What a Soundscape music licence covers
Music licensing is the permission to use a piece of music in something you are making. What makes it confusing is that the permission is rarely one thing: it varies by where the work will appear, whether it earns money, how many people are behind it, and for how long.
A Soundscape subscription bundles that permission with the catalog. While your subscription is active you can download and use any track it covers, and the licence for anything you have already published stays with it — it does not lapse when the subscription does.
Personal projects
The free tier covers personal, non-commercial use on a single channel, with no monetization. It is the right fit for a student film, a hobby channel or a first edit, and it is enough to judge whether the catalog suits your work before paying anything. Browse the catalog to see what is there.
Solo creators earning revenue
The Creator licence is the point at which the music can make you money. It covers unlimited downloads and single-channel use — one YouTube channel, one social media channel, one podcast or vlog — and permits monetizing that personal content. It stops short of client work and advertising.
If you are producing for someone else, or the music will run in an ad, this is not the tier you need.
Companies and client work
The Studio licence covers commercial company use for teams up to 50 people. It carries everything in Creator and adds all online media, paid online ads, client projects, multiple YouTube channels, multiple social accounts and websites, monetized company content, and internal company use.
It stops at broadcast, OTT, games and apps. Those uses are real licences in their own right, not extensions of an online one.
Broadcast, advertising and everything beyond online
Enterprise exists for the rights an online licence does not reach: paid advertising across TV, radio and OTT, broadcast television, film and cinema, OTT streaming services, educational institutions, video games, apps and events, distribution partnerships, and international sub-publishing. It is also the tier for companies over 50 people. Talk to us about Enterprise if any of that describes your project.
How to choose
Work from where the music will end up rather than from what you are making. A wedding video and a corporate explainer might take the same licence; two YouTube videos might not, if one carries a paid ad.
Three questions settle most of it. Will the work earn money? Is it for you or for a client? And will it appear anywhere other than online? Compare the plans once you have those answers — the boundaries above are the same ones the plans are drawn along.
Real music for real stories
As artists ourselves, we believe in connecting passionate film and video producers with authentic music, to create meaningful stories.
Browse Our Music