Where your music licence lives

A notice appears against a video you published eight months ago. Something about the music. The video is still up, or it is not, and there is a form asking you to explain yourself.

Your first thought is that the track came from a subscription library and this must be a mistake. Your second is that you have no idea where the proof of that is. Your editor downloaded it. You are not sure whether you still work with your editor.

This post is about keeping the records that make a music claim easier to check and respond to.

Whose problem is a claim?

The notice goes to the channel account. Agree who helps respond.

The channel is in your name. The platform's notice goes to you, the response deadline is yours, and depending on what the claimant has asked for, the video can carry a notice, lose its monetisation, have its revenue redirected, be blocked in certain countries, or come down. Nobody at the platform is going to contact whoever edited it.

Your editor or music supplier may help, depending on your agreement and the licence. Keep your own copy of the records so access does not depend entirely on an active relationship.

What are you being asked for?

Evidence that the use was licensed, in a form somebody else can check.

That usually means the licence document or certificate, the name of the track and whoever supplied it, the date it was licensed, and often a licence or invoice number. Some libraries issue a per-track certificate naming the video or the channel. Some issue a receipt for a subscription period. They are not equally useful, and that difference only becomes visible when somebody asks.

What does not work is a sentence explaining that it came from a paid subscription. That is a claim, and the process is asking for a document.

Does your subscription cover you, or the person who downloaded it?

This is the question worth asking before anything goes wrong.

Licence terms differ. Check who and what the licence covers, the permitted platforms and uses, whether projects must be registered, and what happens to existing publications when a subscription ends.

Follow that through. If your editor downloaded the music under their account, on their subscription, the licence may name them rather than you. If they stop paying for it, or move to a different library, or stop working with you, the status of the music sitting in fifty of your published videos is now a question with an uncomfortable answer.

Ask the two questions in writing, once: whose account was this licensed under, and what happens to videos already published if that subscription stops. Whoever supplies your music will know. If they do not, that is also information.

Where should the licence live?

In your storage, named after the video, on the day the video is delivered.

The system is deliberately unimpressive. One folder per video, sitting in your own account, not your supplier's shared drive. Inside it, the licence file, named for the piece of music it covers, with the video title alongside. A single spreadsheet with one row per video listing the track, the supplier, the licence date and the reference number.

That is the whole thing. It takes a minute per video at the point of delivery and it turns a claim from a bad week into a five minute search, because the moment you need it you will be looking for one video by its title and nothing else.

The reason it fails without the naming rule is worth stating. Library exports arrive with names like a row of digits. Six months later you are looking at forty of those and no way to tell which one belongs to the video being claimed, which is functionally the same as not having them.

We save licence records with the relevant piece and deliver them into the partner's folder. That gives you something concrete to check if a claim arrives later.

After a supplier leaves

The licences leave too, if that is where they were living.

This is the scenario and it is not rare. A working relationship ends, amicably or otherwise. The editor's shared folder goes away, or access is revoked, or it simply stops being maintained. Six months later a claim arrives on a video from that period and the only person who can produce the paperwork is somebody you no longer have a reason to email.

There is no clever fix at that point. There is only the fact that the copy should have been in your own storage from the beginning, which costs nothing and is usually sorted out after the first claim.

Ask where the records are kept and request a copy you can access. Check one published video against its music licence to see whether the link is clear.

Either way you end up with a record you can produce when a notice arrives.

Sources and evidence

What here is established rights guidance and what is our own method.

What is established. Using copyright music online generally needs permission or a licence (UK Government guidance); synchronisation rights are use-specific, and the recording and the composition are licensed separately (PRS for Music); and, absent a written assignment, a creator usually keeps copyright in what they make (UK Intellectual Property Office). This is general guidance rather than legal advice, and the exact rights depend on the use and the agreement.

Our method. Keeping each licence and its terms filed against the video it belongs to, under the partner's own account, is the practice here.

References.

• PRS for Music. Commercial Music Sync Licence. prsformusic.com. Synchronisation rights are use-specific. Check publisher and recording rights separately.
• UK Government. Licences to use music online or on mobile technology. gov.uk. Online use of copyright music generally requires permission or a licence. The exact rights depend on use, repertoire and agreement.
• UK Intellectual Property Office. Ownership of copyright works. gov.uk. A contractor usually retains copyright absent contractual assignment. General guidance, not legal advice.