This is a post I was honestly hoping I wouldn’t have to make, but here we are.
As a Roblox developer, running a company within the platform, and most importantly, a composer, the current audio copyright infringement detection system is impossible to work with.
As some may know, Roblox uses Audible Magic, a popular audio recognition and protection service, to detect infringing content within the Roblox audio landscape.
This is what prevents people from uploading copyrighted audio and what does routine scans for copyrighted material. (as far as I’m aware, at least)
This, in theory, is good. And in practice, it is too! Well, sort of.
When you decide to protect your audios using Audible Magic, this triggers all hosting websites and stores to detect uploads of that same audio, whether you own it or not.
The key difference here is that in those websites and stores, you can prove ownership of the audio and restore it.
In Roblox, there is zero way to do this.
As such, you may find yourself in a position such as the one I am in right now. Multiple of your own songs blocked, and no feasible way to reupload them.
The “you can contact us” part of the automated message is misleading. Contacting leads to a response to the style of “there is nothing we can do”.
Honestly, I don’t quite understand how something like this could have been overlooked. Roblox has hired composers from the platform for official events in the past. This almost feels like an indirect statement that the platform has no composers, or any worth of having means to combat this at least.
This is a problem that deserves to be much higher priority than what it clearly currently is.
Either way, I’m obviously not part of the Roblox departments behind music, I’m just a composer making his living in the platform. At the end of the day I’d be happy with just having this situation resolved.