What is Licensed Music

Licensed music explanation infographic


Royalty free licensed music has, over the last two decades, been a major game changer for both content creation, and businesses alike! Licenses themselves have changed largely and become much more affordable and accessible to even beginner creators and businesses that don't yet have the larger budget of older more experienced ones! This has also caused a large boost in the options available when it comes to using music for content.

A music license is essentially a predetermined agreement between the license holder and the license user that dictates the terms of the license user using that piece of music. The terms often include specific allowable uses, restrictions for use, what the allowable length of use is, and how many times it can be used. There are other terms that can be added on as well, but these are typically the terms you'll see on most licenses. 

Typically, the copyright holder is the one coming up with these, and sometimes they can even be negotiated! As a user, it's very important to study the terms so that you know exactly what you can and can't do with the track or tracks that you're getting before you purchase the license. This will help you avoid spending money on something that you later realize is unusable for your project in the way that you wanted to use it.

The Benefits of Licensed Music

Licensed music comes with many different benefits in today's world, and these include:

  • Being a more affordable option
  • Protection from copyright issues
  • Having the music available to you quickly

Finding music for your content, whether you're a content creator or a business, can be very expensive. Going the license route can help you save a lot of money! For starters, these days many of the licenses are typically royalty free. This means that you won't have to pay royalties to the copyright holder every time the track is used, played, or a part of a commercial product or project. To learn more about what royalty free music is, check out this guide: Royalty Free Music: Learn all About it and How You Can Use it! - Stock Music Central

The license will also make it so that there aren't copyright issues when you, for example, use it in videos, ads, and other forms of content. This is a major help when being careful to avoid copyright strikes on YouTube, social media, and other platforms.

This is very beneficial because it means that you won't have to take down successful content, or even ads that are important to your business! It helps remove the danger of even mistakenly using copyrighted material that can cause your content to be removed. If you'd like to learn more about the benefits of using no copyright music, take a look at this guide: No Copyright Music: What it is and How to Use it - Stock Music Central

When going with the license route, you will typically have the music available for you to use right away. This can be very beneficial if you need it right away or if you need to get your new content up quickly. 


Types of Licenses

There are multiple types of licenses that are used for music, some more restrictive, some are more open, let’s go over some of them!


Royalty Free

Let’s talk a little more about royalty free licensed music. It’s typically the sort of music that you can keep using for a specific period of time or for an unlimited time. You’ll never have to pay royalties for using it which can make things easier and more affordable! This can really be a major benefit to everyone using it!

Royalties can at times be a little complicated, and while it’s still beneficial, royalty free may be better for those just starting out. That way you can avoid some of the complicated licensing terms.

Creative Commons

This License can be a little more complex. It comes with a wide range of set uses and different allowed levels of use for a track and is organized with easy-to-understand terms. Some for example don’t allow commercial use, while some do. Others may allow you to remix it, while some won’t. 

Regardless of the type, it’s always very important to read the terms of these licenses, especially Creative Commons as these have a lot of variable terms!

 Where and When Licensed Tracks Come in Handy


In both content creation and business there are many different situations where licensed music can be a great asset to have! For example, intro music can be a major brand recognition boost and can even help relay to the viewer what your content is about and cause longer viewer retention!

Background music is another great example! Whether it's for an ad or even a travel video, licensed background tracks can help build the right sort of atmosphere for your videos! This form of track has a wide range of uses across most forms of content and most content platforms! This music is great for improving parts of content that typically sound dead. Even simple piano background music can have a major impact on livening up content. Take a look at this article to learn more about what background music is!

Transitional music and short tracks are another good example! Musical transitions into the next scene or segments of your content can help boost entertainment value and the professionalism of your content! This type of track also works well for shorts and reels! Shorts and reels are very important for most content creators to take part in because they've become a quick way that people can enjoy watching the content that they love, and they even help with channel discovery! People that love watching your shorts may eventually take a look at your longer videos and even become subscribers or followers! If you'd like to learn more about creating shorts and reels, and how you can find and use music to enhance them, check out this link: Learn how to Make a Shorts or Reel and the Benefits They Bring! - Stock Music Central

Licensed music is also useful for larger scale productions like films and video games! These atmosphere building tracks can play a major role in improving storytelling and helping to pull your viewers and players into the atmosphere of your content! In both film and video games, music has a very impactful way of being the glue that helps hold a scene's atmosphere together, as well as influencing it to change the entire atmosphere during scene transitions! It even works great for using music for trailers, if the license terms are beneficial for creating trailers! Here's more on using cinematic music! 

Our next example is on the business side. Light music or professional sounding corporate style music is great for helping to build a professional atmosphere in employee orientations, ads, presentations, and much more! These tracks can help create a calm, professional theme. Learn more about using music for ads.

YouTube of course is one of the largest platforms where licensed music comes in handy! Content is, more often than not, greatly enhanced by adding the right sorts of musical tracks. whether it be intros, or backgrounds!  If you’d like to learn more about how you can use licensed music for YouTube videos, check out this link: How to Use Music for YouTube Videos

Our Music License

At Stock Music Central, we use one license for all of our tracks, except for the exclusive tracks that have their own license. We use the Pro License. We've made the terms of this license extremely easy to understand and simple. We did this to avoid the sometimes complex and varied terms that you find with some tracks. 

The Pro License terms include:

  • Royalty free
  • No copyright issues
  • No expiration, no renewals needed, buy once use forever.
  • Unlimited number of times used!
  • Can be used for YouTube, all social media platforms, movies, video games, ads and more!
  • Useable for monetized content and commercial purposes.
  • Can be sold as a part of a project or product like movies but cannot be resold by itself. 

If you'd like to take a look at our royalty free music, simply follow this link to our category list: Collections Archive - Stock Music Central

We also have exclusive license tracks which can only be bought once then are no longer available as  the license is exclusive to that one person! Find Exclusive Music

 Licensed music is a great help to both content creators and businesses! Overall, it's often an affordable, easy way to enhance your content and channel! Learn more by visiting this page which does a good job of explaining more music licensing: https://www.indiemusicacademy.com/blog/music-licensing-overview

FAQ

How much do these sorts of licenses usually cost? The answer to this varies widely depending on where you're buying from. Some places, like ours, charge under $10 and some companies can charge hundreds. For mainstream music it often costs much more! Some places are priced for everything in between. At Stock Music Central we keep our prices low as a part of our goal to make finding music for content much easier.

Can I use one royalty free license for multiple projects? It all depends on the terms of the license that you pick. With ours you can! It makes the track that you got it for useable for an unlimited number of projects!