Taylor Swift YouTube Copyright Rules

Taylor Swift YouTube Copyright Rules

Last year I made a video of The Tortured Poets Department part I with lyrics after seeing a huge amount of Taylor Swift compilation albums on YouTube, with millions of views, not published by her, but by YouTube users. I thought it’d be ok – if they can do it why can’t I? These types of videos…

I couldn’t sing along to her official lyrics videos – as they are hard to follow, and the words appear in unexpected places, the timing isn’t quite sufficient if you don’t know all the lyrics: so I wanted something more karaoke like to sing along to.

Initially the video was partially blocked in ‘some countries'(it’s always only Belarus, Russia) – then a few days later it was fully blocked. I didn’t quite understand why, so I challenged it and forgot about it.

A few months later it became partially blocked again, so it was viewable in most of the world, except for Belarus, Russia. So I thought, great, I can now upload TTPD Part II. Which I did in 2025. That was also partially blocked in Belarus only. Then the original TTPD I had uploaded in Oct 2024 mysteriously got fully blocked again, for reasons elude me. It’s either blocked or it’s not. Why the block ping pong?

So I thought I’d try to experiment with this, and I uploaded TTPD I again. That was also initially partially blocked in Belarus only and it remained as such for a few days, when it became fully blocked again as it reached just over 950 views. Annoying. TTPD II however, was and still is only partially blocked in Belarus…

Finally I uploaded TTPD I AGAIN, this time as unlisted, in June ’25. This remains only partially blocked for now (September 2025).

So… what’s going on here, does anyone understand??? It makes no sense. There are also 100s of videos of Taylor’s songs/compilations, with and without lyrics, that are not blocked. Some of them don’t even have a lot of views, nor are they posted by people with more than 1000 subscribers. So that logic, which I thought was the logic, isn’t the logic. THERE IS NO LOGIC! lol

I have asked YouTube a couple of times, but I have had no answer, so I’m putting it out there, maybe someone knows what is going on, or what isn’t going – maybe something is broken. Maybe there’s someone at YouTube who doesn’t like Taylor and who grants random copyright to people, just to confuse everyone.