What people ask most about licensing our songs: online video, new versions, print, and how a request works.
For an everyday video, such as a cover or a song playing in the background, YouTube’s own licenses with publishers usually cover it, so you don’t need one from us. A video that promotes a product, a business, a cause or a campaign does. That’s a sync license.
YouTube’s Content ID matched music in your video to a song or recording a rights holder has registered. A claim isn’t a strike. Often it means the rights holder can place ads on the video while it stays up. If you have a license from us and the claim names Watershed, send us the video link and we’ll look into it.
A CCLI license covers your church’s use of the songs. YouTube’s claim system runs separately, and can still flag a video that uses them. Don’t dispute or appeal a claim on a song you didn’t write: an appeal that fails can put a strike on your channel.
Every rights holder in a video, for the song and for the recording, sets its own policy, and any of them can block it. A block may come from a label or another publisher, not from us.
Only with our approval, before you record or release. Send the original lyrics and your changes with your request. The words are the songwriters’, so approval isn’t always given.
A medley joins parts of several songs into one, so every rights holder of every song in it has to approve it before you record or release. Ask us for ours with your request.
Where an official translation exists, use that version. Where one doesn’t, request one before you record or release it, and we’ll reply with an approval and terms.
Print publishers license our songs at standard industry rates. Tell us the song and the publication.
Our new catalog and licensing platform opens soon, with every song we control in one search. Until then, ask us: send the title, the writers and the artist, and we’ll check. If we control only part of a song, the other publishers license their shares directly.
Our licensing team reviews it and replies by email: with questions if anything’s unclear, and with terms if it’s approved. Nothing is agreed until you accept them.
That’s sync: setting music to picture. The sync FAQ covers how it works and what a request needs.
Tell us the song and how you’ll use it. Our licensing team replies by email.