AI Music and Licensing for Commercial Use

Where generated music is commercially usable, what the licence actually needs to cover, and the ownership question that has not fully settled.

Generated music has become good enough for a substantial share of commercial video, and it solves a real problem: a track written to the length of the edit, in the required mood, revisable at no cost, without a licensing negotiation. For corporate films, explainers, social content and event loops this is genuinely useful. The questions that remain are legal rather than musical.

The first practical advantage is fit. Library music is written to standard lengths and has to be edited to the film, which frequently means an awkward cut or a film adjusted to the music. A generated track can be produced at the exact duration with the build landing on the reveal, which is what a composer would do and what a library cannot. For films with a specific structural moment, this alone justifies the approach.

The second advantage is exclusivity of a kind. Library tracks appear in competitors' work, and a distinctive one is recognisable. A generated track is at least not the same track your competitor licensed, although whether it is meaningfully unique is a harder question given how these systems produce output.

The licensing question is where care is required. The terms offered by generation services vary substantially: some grant broad commercial rights, some restrict use in paid advertising or broadcast, some require attribution, some reserve rights to the output, and some change their terms over time. A studio using generated music commercially needs to read the actual terms of the service it uses, keep a copy of them, and confirm that they cover the specific use, including paid media, territories and duration.

The ownership question is genuinely unsettled and should be treated as such rather than assumed favourable. The U.S. Copyright Office (2025a) concluded that copyright protects human authored expression in works made with AI tools, that outputs lacking meaningful human creative input do not qualify for protection, and that prompt selection alone does not by itself produce a copyrightable work. Applied to music, this suggests that a track generated from a prompt with no further creative intervention may not be protectable, which matters if a brand wants exclusive use of its audio identity.

The practical implication is not to avoid generated music but to understand what it gives you. For a corporate film, an explainer or an event loop, protectability is largely irrelevant: the client needs a licence to use the track, not the ability to stop others using something similar. For a brand's signature audio identity, intended to be recognisable and defended over years, the position is different and commissioned composition remains the safer route.

The generative training question is a separate matter that clients occasionally raise. The U.S. Copyright Office (2025b) addressed generative AI training in a further part of its series on copyright and artificial intelligence. A studio does not need to resolve the debate, but it should be able to tell a client which service produced the music and what that service states about its training and the rights it grants, because a procurement or legal team may ask.

The musical limitations are worth naming honestly. Generated tracks tend toward the generically competent: structurally conventional, emotionally legible and slightly anonymous. For a film that needs a distinctive musical identity, or one where the music is doing heavy emotional work, a composer still produces something a generated track does not. The gap is narrowing and it has not closed.

The audiovisual construction matters more than the source of the track. Zhang et al. (2025) found that audiovisual features of short video advertising contribute measurably to consumer engagement behaviours, and Xiao et al. (2026) reached compatible conclusions from a combined visual and audio perspective. A generated track well chosen, well placed against the edit and properly mixed with space for the narration will outperform a commissioned track handled carelessly.

The workable studio policy is to use generated music where the requirement is functional and the licence covers the use, to commission or license properly where the music carries the film, to keep a record of the licence terms with the project archive, and to tell clients which was used. That last point costs nothing and prevents the situation where a client discovers at a legal review, two years later, that nobody recorded where the soundtrack came from.

References

U.S. Copyright Office. (2025a). Copyright and artificial intelligence, Part 2: Copyrightability. https://www.copyright.gov/ai/Copyright-and-Artificial-Intelligence-Part-2-Copyrightability-Report.pdf

U.S. Copyright Office. (2025b). Copyright and artificial intelligence, Part 3: Generative AI training (Pre-publication version). https://www.copyright.gov/ai/Copyright-and-Artificial-Intelligence-Part-3-Generative-AI-Training-Report-Pre-Publication-Version.pdf

Zhang, Z., Qiu, K., & Ye, Y. (2025). Influence of audiovisual features of short video advertising on consumer engagement behaviors: Evidence from TikTok. Journal of Business Research, 201, Article 115662. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2025.115662

Xiao, L., Li, X., & Mou, J. (2026). Exploring user engagement behavior with short-form video advertising on short-form video platforms: A visual-audio perspective. Internet Research, 36(1), 154–188. https://doi.org/10.1108/INTR-07-2023-0521