lately and the approval process has taken longer than I would like as well. My newest album “shorts” was released recently through RN, but took longer than expected so I wasn’t able to submit it for playlist consideration. Did your release ever get approved?