How to license music legally with Epidemic Sound: Your guide

TL;DR: To safely use music in your content and avoid copyright claims or legal hassles, you need to have the right type of music license for your projects. Any content you publish with an active Epidemic Sound subscription will stay cleared forever.

Is Epidemic Sound’s music royalty-free?

Royalty-free music is music you can use in your content without paying royalties to artists or rights holders every time it’s played. You pay for it once, or on a recurring basis if you subscribe to a royalty-free music service.

Epidemic Sound owns all economic rights to its music catalog. This goes beyond royalty-free, offering subscribers a direct license that includes public performance rights for a wider range of uses, including TV, streaming, and events.

This model provides a comprehensive and worry-free solution. You don’t need to pay separate royalties to performing rights organizations (PROs) for public broadcasts and other major use cases, nor deal with other third parties.

It’s also important to distinguish licensed music from ‘public domain’ music. Public domain refers to tracks and compositions whose copyrights have expired, making them free for anyone to use. However, navigating the public domain can be risky, as the status of a track can vary by country, and recordings of public domain compositions can still be copyrighted. Our direct license eliminates this uncertainty, guaranteeing your content is safe.

How do I keep my content safe?

To keep your content safe from copyright claims, takedowns, and legal issues, you need the right license for the music you use in your content. Once you have an active subscription with Epidemic Sound, you can safelist the channels you use by connecting them to your account.

If you’re a business, an Enterprise solution may be the right choice for you. Regardless of platform and media switch-ups in the future, your content is safe. Our license keeps you covered for distributing your productions globally, meaning you don’t have to worry about territorial rights or whether your content is cleared for use in specific regions. What you publish during a valid subscription is licensed forever, even if you choose to leave Epidemic Sound.

How do I deal with copyright claims?

If you don’t have the right music license, you might receive copyright claims on your videos. There are different types of copyright claims, strikes, and takedowns. You can read more about the different types of copyright claims on YouTube here. The best way to avoid copyright claims is to make sure your channel/s or video/s are correctly safelisted before you publish your content.

If you’ve received a copyright claim on your video and think there’s been a mistake, you can dispute the claim by following this guide. If you’d like to learn how music copyright works for other platforms, you can read these guides on podcast copyright rules, licensing music for YouTube, and safelisting tracks for Instagram.

If you have more questions, check out this safelisting guide or visit the Epidemic Sound Help Center.

What license do I need to use as a business?

A business music license is different from a personal music license, which can be granted to both amateur and monetizing content creators. If you want to soundtrack commercial content on a larger scale, you’ll need a business license. Epidemic Sound offers a few different options, depending on your needs. Our Enterprise solution offers legal indemnification, which means we financially protect you against third-party claims connected to the use of our music, giving you and your clients a great layer of security. You can learn more about business licensing here.

If you’re a brand, publisher, broadcaster, or production company, click here to learn why you should partner ‌with Epidemic Sound for your sonic branding.

What happens after I cancel my subscription?

All content published during an active subscription will stay cleared forever. However, if you use Epidemic Sound’s music in new content published after your subscription ends, it’ll result in copyright claims and monetization by Epidemic Sound.

To keep safely soundtracking and monetizing your content, your subscription needs to be reactivated.

What happens if I use music without the right license?

Using copyrighted music without the right license is illegal. It could lead to fines, removal and demonetization of your content, and in the worst case, lawsuits.

Lawsuits for alleged unlicensed music use can lead to severe financial hits — anywhere from $750 to $150,000 per infringed work in the US. These cases can take months, even years to resolve, and can cause irreparable reputational and financial damage.

Partnering with a music provider who can offer a direct license with all rights covered will save you time, money, and headaches. With an active Epidemic Sound subscription, you can connect your relevant channels to your account and keep your content safe.

This article was reviewed for legal accuracy by Emil Henriksson, VP, Head of Commercial Legal at Epidemic Sound.