Music licensing explained in plain English

“Royalty-free” does not mean free

It means you pay once rather than paying per use. You still pay, and you still only get the rights the licence lists.

This is the single commonest misunderstanding in the field, and it is where most trouble starts — somebody downloads a track from a subscription library, uses it in a television advert, and discovers that broadcast was never included.

The four kinds, briefly

• Royalty-free (subscription). Pay monthly, use the catalogue. Cheap and quick. You share the tracks with everyone else subscribing, and — this is the part people miss — check what happens to work you have already published if you stop paying. Some libraries cover it, some do not.
• Royalty-free (single track). Buy one track outright for a defined set of uses. Cleaner than a subscription because the licence does not depend on you continuing to pay.
• Rights-managed. Priced by exactly how you will use it — territory, media, duration. More expensive, more precise, and typically how well-known recordings are licensed.
• Commissioned. Written for you. Nobody else has it, it fits your edit because it was written to your edit, and the rights are whatever the agreement says — usually everything.

The five things a licence must say

Whatever route you take, read for these. If any is missing or vague, ask before you use the music, not after.

• Territory. Worldwide, or a list of countries? A UK-only licence is a problem the moment your video is on a website.
• Media. Online, social, broadcast, cinema, in-product, events. These are usually listed separately and priced separately.
• Duration. Perpetual, or a term? A five-year licence means something has to happen in five years.
• Exclusivity. Can the same track be licensed to a competitor? For most stock, the answer is yes and always will be.
• Modification. Can you edit, cut down, loop or re-score it? Campaigns always need shorter versions eventually.

Why a claim arrives on your own advert three years later

This is the failure that surprises people most, because nothing changed at your end.

Music platforms match audio automatically against a database of registered recordings. If a track you legitimately licensed is also registered by a library, a publisher or a rights collection society — and most library music is — the system can match your video and issue a claim against it. Your advert is then muted, or it earns money for somebody else, until you produce the paperwork.

It typically happens years later because catalogues change hands, licences lapse, or a track gets registered somewhere new after you used it. None of that is under your control.

Two practical defences: keep your licence documentation somewhere you can find it in five minutes, and understand that commissioned music is not registered against you in the first place, which is why the problem does not arise.

When commissioning is worth it

Not always. For weekly social content, a well-chosen licensed track is a sensible commercial answer and nobody should tell you otherwise.

It becomes worth commissioning when the music has to do something a library track structurally cannot: land its swell on your cut, resolve on your logo, or be recognisably yours across everything you publish. A library track was written before your film existed, so it can only fit by luck.

The other argument is arithmetic. Commissioned music costs more once, then stops costing anything — no subscription to maintain, no licence to renew, no claim to argue about.