BRAND NEW STRATEGY: I feel like things happen in life for a reason and in this case getting dropped from DistroKid and CD Baby was the best thing that probably could've happened to me. I'm going to graduate from the audio claims method to the visual claims method.
Now that I've been doing deep research on MCNs ever since this happened, I've got an idea from this one Reddit poster that I was reading who is in an MCN and he uses their visual copyright claim content ID system. You can only get access to this feature being in an MCN. I feel like this is going to be way better than the audio claim method for this reason.
The way he described it is when people steal your material or in this blackhat method doing exactly what you did with audio detection and just doing it with visual content you can get passive income while also being to advertise your videos and bring some traffic back to your channel. Whatever videos you have you put it into the system and you get a visual claim for it.
This is great for any OG content you got out there and you can attach it to your videos and you'll make money the same you did with the audio claims. The only thing that I don't know about is how much money you make I don't know yet if it's more than what music distributors pay you or not. If it is more then there's no reason to continue working with music distributors to make money off of copyright content using this method.
Obviously, I haven't tried this for myself yet because I'm still in the process of trying to get at least one of my channels monetized to be eligible to apply and get accepted for an MCN that uses this feature. This is my main concentration so hopefully, within the next few weeks, I'll be able to get into an MCN and update you guys on how this goes for me.
At first, I just wanted to get into an MCN to avoid the troubles that AdSense gives certain channels but this actually gives me even more motivation now because a lot of money could be made from this method.
The only thing that I don't know is if the MCNs would drop you like most of the big music distributors do if you abuse the method. I can't confirm this but I doubt it since MCNs work a little differently, you're not expected to be treated as a music artist so I think you could be a lot more safer.
I'm not using music anymore, I'm gonna focus on video from here on out.
Here's a video that I posted earlier in this thread about abusing the system with these claims, he does video not music:
It seems like a complete hit or miss when we try to get that type of content monetized. Like you said it seems to be hit or miss pretty much.