>>16781046It's not for the "purpose of youtube". There are two types of licensing that you must acquire when making a cover
1) Compulsory cover license. This allow you to make your own recording of an existing song for a set royalty fee. That's "wham bam thank you mam" easy: pay the fee and you're golden, the royalties to pay is proportional to the number of physical copies you sell / streaming "views" you get (with some services like Spotify even eating that cost on your behalf, docking from the revenue they pay you)
2) buuuuuut, if you want to make an MV (meaning having ANY moving picture synchronized with the song) you have to pay a "synchronization license" and there is no set value mandate by law: each copyright holder can charge you whatever they want or simply deny you the license.
All in all it means: a cover with a png (or a powerpoint with lyrics) on Youtube costs you next to nothing, making any type of MV will put you at the mercy of the copyright holder.
With all of that said, they could easily license meaningful (but not current) western songs to cover like the one at
>>16780309 
