With Creator Music, some songs can be licensed, which means creators pay an upfront fee (or no fee for some tracks) to use music in their video and keep the video’s full revenue share.
Find music to license
To find tracks you can license:
- Sign in to YouTube Studio in a web browser.
- From the left menu, select Creator Music
.
- On the Home or Browse pages, go to the search bar
and enter search terms, such as song title or artist name.
- Check the License available box at the top of your search results.
- On the Home page, you can find licensable tracks in Featured licensable tracks.
- Licensable tracks are listed with a price next to them.
- If you don’t want to buy a license, licensable tracks may also be eligible to share revenue if your video meets the revenue sharing usage requirements.
Get a license
Once you find a licensable track, there a few ways you can license it:
- In Creator Music
- During upload
- After upload
To license tracks in Creator Music:
- Sign in to YouTube Studio in a web browser.
- From the left menu, select Creator Music
- Find a track you want to license.
- Click "More actions"
Buy license.
- Review the license details.
- Paid licenses: Click BUY LICENSE
- No-cost licenses: Click DOWNLOAD.
- Paid licenses: Click BUY LICENSE
- To use the license, add the license to your video during upload.
When you upload a video that uses a Creator Music track, you need to add the license information to the video file you’re uploading. You can also buy a license at upload if you haven’t done that yet. You can do all of this from the Video Elements page:
- Start uploading a video in a web browser.
- On the Video Elements page, in the Add music licenses section, click ADD.
- Find the tracks you used in the video you’re uploading.
- Click Purchased for tracks you’ve already purchased.
- Click Downloaded for tracks you’ve downloaded.
- Click Saved for tracks you’ve saved to your library.
- For Downloaded or Saved tracks, click the price. For Purchased tracks, click ADD and skip to Step 6.
- Review the license details.
- Paid licenses: Click BUY LICENSE
- No-cost licenses: Click ADD LICENSE.
- Paid licenses: Click BUY LICENSE
- Review the Video copyright details page to confirm the license was added to your video.
- To add more licenses, repeat Steps 2-5 above.
- Click RETURN TO UPLOAD to finish the upload process.
Keep in mind:
- You can also add licenses from the Checks page if Creator Music tracks are found in the Checks process. On the Checks page, click ADD LICENSE and complete the licensing steps.If you’ve already added a license on the Video Elements page, the license will appear on the Checks page.
- On the Visibility page, if your video’s privacy settings are set to Private or Unlisted, or if a video is a Draft, any licenses you’ve added can be removed and added to other videos. This can’t be done once a video is set to Public. Learn how to remove licenses.
Licensing tracks after upload is possible for a short amount of time after a video is published. To get a license after upload:
- Sign in to YouTube Studio in a web browser.
- From the left menu, select Content
.
- Find the video with the track you want to license.
- Click the video thumbnail.
- From the left menu, select Copyright
.
- Paid licenses: Click BUY LICENSE
- No-cost licenses: Click ADD LICENSE.
- Paid licenses: Click BUY LICENSE
Remove a license
If a video’s privacy settings are set to Private or Unlisted, or if a video is a Draft, any licenses that were added to that video can be removed and added to other videos. This can’t be done once a video is set to Public.
To remove a license:
- Sign in to YouTube Studio in a web browser.
- From the left menu, select Content
- Find the video that has the license you want to remove.
- In the Restrictions column, hover over License added.
- Click REVIEW.
- Click Actions
- Click REMOVE LICENSE.