What a music licence actually covers

Two rights, and people usually buy one

Putting recorded music into a video requires permission for two distinct things.

The composition: the underlying song, owned by the writers and their publishers. Permission to combine it with moving images is a synchronisation licence.

The recording: the specific performance, owned by whoever made it, usually a label. Permission to use that recording is a master use licence.

Both are required. Buying one does not give you the other, and this is why you can legally record your own version of a famous song under a mechanical licence and still not be able to use it in a video without a sync licence, and why you can never use the famous recording without the label’s agreement.

Library and stock music simplifies this by having both rights in one place, which is most of what you are paying for.

“Royalty-free” does not mean free

It means no recurring per-use royalty. You pay once and do not pay again per broadcast, per stream or per copy.

It does not mean no cost, no conditions, or no limits. A royalty-free licence still specifies:

• Territory. Worldwide, or one country.
• Term. Perpetual, or five years, after which the video must come down or be relicensed.
• Media. Online video is often included; broadcast television, cinema and paid advertising are commonly excluded or priced separately. This is the exclusion that catches people out, because a project that starts as a web video becomes an advert.
• Number of productions. One track, one project, unless the licence says otherwise. A subscription that lets you download unlimited tracks usually still licenses each use, and often ties the licence to an active subscription.
• Exclusivity. Almost never. Your competitor can use the same track.

Read the licence for the specific track. Libraries have several tiers and the tier decides the terms.

Creative Commons, read properly

CC licences are free and conditional. The condition is in the name.

• CC BY: use it, including commercially, if you attribute as specified. The attribution is a legal condition, not a courtesy: title, creator, source, licence, and any modifications. Omitting it means you are using it without a licence.
• CC BY-SA: additionally, derivatives must carry the same licence. For a video containing the music, whether this reaches your whole video is a question that has been argued at length and is not uniformly settled.
• CC BY-NC: no commercial use. A monetised video is generally commercial. A video on a business’s channel is generally commercial. If there is any money anywhere near it, assume NC excludes you.
• CC BY-ND: no derivatives. Synchronising to picture is commonly treated as creating a derivative, so ND is usually unsuitable for video.
• CC0: dedicated to the public domain where that is possible. The closest thing to unconditional.

Two practical cautions. Check the licence at the source, on the creator’s own page, not on an aggregator that may have copied it wrongly. And a CC licence can only be granted by the rights holder: an uploader who did not own the track cannot licence it to you, and your reliance on their claim is not a defence.

Public domain is narrower than it looks

A composition falls into the public domain after its term expires, and the term varies by country: commonly the author’s life plus 70 years, with exceptions.

The recording is separate and has its own term. A 1950 recording of a Beethoven symphony is a recent recording of a public-domain composition: the composition is free, the recording is not.

So “it is Beethoven” is not a licence. Record it yourself, or find a recording explicitly released under CC0 or an equivalent: several projects exist precisely to provide these.

Content ID is a matching system, not a ruling

Automated identification on video platforms compares your audio against a database of reference files. A match produces a claim. This is a private matching process operated under a platform’s own rules, and it is not an adjudication of whether you have the right to use the music.

Two consequences that surprise people:

• You can be claimed on music you licensed properly, because the library’s own distribution put the track in the reference database. Libraries usually provide a clearance process; it takes time and the claim sits on your video meanwhile.
• You can be claimed on music you wrote and performed yourself, if a version of it or something similar is in the database.

Disputes go through the platform’s process. Keep your licence documents and receipts where you can find them quickly, because that is what the process asks for.

The routine that prevents problems

For every piece of music in a project, record in one place: the track, the source, the licence type, the licence number or the URL of the CC deed, the date, the permitted territory and term, and the attribution text if one is required. A spreadsheet is enough.

It takes a minute per track and it is the difference between answering a claim in ten minutes and spending a day reconstructing where a file came from.

The free path

• Free Music Archive, ccMixter, Wikimedia Commons: CC-licensed music, with the licence stated per track. Check it at the source.
• Musopen: public-domain and freely licensed classical recordings, which solves the recording-term problem above.
• YouTube Audio Library: free for use on that platform under its own terms; read them, because they are platform-specific.
• Make it yourself. LMMS, Ardour, Hydrogen, Surge XT and a large body of free sample packs will produce a serviceable bed, and a track you made has no licensing question at all.

The limitation

None of this is legal advice and the rules differ between countries: term lengths, what counts as a derivative, what exceptions exist for education, criticism or parody, and how moral rights operate. A position that is safe in one jurisdiction can be wrong in another, and material published online reaches all of them.

The defensible practice is the boring one. Use material whose licence you have read, keep the record, and where the stakes are real (an advertisement, a broadcast, anything with a budget) get the clearance properly rather than relying on a summary written by somebody who does not know your jurisdiction.