Music Licensing for Podcasts: What You're Actually Allowed to Use

Music in podcasts is a genuine legal concern that most beginners ignore until they get a takedown notice or a payment demand. The rules are not intuitive, and "I'm only a small show" is not a defense.

How Music Copyright Works

Almost all commercially released music is protected by copyright. The rights to music typically involve multiple layers: the composition copyright (the underlying song — melody and lyrics), held by the songwriter or publisher; and the sound recording copyright (the specific recorded performance), held by the record label or recording artist.

Using a song in your podcast requires licensing both rights. For most commercially released music, this means licensing from the publisher (often through organizations like SOCAN in Canada, ASCAP or BMI in the US) and directly from the record label.

For individual podcasters, these licenses are expensive, complicated to obtain, and generally not practically available. This means you cannot legally play a commercially released song in your podcast without paying for it, regardless of how briefly you play it, whether you credit the artist, whether your podcast is free, or how small your audience is.

What You Can Legally Use

Royalty-free music libraries. Services like Epidemic Sound, Artlist, Musicbed, and Soundstripe offer licensed music for podcasts and other content. You pay a subscription and can use tracks from their library in your episodes. The license covers podcast use. This is the practical standard solution.

Creative Commons music. Some artists release music under Creative Commons licenses that permit specific uses. The license type matters — some CC licenses allow commercial use, some require attribution, some prohibit modification. Check the specific license before using.

Original music. If you have a musician create original music for your show and own the rights to it outright, there are no licensing concerns.

Public domain music. Music old enough to have entered the public domain (composition copyright expired) is free to use. Generally this means compositions from before the 1920s in most jurisdictions, though this varies.

The Spotify Complexity

Spotify has complex music licensing arrangements that differ from traditional podcast distribution. Some music that's licensed for streaming on Spotify may not be licensed for use as background music in a podcast episode. Don't assume that because you can stream a song through Spotify, you can include it in your podcast distributed on Spotify.