How to license music for commercial use

"Commercial use" is a broad phrase. It covers a product campaign, a recruitment film, a trade-show loop and a monetised channel. What they share is that the video exists to make money for someone — and that is exactly the line a free download or a personal-use licence does not cross.

Step 1: define the use before you listen

Write four lines: where it runs, in which countries, for how long, and for whom. Everything downstream — price, tier, paperwork — is decided by those four. Choosing music first and scope later is how projects end up re-cutting to a different track.

Step 2: describe the film, not the genre

Genre words narrow the search too early. "Upbeat corporate" returns a thousand tracks and none of them fit the cut. Describe what happens on screen, what the viewer should feel, and where the edit lands. Our Music Supervisor reads that kind of brief, and how to brief music in plain language shows what a good one looks like.

Step 3: shortlist three, test against picture

Music that sounds right in a browser tab often fights dialogue, voiceover or pacing once it is under the edit. Drop all three candidates onto the timeline before deciding. The cheapest version of this mistake costs an afternoon; the expensive version costs a re-licence.

Step 4: licence at the right scope

Pick the tier that matches where the project may plausibly reach, not where it starts. Upgrading later is possible, but explaining an out-of-scope broadcast to a client is not a conversation anyone enjoys. Tiers are compared on the licensing page.

Step 5: keep the certificate

After checkout you receive the WAV master, an MP3 and a licence certificate naming the licensee, the track, the writers and the scope. Store it with the project files, not in an inbox. When a broadcaster, platform reviewer or client's legal team asks who cleared the music, that single PDF is the answer.

The two traps worth naming

Content ID. Music registered for rights management can trigger automated claims even when you are fully licensed. Knowing how to resolve one in a day rather than a week is a practical skill: Content ID, claims, and how to avoid them.

Social platform libraries. The music built into a social app is licensed for personal posts, not for a brand's paid campaign. Brands are the exact case those libraries exclude.

Hear it in practice

Two of our curated playlists that show this in the music itself:

• Corporate Inspiration — brand films, explainers and product stories.
• Sports Highlight Reel — driving cues for energy-led commercial edits.