Music licensing runs on about fifteen words, and most contracts assume you already know all of them. Here they are, each defined plainly and then followed by the part that actually affects you. If you are reading a licence right now, this is the page to keep open beside it.

Sync licence (synchronisation licence)

Permission to combine a piece of music with visual or audio content, "synchronising" it with your video, film, ad or podcast.

It is permission to use, never a transfer of ownership. You are not buying the song. You are buying a defined right to put it in a defined thing.

Master rights

The copyright in a specific sound recording. That performance, that take, that mix. Controlled by the recording artist or their label.

Two different recordings of the same song are two different masters. Clearing one does not clear the other.

Publishing rights

The copyright in the underlying composition, melody, chords, lyrics. Controlled by the songwriter and their publisher.

This is the half people forget. You need both master and publishing, and for signed artists they are usually held by different companies who negotiate separately. An unsigned artist who wrote and recorded their own track normally controls both, which is why independent catalogues clear so much faster.

One-stop

A track where a single party can clear both master and publishing.

The reason it matters: one signature instead of two negotiations, and no risk of clearing one side and getting refused on the other.

Use type

The category of thing you are making: social post, YouTube video, podcast, film, commercial ad.

Use type is the primary price driver, and licences are scoped to it. A YouTube licence does not become an ad licence because you later decided to run the video as an ad. If the use changes, the licence needs to.

Term

How long the licence lasts. Common terms are one year, three years, five years, or perpetual.

Perpetual costs more than a short term for an obvious reason. Whether the extra is worth it depends entirely on whether you can practically take the content down when a short term ends, for a podcast, you cannot.

Perpetual

No expiry date. The licence runs indefinitely.

Perpetual is not the same as exclusive and not the same as ownership. It just means nobody sends you a renewal invoice and your published content never quietly falls out of clearance. On cadential. it is the default.

Territory

Where in the world the licence applies, worldwide, a region, a single country, a single state.

The internet does not respect territory. If your content is publicly available online, anything narrower than worldwide is a mismatch with reality, and narrow territories mainly make sense for genuinely geo-limited campaigns like regional broadcast. cadential. licences are worldwide by default.

Non-exclusive

The artist can license the same track to other people at the same time.

This is the normal state of affairs and it is what keeps prices sane. It does not weaken your rights at all. Your licence is exactly as valid whether one person holds it or a thousand do. It only means you cannot stop anyone else using the track.

Exclusive / category-exclusive

Exclusive means nobody else can license the track. Category-exclusive means nobody else in your category. Your industry, or a defined competitive set, can.

Exclusivity is expensive because the artist is giving up every other sale of that track. Worth it for a brand campaign built around a song; almost never worth it for a YouTube video.

Content ID

YouTube's automated fingerprinting system. Rights holders register reference recordings, and YouTube scans every upload for matches.

The critical thing to understand: Content ID is completely separate from licensing. It has no knowledge of your licence, so a perfectly valid licence can still be met with an automated claim on a registered track. Nobody can "clear" you in Content ID without being the registered rights holder or their partner. What a licensor can honestly do is give you proof of licence to submit and help push the claim through, which is what cadential.'s licence terms commit to, in exactly those words.

Copyright claim vs copyright strike

A claim is automated and usually redirects the video's ad revenue to the claimant. A strike is a formal legal removal request from a rights holder.

Claims are common and low-stakes. Strikes carry channel penalties and three can end a channel. They get used interchangeably in forum posts and they should not be.

Royalty-free

A payment structure with no ongoing per-use royalties, not a type of permission, and not free of charge.

Full breakdown in royalty-free music vs a sync licence.

PRO (performing rights organisation)

Bodies like APRA AMCOS, ASCAP, BMI and PRS that collect performance royalties on behalf of songwriters, mostly for broadcast, public performance and streaming.

A PRO does not issue sync licences and cannot give you permission to put a song in a video. Different right, different organisation. If you are broadcasting, your broadcaster's PRO obligations are their own thing and sit alongside, not instead of, your sync licence.

Cue sheet

A log of every piece of music in a production, track, composer, publisher, duration, how it was used.

Required by broadcasters and festivals so PROs can pay out performance royalties. If you are making film or TV, start keeping one from day one rather than reconstructing it in a panic at delivery.

Licence number

The unique identifier printed on a licence.

It is what makes a licence checkable by a third party rather than a PDF you claim to have. Every cadential. licence has one and anyone can verify it at usecadential.com/license/<licence-number>. If a number does not verify there, it is not a genuine cadential. licence.

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