In this guide
- What does TikTok's Commercial Music Library cover, and where does it stop?
- If your track is in the library, can a business use someone else's upload of it?
- Does posting from a personal account let a brand use any sound?
- How does a track get into the library, and what can TikTok tell you about who used it?
- What does TikTok pay you when a business uses your track from the library?
- Who answers for a use outside the library, TikTok or the business?
- What can you do when a business has used your music outside the library?
If your track is in TikTok's Commercial Music Library, the library licenses the copy that was opted in, on TikTok only. If it is not, TikTok grants no business the right to sell with it. For a business, any other copy needs your licence: another user's upload of your track, or the same video posted off TikTok. Where the work was registered first, a US court can award up to $150,000 for each work a business infringes wilfully, knowing it needed a licence or not caring whether it did.
What does TikTok's Commercial Music Library cover, and where does it stop?
TikTok's Commercial Music Library, or CML, holds the tracks TikTok calls Commercial Sounds: the music a business may use in organic posts, ads and branded content on TikTok. TikTok's help page for businesses, last updated July 2025, calls it "a pre-cleared global music library of 1 million songs", "free for businesses to use", and says businesses "cannot use the general music library for commercial usage".
The licence ends where TikTok ends. The library's user terms say: "Commercial Uses outside of TikTok are not permitted and no rights are granted by TikTok for such uses." A business posting the same video to Instagram and Facebook, or anywhere else, needs a licence from the rights holders directly. Inside the library, Premium tracks may carry an extra fee.
If your track is in the library, can a business use someone else's upload of it?
Not under TikTok's licence. Audio a user uploads into their own video is, in TikTok's terms, an Original Sound, and TikTok's Music Terms say: "If you're a Commercial User, you should not use an Original Sound uploaded by another user."
A business that uploads one vouches for the rights, and TikTok's help page tells a business using someone else's to make sure it holds a proper licence. That licence covers the song as well as the recording: TikTok's Music Usage Confirmation names "the musical compositions and the master recordings".
In our production music case study, the official copies sit in the library, and 95 businesses and organisations still used copies other people had uploaded, without a licence, in 120 posts made in 25 countries.
Does posting from a personal account let a brand use any sound?
No. TikTok's app offers a business account only Commercial Sounds and a personal account every sound. Its Music Terms count anyone using the platform for commercial purposes as a Commercial User, "(including individuals)", and TikTok's business blog warns: "If you use our General Music Library through a personal account to promote your business, you are at risk of copyright infringement." One brand told a US court it believed TikTok's licence covered its promotional videos. The court found it had infringed anyway; what it believed could only affect how much it owed.
How does a track get into the library, and what can TikTok tell you about who used it?
Its owner opts it in through a distributor or another TikTok partner.
When TikTok announced its Artist Impact Program in May 2023, it named distribution partnerships "with the likes of Believe, DistroKid and Vydia". In July 2025 TikTok and Chordal announced that rights holders would be able to opt in through Chordal and pre-clear their fractional shares. Not every distributor delivers to the library. EmuBands says it does not, so its artists' recordings are not available to a business account.
The user terms give TikTok the right to report a business's use of a Commercial Sound to the rights holders: views, creations, likes and followers, the account name, the country of its home offices, its industry, its campaign names and the audience it targeted.
What does TikTok pay you when a business uses your track from the library?
You are paid through the deal that put your track in the library, at a rate TikTok does not publish. For a standard track the business pays TikTok nothing.
In TikTok's own example, a track placed in the library in April 2022 had over 14 billion views and 3 million video creations by the end of that year, and businesses using it from the library accounted for 65% of the views and 57% of the creations.
Outside the library, a business without a licence pays no one for the music. Our view: if a business is found to have used music in a commercial context without paying, it should remunerate the rights holder. Where it has not, the law measures what it owes: in the US, $750 to $30,000 for each work, and up to $150,000 for each work a business wilfully infringes, where the work was registered first.
Who answers for a use outside the library, TikTok or the business?
The business. TikTok's user terms make it responsible for any claim that arises from breaking TikTok's terms or from using general library sounds without a licence, and require it to cover TikTok if such a claim is brought against TikTok. TikTok's own measures act on the post: it may mute or remove a video where it believes the music is unauthorised, and rights holders can report posts to it. Muting a post or taking it down pays no one.
Labels have taken these posts to court. Warner Music Group's complaint against Crumbl quotes a Crumbl TikTok video of January 2024: "We were gonna make a funny video to promote Mystery Cookie, but legal said we can't use any trending audios." Filed in April 2025, the complaint alleged promotional videos on TikTok and Instagram using at least 159 of Warner's recordings and compositions. Warner sought the most the law allows for each work, and Music Business Worldwide calculated that maximum across the 159 works at $23.85 million. Crumbl and Warner settled in 2026 on terms they have not disclosed.
Universal sued Brinker International, the owner of Chili's, in October 2024 over posts on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and YouTube, alleging 38 infringed recording copyrights and 42 publishing copyrights. The case settled in 2025, with terms not disclosed.
What can you do when a business has used your music outside the library?
We find it, and specialist music lawyers pursue what the business owes. Our own audio fingerprinting technology matches your recordings by their sound, so it finds them on TikTok and Instagram, in copies other people uploaded, in sped-up, slowed-down and renamed copies, and in videos cross-posted from one platform to another. We pursue only businesses and brands, and never a post that took your track from TikTok's Commercial Music Library, which is licensed. Because TikTok can mute or remove a post and a business can delete one, we capture and hash each post, with its date, before the business is contacted.
Money never goes from you to us. For this service we take a share of what a business pays, and if nothing is paid, you owe nothing.
