Empowering creators and platforms with tamper-proof audio identity, from YouTube Shorts to the metaverse.
San Francisco, CA and Tokyo, Japan — May 4, 2025 — Today, YouTube, a Google company, and SoundLinks Inc., a Tokyo-based innovator in audio identity technology, announced a strategic partnership to integrate SoundLinks’ SDID (Sound Decentralized Identifier) into YouTube’s content platform. The initiative enables creators to embed a non-intrusive, tamper-proof identity layer into their music, audio, and voice content—making ownership verifiable even when content is remixed, streamed, or shared across Web3 platforms.
With over 2.7B monthly active users and an explosion of user-generated content, YouTube faces rising complexity in tracking rights, ownership, and reuse of short-form video and audio. The challenge is further amplified by the fragmented nature of content in decentralized ecosystems, where audio can be divorced from its metadata or misattributed.
This partnership solves the problem by embedding a permanent, inaudible ID directly into the soundwave, allowing every audio asset to carry its “digital DNA.” SDID, already patented in the US, Japan, and EU, enables real-time verification of content identity, even when played off-chain or offline.
“YouTube’s mission is to give everyone a voice—and that includes protecting the voices of our creators,” said Dr. Elaine Cruz, Head of Creator Ecosystems at YouTube. “By embedding SoundLinks’ SDID technology into our content pipeline, we are enabling a new standard of trust, attribution, and monetization in the evolving Web3 landscape.”
Masuo Karasawa, Co-founder and Chief Scientist at SoundLinks, added: “In Web3, identity is more than a username. It’s every piece of content you share. This partnership with YouTube lets us embed identity into the content itself—empowering creators with a new layer of rights management and authenticity, across platforms and blockchains.”
The partnership will begin with integration into YouTube Shorts and Music. Creators will be able to automatically tag uploads with SDIDs during the publishing process. A browser extension and mobile SDK will follow, allowing developers, rights holders, and marketplaces to verify content ownership or licensing status in real time.
“I had no idea my remix of a beat was being used on another channel until now,” said Los Angeles-based producer @AudibleSketches. “Thanks to SDID, I can trace usage and get recognition—and revenue—from content I didn’t even know was mine.”
A pilot program begins Q3 2025 with select YouTube partners in North America and Asia. SoundLinks plans to release public APIs and SDKs for integration with NFT marketplaces, Web3 wallets, and metaverse platforms by Q4.
For more information, visit: www.soundlinks.tech/youtube
Contact: [email protected] or [email protected]
SDID stands for Sound Decentralized Identifier. It is a patented technology that embeds an invisible, inaudible identifier into audio content, enabling content identity to persist even across remixing, streaming, and offline playback.