Royalty-free music for videos: what each license allows and what to credit

What does "royalty-free" mean for a video, and does it keep Content ID away?

In the sources we read, "royalty-free" is how a library describes its music. What you may actually do comes from the license text attached to each track: a library license, a Creative Commons license or a public-domain dedication. YouTube is explicit that the label does not control Content ID: its Help page on safe music says "Even if you find music online that's labeled "free," Content ID might still flag it".

The same page adds that Content ID "also doesn't know if you bought the rights to the music on other websites or offline". So a license you hold is not visible to YouTube's matching system, and the way to settle a mistaken claim is the dispute process covered below.

Source: YouTube Help, Tips to find safe music, read October 27, 2026. The page shows no update date.

Which free music sources allow monetized videos, and what must you credit?

The table lists what each source says on its own pages about credit and monetized use. It is a documentation comparison, not a ranking: we did not upload test videos to YouTube, so we did not observe Content ID behavior for any of these sources.

Credit and monetized use.

Sources, all read October 27, 2026: YouTube Help, Use music and sound effects from the Audio Library; the Pixabay Content License summary (read through an Internet Archive copy, because the site blocks automated browsers); the Incompetech Music FAQ; the Free Music Archive FAQ; the Creative Commons CC0 deed. Each link is in Sources below. We left Mixkit out because its music license text only opens in a pop-up that our reader could not retrieve, so we could not verify any sentence about it.

What do CC BY, CC BY-NC and CC0 mean on a monetized channel?

Creative Commons publishes a short deed for each license. These are the lines that matter for a video, quoted from the deeds read October 27, 2026.

• CC BY 4.0: "You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made." The deed allows sharing and adapting "for any purpose, even commercially".
• CC BY-NC 4.0: adds "You may not use the material for commercial purposes." Free Music Archive quotes Creative Commons on where that line falls: "CC cannot advise you on what is and is not commercial use." Our suggestion: a channel with ads, sponsors or paid memberships should treat NC tracks as off limits, because nobody on those pages draws the line for you.
• CC0: the deed says "You can copy, modify, distribute and perform the work, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission." It also says CC0 does not affect "the rights that other persons may have in the work or in how the work is used", so a CC0 recording of someone else's composition can still carry that composer's rights.

The BY deed also warns that its summary "has no legal value" next to the full license and that other rights, "publicity, privacy, or moral rights", can limit how you use material. Read the full legal code when money depends on it.

How do you credit a track, step by step?

Use the credit text the library gives you, unchanged. Kevin MacLeod's track page for "On the Cool Side" shows this attribution code, which we copied from the page on October 27, 2026. Paste it into the video description, with the track title replaced by the one you used.

1. Open the track page on the library and copy its attribution text. On YouTube's Audio Library, open the "Attribution required" filter, click the Creative Commons icon in the "License type" column and press Copy.
2. Paste it into the video description. YouTube Help says "you must credit the artist in your video's description" for Creative Commons tracks. Incompetech's FAQ says credits "can be placed in the video description or in the video itself", and its Content ID page tells you to add credits before disputing a claim; our suggestion is the description, because it is the place YouTube names.
3. If you trimmed, looped or mixed the track, add a short note such as "Edited: trimmed to 12 seconds". CC BY asks you to indicate if changes were made.
4. Add one row to your license log (below) with the track page URL, the license and the download date.

"On the Cool Side" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Does the credit stay inside the music file or the exported video?

No, in the three files and the one tool we tested. We downloaded a CC BY track (On the Cool Side by Kevin MacLeod, Incompetech), a CC0 track (Ambient music test, Yamaha CK61, by Wilfredor, Wikimedia Commons) and a CC BY 4.0 recording (Wedding Day at Troldhaugen by Grieg, played by Harald Vetter, Wikimedia Commons). We read their tags with ffprobe, then added each one to a 12 second silent test clip with the free Add audio tool on this site, driven through its real page in a headless browser. Each run produced a 12.0 second MP4 with one audio stream. One more run used a copy of the CC BY track to which we had written license and copyright tags ourselves: the tool dropped those tags too, so it does not copy tags from the audio file into the MP4. That is a limit of this tool, not a rule for all editors.

Control: before reading the tracks, ffprobe was run on a file we wrote a "license" tag into, and it printed that tag, so an empty result above means the tag is absent, not that the reader missed it. A second control confirmed the silent clip had 0 audio streams before the tool ran and the exports had 1. A positive control, the tagged copy in the last table row, shows the tag reader sees tags that exist and the tool does not carry them over. The full log is in test-results.txt and the script in test-run.sh, linked below.

To check a file of your own, run the command below and look for a license, copyright or url line.

ffprobe -v error -show_entries format_tags -of default=nw=1 yourtrack.mp3

Scope: three tracks from two sources, one tool, one afternoon. Other editors may keep or drop tags differently, and we did not test a YouTube upload. The practical point stands anyway: a file does not prove its own license, so the proof is the track page and your log.

Free tool:Add audio to video (free, in your browser)

Can you write the credit into the exported MP4 as a backup?

Yes, with ffmpeg, and it costs nothing in quality. We copied the exported MP4 with the stream copy option and wrote the Incompetech credit text into its copyright and comment tags. ffprobe read both tags back, the file still had one video and one audio stream, and the picture and audio checksums were identical before and after. This only keeps a copy of the credit with the file for your own records. We did not test whether YouTube, TikTok or any other platform reads these tags, so the video description stays the credit.

ffmpeg -i video.mp4 -c copy \
  -metadata copyright="\"On the Cool Side\" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) / Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License / http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/" \
  -metadata comment="\"On the Cool Side\" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) / Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License / http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/" \
  video-credited.mp4

What should your music license log contain?

A log turns "I think it was free" into something you can show. One row per track is enough. Our template has these columns: track, artist, library, track page URL, license, license URL, date downloaded, credit line used, videos it is used in, and whether the channel is monetized. Download the CSV below and fill a row when you download a track, not months later.

Free tool:Download the music license log template (CSV)

What if Content ID claims a track you have a license for?

Check the claim before changing anything. YouTube Help says "Copyright claims affect videos, but usually don't impact your channel or account", and that depending on the owner's settings a claim can block the video, run ads on it or only track its views. A strike comes only from a valid removal request, not from a claim.

• Fix a missing credit first. Incompetech says a claim "Probably has something to do with the Attribution part of the license" and tells you: "Be sure to add credits BEFORE YOU DISPUTE THE CLAIM."
• Dispute in YouTube Studio. YouTube Help lists three valid reasons, the first being "Having all the necessary rights to the content in your video". The claimant has 30 days to respond. They can release the claim, reinstate it, submit a removal request or let it expire.
• If the library cannot help, go to the artist. Free Music Archive says it cannot change license terms and tells you to contact the artists.
• Keep your log row and screenshots of the track page and license from the day you downloaded.

Sources: YouTube Help, Learn about copyright claims and Dispute a copyright claim; the Incompetech YouTube Content ID page; the Free Music Archive FAQ, all read October 27, 2026. Shorts are not exempt: YouTube's safe-music page says music that is safe in a Short "that's less than 60 seconds may not be safe to use in a longer video", so check the license again when you reuse a Shorts sound in a long video.

Do the same rules apply on TikTok, Instagram and Facebook?

No. Each platform has its own library with its own terms, and a license that is fine on YouTube may not cover a business post on TikTok or a track used outside Meta apps.

• TikTok, business accounts: TikTok's help page says "Businesses cannot use the general music library for commercial usage" and tells businesses to use its Commercial Music Library, described as "a pre-cleared global music library", for organic content, video ads and branded content. It adds that if you use other licensed sounds, you should "consult your legal team to ensure you have obtained a proper license". We did not read TikTok's rules for personal creator accounts.
• Meta Sound Collection: the Sound Collection Terms (last modified March 16, 2022) grant "a non-exclusive, royalty-free license to use the SC Audio Content for commercial or non-commercial purposes in content you create, upload, and distribute on the Meta Company Products" only, and say "You may not perform, distribute, make available or otherwise use the SC Audio Content separately from the Meta Company Products". So a Sound Collection track is for posts on Meta apps, not for the same video on YouTube.
• Our suggestion: if you post the same video on several platforms, pick music whose license covers all of them (CC0, CC BY with credit, or a library license that names each platform), or re-add the music natively on each platform.

Sources: TikTok Ads Help, About the Commercial Music Library; Meta, Sound Collection Terms (read in English), both October 27, 2026. We did not test posting on either platform.

Which source should you use for your video?

Our suggestion, based on the license statements above. It is not legal advice and it is not a ranking of music quality.

What are the limits of this page?

Tested: the tag contents of three real tracks and of the MP4s exported by the Add audio tool, with controls. Read, not tested: every license statement above comes from the library or Creative Commons page named next to it. Not tested: uploading to YouTube, TikTok or Meta apps, any Content ID matching, other editors, and music from Mixkit, Epidemic Sound, Uppbeat and other libraries that we did not read. The YouTube Audio Library help page also says YouTube cannot give legal guidance, so when a licensing question has money attached, ask a qualified lawyer.