How to find out which songs your music licences cover
Learn how to find out what songs your current licences cover in order to make them available on your app or service.
For apps and services looking to acquire music to use within their platform, obtaining music licences is just the first step. Once you have the recording licences from record labels, the publishing licences from music publishers and licences from PROs (performing rights organisations), you need to figure out which songs you can make available on your platform.
This is complicated because rarely are songs wholly owned by one entity. This tends to happen because songs usually have multiple songwriters who are represented by different music publishers.
For example, for a single song, the sound recording may be owned by Warner Music Group, while the publishing may be owned by two organisations, Universal Music Publishing and Warner Music Publishing.
In this case, if you have 100 songs from Warner Music Group and you have agreements with Universal Music Publishing and Warner Chappell Music, you’ll need to assess how many of these songs are 100% covered by the publishers you have licence agreements with. This is because it’s likely that not all 100 songs you obtained from Warner Music Group will be covered by the licences you have with both publishers.
After conducting some analysis, you might discover that your agreements only cover 20% of the total songs. This is an important detail to catch in order to avoid encountering legal issues for playing music without proper permission.
To determine the extent of your music coverage under your current licences, it’s helpful to do the following:
A. Review Licence Terms and Restrictions
It’s important to carefully review the details outlined in your licensing agreements. These agreements may include restrictions related to the territories where the songs can be played. For example, some licences may only permit playing the songs within a particular country or region.
B. Assessing Coverage for Each Song
To determine which songs your licences cover, you are often required to:
- Match Recordings with Publishing Rights: This involves identifying and associating the correct musical composition (the underlying song) with the corresponding sound recording (i.e. the specific recorded audio version of that song).
- Check for Joint Publisher Ownership: Check that all the music publishers for the songs you want to use are not jointly owned by other publishers that you haven’t received permission from. This way, you can avoid any potential copyright infringement by ensuring you only make available content that is fully licensed.
- Verify Publisher Permissions or Exclusions for Your Use Case: Ensure that the publishers whose catalogue you are permitted to use have agreed to grant you a licence for the specific music rights your use case requires. Some songwriters have agreements with their publishers which exclude certain service types, so it’s important to verify this.
Generally, you need to ensure that the music you use is in full compliance with what is outlined in your licensing agreement. The process of doing this is generally referred to as ‘filtering’ or ‘content filtering’.
What is Content Filtering?
Content filtering, also known as filtering, is a process used by apps and services like Spotify, TikTok, Peloton and Rock Hero etc, to sort through the music they offer based on the licences they’ve acquired. The purpose is to make sure that apps or services using music only provide their users with songs for which they have the proper rights to. The list of these approved songs is often referred to as a ‘cleared catalogue.’
How can you ensure that the music used in your app is cleared for use?
If a company with an app or service wants to use the original (master) recordings on their platform, they usually collaborate with an audio provider like 7digital or Tuned Global. These companies provide the audio files for the songs that the app has licensed, this is done via something called an API integration.
The audio provider will be integrated with a music rights management company like Blokur who has a global rights database, and can filter the recordings that the audio provider has based on the publishing licences that the app has obtained. This process ensures that only the songs that are 100% cleared on the master and publishing side are used.
In cases where apps don’t require the use of the original versions of songs, such as a Karaoke app, instead of using an audio provider they can partner with a ‘Soundalike Recordings’ company, or even create their own covers in-house. In such situations, a rights management company like Blokur would still be required to ensure that the music used on the app or service is 100% cleared on the publishing side only, and has the permission to use these soundalike versions.
What if you need popular music but don’t have a licence yet?
If you haven’t already secured the necessary licences to use music on your platform, you can consider using Blokur’s API to access music that has already undergone the filtering process. This means that Blokur has already determined the combinations of licences needed to use specific songs. Therefore, all you need to do is sign up and specify the type of music you’re looking for, such as popular songs, classics, upbeat or slow tracks, etc. After this, Blokur will obtain the required licences on your behalf, and you can access these cleared songs once integrated with our API.
Here’s a sample preview of some of the chart music you could access using Blokur!
Try Blokur
No matter what kind of music you want to include in your app, companies like Blokur can assist you in providing authorised content with confidence, all while staying compliant with your licensing agreements.
If you’d like to learn how to go about acquiring music licences for your app or digital service, feel free to check out our simple seven-step guide to help you get started or get in touch with us today!
