Music in Videos on the Website

The song behind the video

A business makes a short video: the crew at work, a finished project, a walk through the showroom. Silent, it feels flat, so someone adds a favourite song.

Often a chart hit, bought years ago and sitting in somebody's music library.

The video goes on the website, on YouTube and on Facebook. A few weeks later it has been muted, blocked in some countries, or is showing ads the business never placed.

This post explains how it works in general terms; it is not legal advice. If a claim or a demand letter arrives, speak to a lawyer who works in copyright.

Two owners in one song

A recorded song usually has two sets of rights. One covers the composition, often controlled by a music publisher. The other covers the recording, often owned by a record label.

Putting the song in a video needs permission from both. That permission to pair music with pictures is usually called a synchronisation licence, and for a well-known song it is negotiated rather than bought at a checkout.

Buying the track gave you the right to listen to it. It did not include the right to publish it inside a video that promotes a business.

Beliefs that do not hold up

• Buying the track covers personal listening, not publishing.
• Crediting the artist acknowledges them; it does not grant permission.
• Using a few seconds is not automatically allowed.
• A small audience does not change who owns the song.
• Other businesses doing it is not a licence.
• Hosting the video yourself avoids the scanners, not the rights.

The third is the most widespread. Canadian copyright law allows some uses without permission, for purposes such as criticism, review or news reporting, but a promotional video rarely fits them, and length alone does not decide it.

What YouTube and Facebook do

Both compare uploaded video against recordings that rights holders have registered. A match can come within minutes of uploading, or months later when a new recording is added to the system.

On YouTube the owner of the music chooses what happens: the video can be blocked, have its sound muted, carry ads that pay the rights holder, or simply be tracked.

Facebook checks uploaded video against known music too, and a matched video may not play at all.

Formal takedown requests are more serious than these automatic claims, because repeated ones count against the channel or page itself.

Video on your own website

A video uploaded straight to your own site is not scanned by anyone, which makes the problem quieter but no smaller.

Rights holders and the agencies acting for them do look for unlicensed use, and the letters they send resemble the demand letters some businesses receive over photographs.

A video embedded from YouTube carries YouTube's decision with it. If the video is muted or blocked there, it is muted or blocked on your page too, usually without anyone at the business noticing.

A worked example

A real estate photographer shoots listings for a few dozen agents and, for larger homes, produces a two-minute walkthrough video with a song underneath.

For years the songs came from his own music library, and the videos went up on his YouTube channel for agents to embed on their listing pages.

Then the claims began. Several videos started showing ads, with the money going to a record label, and one was blocked outright two days before an open house, on a listing page the agent had already sent to buyers.

The cause was a habit rather than one bad choice: every video reused music nobody had licensed, and every agent's page carried the same exposure.

He moved to a production music library whose licence covers client videos on any platform, re-cut the claimed videos, and now keeps the licence record for each track in the project folder.

The agents were told the music in every video is now licensed, and that the paperwork exists if anyone asks.

Music you can actually use

Production music libraries, often sold as royalty-free music, license tracks for a one-time fee or a subscription. Royalty-free means no payment for each use. It does not mean free of conditions.

Read the licence before relying on it. Some exclude advertising or broadcast, some cover one project or one channel, and some require a credit in the description.

Creative Commons music varies in the same way: some licences allow commercial use with a credit, while others forbid it outright.

Music written for you by a local composer, with the rights set out in writing, is another route, and it gives the business a sound nobody else is using.

Music nobody chose

Claims also arise from music nobody added on purpose: a radio playing in the shop during filming, a band at an event, the soundtrack of a fitness class.

The scanning systems hear it the same way. Switch off background music before filming, or plan to replace the sound afterwards.

Videos made by an outside videographer deserve a question too: what music is in this, and does the licence cover our use of it on our own site and channels?

Keep the paperwork

For every video, keep a note of each track, where it came from, the licence terms and the date. Keep the licence document itself with the video files.

When a claim arrives, that record is what lets you dispute it quickly through the platform's own process.

It also matters when staff change, since the person who picked the music is often the only one who knows where it came from.

The counter-case

Not every video needs music. Many business videos are better with natural sound, a clear voice and captions, and nobody will ever claim those.

The exposure also grows with volume. A business publishing new video every week has more at stake than one with a single clip on its about page, though the clip still deserves checking.

And music you wrote and recorded yourself, or licensed properly, is yours to use as the licence allows.

For everything else, use music licensed for business video, or none, and keep the record.

What to check

1. List every video on your site and channels.
2. Note the music in each one.
3. Find the licence for every track.
4. Replace or remove any track without one.
5. Ask outside videographers what their licence covers.
6. Switch off background music before filming.
7. Keep the licence record with each video.

Step three is the one to be strict about. A track whose licence nobody can find leaves the business no better placed than if it had never had one.

The same question about images is covered in photos from a previous web designer's stock licence.

Frequently asked questions

West Coast Media Solutions Inc. provides web design, web development, hosting, digital marketing, and business consulting to organisations across Canada, drawing on more than twenty-five years in the field.