Studio credit
Elephant Audio
Audio production · Sound design · Music production
LahorePKEngineering sound since 2018
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Decision guide
Custom Music or Library Music for Your Campaign.
Library music is pre-made and licensed, so it is faster and cheaper and cannot be exclusive. Custom music is written for your brief and your edit, so it hits picture exactly and you normally own it. Choose library when music is texture under a message the picture already carries. Choose custom when the music has to do the identifying.
Should I license library music or commission a custom track?
If you got here asking whether you can just use a song you like
The short answer is no, and the reason is that a recorded song is two separate properties. The composition belongs to the writers and their publisher; the recording belongs to whoever paid for it, usually a label. Using a known track in an ad means clearing both, separately, from parties who can each say no and neither of whom has to explain why. That is why the answer to “can we use this song” is so often a timeline rather than a price.
Which leaves three real routes, and most people arriving at this question only know about two of them.
① Licence a known song — both clearances, a fee for each, and no certainty until both agree. ② Licence library music — immediate, bounded by territory, media and term, and never exclusive to you. ③ Commission a track written for the piece — no clearance to chase, because the rights are created for you rather than borrowed from someone.
⚠️ The third option is the one nobody searches for, and it is frequently the cheapest way to end the problem outright. Not because custom music is cheap — it often is not — but because it is the only one of the three where nobody can withdraw permission later, and where the music cannot appear in a competitor’s film. The rest of this page is about choosing between the second and the third.
The honest version of this comparison
Most articles comparing these two are written by companies that sell one of them, and they reach the conclusion you would predict. This one is written by a studio that sells custom music, so it is worth saying plainly: library music is the right answer more often than studios like us admit, and recommending custom for a job that does not need it is the most common way a music budget gets wasted.
The useful question is not which is better. It is what the music has to do in this specific piece.
Library music is the right answer when
In these cases a custom commission buys very little that the audience will ever perceive:
- The picture already carries the message and the music is texture underneath it
- The turnaround is days, not weeks — a licence completes in an afternoon
- The piece is one of many similar assets: social cut-downs, explainers, internal content, evergreen product video
- The budget for music is under roughly a thousand dollars, where custom is not realistically available and a good library track is
- Nobody will ever need to own it exclusively, and it does not matter if a competitor could licence something similar
Custom music is worth the money when
These are the cases where a library track will visibly cost you something:
- The music has to hit specific moments in the edit — a cut, a reveal, a product beat. Library music is written without knowing your edit, so it approximates and the approximation is audible.
- The music is the brand asset, not the bed. Anything that will be reused across a campaign or become a sonic identity has to be owned.
- Exclusivity matters. A library track is licensed to everyone who licences it, including, in principle, a competitor.
- The brief needs an instrument, a vocal or a cultural register the libraries do not stock convincingly.
- The spot will run on broadcast in multiple territories over years, where cumulative library licensing costs can overtake a buyout.
The rights question decides more of this than the creative one
The creative comparison gets most of the attention and the rights comparison decides more outcomes. They work in fundamentally different ways.
A library licence grants use within defined limits: territory, media, and term. It is cheap partly because it is bounded. When the campaign is extended, taken to another country, or moved from online to broadcast, the licence has to be extended too, and the extension is priced at that moment rather than the original one. Campaigns that run longer than planned regularly discover the music has become the expensive part.
Custom work commissioned for a client is typically a full buyout: the client owns the master and the composition outright on final payment, and there is nothing further to pay whatever happens to the campaign afterwards. That is a large part of what the higher initial price buys, and it is why comparing a library track's licence fee against a custom fee as if they were the same kind of number is misleading.
The one thing to check on either route is what happens to a track you have already run when the arrangement ends. On a buyout, nothing — it is yours. On a licence, a lapsed term can mean pulling live assets.
What moves the price on each route
A library track costs less at the outset at every tier, because the same recording is sold many times and the licence is bounded. What moves a library price is the licence itself: online-only use is the cheapest tier, broadcast clearance costs more, and every added territory or extension of the term is priced again when it is needed.
A custom price moves on the same axis, and almost never on the length of the music. It is the usage — where it runs, in how many territories, for how long, and whether it is exclusive — followed by the number of versions and cut-downs, whether parts are played or programmed, and the revision rounds.
So the useful comparison is not one licence fee against one commission fee. It is the cost of the widest use the campaign could reach on each route, including the extensions a library licence would need along the way.
The hybrid, which is what most competent campaigns actually do
Framing this as a single choice for the whole campaign is the last mistake worth avoiding. Sophisticated advertisers do both, deliberately: custom music for the hero spot and anything that carries the brand, library music for the long tail of social cut-downs, explainers and evergreen assets where the music is doing a much smaller job.
That split concentrates the money where the audience will notice it and stops it being spread thinly across assets nobody will remember.
Not sure which you need.
Tell us where the music runs, in how many territories and for how long. We will say which route fits — and we will say library when library is right.
Proof
Work from this service line.
Projects the studio lists under Original Music Production, the service line this guide sits under.
Questions
Frequently asked.
Can I use a song I like in my advert?
Not without clearing it twice. A recorded song is two properties — the composition, controlled by the writers and their publisher, and the recording, controlled by whoever owns the master. Both have to agree, separately, and either can decline without giving a reason. Well-known songs are cleared this way every day; it is a timeline and a negotiation rather than a purchase, which is why it rarely suits a campaign with a fixed air date.
Do I need a licence to use music in an ad at all?
Yes, for any music you did not have made for you. That includes library and production music, which is licensed rather than bought — the fee covers defined territory, media and term. The exception is music commissioned for the piece, where the rights are created for you rather than licensed to you, so there is no permission to lapse and nobody to go back to.
Is library music unprofessional?
No. Production libraries are recorded by working musicians to broadcast standards, and a well-chosen library track beats a rushed custom one. The limitation is not quality, it is fit and exclusivity — the track was written without knowing your edit, and anyone else can licence it too.
Can a competitor use the same library track as us?
In principle yes, unless you pay for an exclusivity arrangement where the library offers one. Most do not for standard licences. If it would be damaging for a competitor to run the same music, that is a reason to commission rather than licence.
What does a custom track's price actually depend on?
Usage, mainly — where it runs, in how many territories, for how long, and whether the client owns it exclusively. Instrumentation and length matter far less than people expect. The same two minutes of music can differ several-fold in price on rights alone.
Do we own custom music outright?
It depends on what was signed, which is why it belongs in the SOW rather than in an assumption. Client-commissioned work is commonly a full buyout of master and composition on final payment. Spec and library work is licensed instead, on defined terms.
Can library music be edited to fit our picture?
It can be edited, and a good editor gets close. What it cannot do is anticipate — a library track has no way of knowing where your cuts and reveals are, so the arrangement will not build toward them. On an edit with strong musical moments the difference is audible even to viewers who could not name it.
Not sure which you need?
Tell us where the music runs, in how many territories and for how long. We will say which route fits — and we will say library when library is right.
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