A licence gives someone legal permission to use content that other people own the rights to. With Creator Music, creators can buy a licence to use music in their video whilst retaining monetisation. To make music available for licensing in Creator Music:
- Find out which of your sound recording assets are licensable.
- Create a licence strategy to customise a licence's usage terms, such as price and duration.
- Apply a licence strategy to your licensable assets.
Before you get started, use the information below to learn more about licence strategies and how they're used to set up licences.
Understand licence strategies
A licence strategy specifies the terms that a creator agrees to when they buy a licence to your music on YouTube Creator Music. There are two types of licence strategies that you can offer: platform strategies and channel-based strategies. Each asset can have a maximum of two licence strategies at a time: one platform strategy and one channel-based strategy.
Platform licence strategies
Platform licence strategies apply to all eligible creators with access to the Creator Music platform. When creating a platform strategy, you can create your own custom strategy or choose one of four preset pricing strategies:
- Promotional: Optimised for visibility and reach.
- Balanced: Balanced between promotional and Premium.
- Premium: Optimised for Premium content.
- Gratis: Best for visibility and reach.
Preset pricing strategies are segmented based on channel subscriber counts so that you can offer competitive prices to creators of all sizes. Custom strategies can have the same price for all creator segments or you can set different prices, but the prices must be in ascending order.
Channel-based licence strategies
Channel-based licence strategies let you offer custom licence terms to individual channels. Paid licences can only be offered through platform strategies.
If a targeted channel from your channel-based strategy wants to acquire a licence, the Gratis channel-based licence will be applied. Bear in mind that you can remove channels from channel-based strategies as needed. Learn how to create a channel-based licence strategy.
Publisher floor pricing
Some publishers set floor pricing on assets that they own, representing the lowest price at which a track can be licensed. When a publisher sets a floor price, the label/distributor must meet the price set in Studio Content Manager.
If you have used preset licence strategies that don't meet a publisher's floor price, the strategy will automatically update in Creator Music to prevent loss of licensability.
Set licensing permissions
When you're ready to get started with licensing, you can set up licensing-specific permissions for Content Manager users. These permissions allow only certain users to view and use licence management features in Studio Content Manager. To set up licensing permissions:
- Sign in to Studio Content Manager.
- From the left menu, select Settings
.
- Click Permissions. This page shows a list of users with Content Manager access and the role that is assigned to them.
- Click MANAGE ROLES.
- Click the drop-down
Create new.
- Under Name of role, enter a name for the role.
- Use a name that will allow you to easily identify the role in the future.
- The maximum length for a role name is 100 characters.
- Tick one or both boxes under Content ID rights management:
- Licence management: Allows users to view and set platform licence strategies on assets.
- Channel-based licence management: Allows users to view and set channel-based licence strategies on assets.
- Click DONE.
- Back on the permissions page, click SAVE to save the new role.
Create new.The role can now be assigned to Content Manager users. Learn more about managing roles.
FAQ
Is the pricing for preset licence strategies subject to change?Due to the constantly changing nature of the YouTube Creator ecosystem, the pricing for preset licence strategies may change. If this happens, any preset licence strategies will be labelled 'New pricing available', which will be visible on the Licence management page or when you edit an asset's licence strategy.
You can choose whether to update your licence strategy and adopt the new pricing or keep it as is. If you choose to keep the pricing as is, the licence strategy will be labelled 'Legacy pricing'.
To update a licence strategy to the new pricing, select the new pricing level on the licence strategy editing page and click APPLY.
This pricing change won't affect any past acquisitions or licence usage. Once you have selected the new pricing strategy, it's not possible to go back to the legacy pricing.