ACRCloud is an audio fingerprint service that will examine your sound recordings to determine if they match the audio signature of other sound recordings in ACRCloud’s extensive database. These results will be displayed by clicking on the ACRCloud icon, which appears next to each track row on the Inspection page.
Based on these results, you will be better able to judge if a track’s ownership is legitimate, whether it may need a remix or cover license, or whether it is valid for distribution to DSPs like YouTube or Facebook that claim sound recordings in UGC content.
What to do if ACRCloud returns a match
If ACRCloud returns a match indicating it has recognized the audio segment to be the same as that of a different a track:
- Check with the artist to make sure they hold the rights to distribute the track
- Make sure the track has the appropriate remix or cover license. Or, if it’s using free beat samples, see the next point.
- Check this article to make sure the track is valid for distribution to DSPs that deal with user-generated content (UGC), such as YouTube Content ID, Facebook Rights Manager, and TikTok.
- Fail the release or park it until you've ensured the appropriate rights.
If the match is a false positive, or the artist does hold the rights to distribute the track, then you can approve the track for distribution.
What is the confidence score?
The confidence score is a measure of how close the tracks in the ACRCloud database match to your release's audio fingerprint.
If the confidence score is low, can I ignore it?
Not necessarily. If ACRCloud returns a match, it's worth looking into, just in case. It's possible that even with a low confidence score, the artist will still need to secure the rights to distribute the track.
What does "No result" mean?
No result means that ACRCloud doesn't recognize the sound recording. This could be because the track is really new or, simply, it's not in their reference library yet.