Australia has an unusually deep independent scene for its size, and almost none of it is in the big international stock libraries. That is an opportunity if you are making something here — real records by real artists, at independent prices — and the only hard part is the paperwork. There are three routes to it.
Route one: direct with the artist
Find the artist, email them, agree a fee and scope, get it in writing. This works, and for a single track from an artist you already know it can be the best option going — nobody takes a cut.
What it costs you is time and certainty. You are drafting the agreement, which means deciding territory, term, exclusivity and permitted use yourself. Many independent artists have never issued a sync licence and will not know what to ask for either. Reply rates are what reply rates are. Budget weeks, not days, and expect to be the one who knows what the document needs to say — the glossary is the place to start.
Route two: a sync agency
Agencies represent catalogues and negotiate placements. If you are clearing music for a national campaign or a broadcast production, this is the right route: they are set up for negotiated deals, rights clearance across masters and publishing, and the scale of paperwork that comes with it.
The trade-off is that agencies are built around deals worth negotiating over. If your budget is a few hundred dollars, the transaction costs more to arrange than it is worth to either side, and the artist's share of what you pay is smaller once the agency takes its cut.
Route three: a marketplace
Terms and prices are set in advance, so licensing is a transaction rather than a negotiation. You pick the track, pick the use, and get a licence. This is the only route that works at creator and small-business scale, because it removes the two things that make the other routes slow: drafting and haggling.
The thing to check is what the marketplace actually is. Stock libraries and artist marketplaces both sit in this category and they are not the same product — one sells catalogue music commissioned for licensing, the other licenses real releases by named artists. Both are legitimate; they differ in what you are buying, and in whether a human made it.
What it costs
For independent Australian artists, ordinary creator use is priced in tens of dollars. These are the ranges on cadential., in AUD:
| Use type | Typical range (AUD) | Covers |
|---|---|---|
| Social media | $8 — $35 | Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, X |
| YouTube & online video | $18 — $59 | YouTube and equivalent platforms |
| Podcast & audio | $11 — $35 | Audio-only shows |
| Film & documentary | $55 — $199 | Short film, doc, student work |
| Brand / commercial | $89 — $399 | Paid advertising and brand content |
One-off, per track, per project. No subscription, and the licence does not expire. Licensing a well-known commercial release is a completely different market — negotiated, and commonly four figures and up.
Territory: the bit people get wrong
"Australian music" describes where the artist is from. It says nothing about where you are allowed to use the track. That is set by the territory clause in your licence, and it is the clause to read first if your content has any international audience — which, on the internet, it does.
cadential. licences are worldwide by default. An artist in Melbourne, a creator in Manchester, one licence, no geography problem.
Checking a licence is real
Whichever route you take, a licence is only worth what a third party can verify. A PDF proves nothing on its own. Ask for a licence number and check it independently.
Every cadential. licence has one, and anyone can verify it at usecadential.com/license/<licence-number> — you, your client, a broadcaster, a platform. If a number does not verify there, it is not a genuine cadential. licence.
Why Australian artists get 80%
Worth saying plainly, because it is the reason the platform exists. Of every licence fee paid on cadential., 80% goes to the artist. The agreement is non-exclusive and the artist keeps their masters, so licensing here costs them nothing elsewhere.
For you as a buyer that changes nothing about the price or the paperwork. It changes where the money lands. For a lot of people making things in Australia, that turns out to matter.
Next
- Is royalty-free music AI-generated?
- Royalty-free music vs a sync licence
- For artists — if you are the one being licensed.