Can You Get Sheet Music from a YouTube Video Legally?

The short answer

Transcribing a YouTube piano cover for your own personal practice is almost certainly fair use under US copyright law. Selling, publishing, or distributing the resulting sheet music is not — that requires a license from the original copyright holder.

This article expands on both halves. Nothing here is legal advice; for commercial use, talk to an actual copyright attorney.

Two layers of copyright on a YouTube piano cover

When you watch a YouTube cover of, say, Adele's "Someone Like You", there are two separate copyrighted works in play:

The underlying composition — the melody, harmony, and lyrics that Adele and Dan Wilson wrote. This is owned by their publishers.

The recording — the specific performance you're hearing. This is owned by whoever made the video (the YouTube cover artist).

The cover artist had to either license the composition or operate under a mechanical license to legally publish their cover. YouTube usually handles this through Content ID and Music Match, which is why most covers stay up.

When you transcribe the cover, you're potentially affecting both:

Transcribing the **notes** = creating a derivative work of the underlying composition

Transcribing a **specific arrangement** = potentially infringing on the cover artist's creative additions

When personal use is clearly fine

US copyright law has a fair use doctrine (17 U.S.C. § 107) that explicitly carves out non-commercial uses. The four-factor test asks:

Purpose: educational, non-commercial, transformative? → personal practice qualifies

Nature of work: published, creative? → cuts against you, but not decisively

Amount used: substantial? → for transcription you use the whole song, which cuts against you

Effect on market: does your use replace the original sale? → personal practice doesn't compete with sheet music sales

Three of four factors favor personal practice. Courts have repeatedly upheld personal-use copying — recording a song from the radio to a cassette, ripping a CD to your iPhone, transcribing a song into a notebook for your own learning.

Practical examples that are fine:

Converting a YouTube cover to sheet music to learn at home

Printing the converted PDF to put on your music stand

Sharing the file with **your piano teacher** for them to help you practice it

Saving it in your private library

When it gets murky

Posting your transcription on Reddit / a forum — public distribution, potentially infringing on both layers

Including the transcription in a YouTube tutorial video — public, derivative work

Sharing in a Discord server with 50 friends — gray area, depends on the size and nature of the group

Practical guidance: anything that's "show this to a small number of specific people I know" is usually fine. Anything that's "publish this to anyone who finds it" is risky.

When it's clearly infringing

Selling the sheet music — even if you transcribed it yourself, you're commercially exploiting the underlying composition

Publishing on a sheet music marketplace (MuseScore.com, Sheet Music Plus, MusicNotes) — these platforms have licensing programs for a reason; uploading without participating is infringement

Using the transcription in a commercial release — your own album, a film score, a video game soundtrack

Distributing the MIDI or MusicXML publicly without consent

The original composition copyright lasts the author's lifetime + 70 years. Most modern pop and film music will be in copyright for the rest of your life.

What about public domain pieces?

If you're transcribing Beethoven, Bach, or any composer who died before 1955 (depending on jurisdiction), the composition is in the public domain. You can transcribe it, publish your transcription, and even sell it.

But the specific YouTube performance is still copyrighted by the performer. So:

"Transcription of Beethoven Sonata Op. 27 No. 2" — fine to publish, even commercially

"Transcription of [specific YouTube pianist's] performance of Beethoven Sonata Op. 27 No. 2" — gray area, because you're capturing their interpretive choices

Safer route for public domain: transcribe the composition (using the YouTube as one reference among many), credit the underlying work, don't credit a specific YouTube performance.

What about Creative Commons covers?

Some YouTube creators release their covers under Creative Commons licenses (look for "Music: Creative Commons" in the description). You can:

Re-use the audio

Transcribe and share the result

Sometimes use commercially (depends on the specific CC variant)

You still need to comply with the underlying composition's copyright. CC on the cover doesn't help you if the song itself is copyrighted.

Practical bottom line

For 99% of users — pianists who want to learn songs they love — converting YouTube to sheet music for personal practice is fine. Don't redistribute publicly. Don't sell. Don't claim authorship. You're good.

If you want to do something commercial with a transcription, talk to a music licensing attorney. The Mechanical Licensing Collective (musicallc.org) and Songfile (songfile.com) handle some commercial use cases without needing a lawyer.

What we do

Super Simple Piano operates the conversion tool but doesn't host the resulting transcriptions publicly. Each user gets their files in their own library. We're not a sheet music marketplace; we're a learning tool. The copyright posture mirrors a personal practice notebook — you write things down for yourself, you don't publish them.

Try the converter for personal practice. We're explicit in our terms of service about not redistributing converted files publicly.