To credit Creative Commons music, name four things: the title, the author, the source and the licence, which Creative Commons abbreviates as TASL.[1] Put them where your audience will see them, usually in the video description and on screen or by voice, and link to the track and to the licence deed. The credit lines below come from tracks on the Frekvenci radio, so you can copy the pattern and swap in your own track.
The short answer: TASL
Creative Commons' own guide spells out each element.[1]
- Title. The name of the track. If the work has no title, leave it out. (Titles are required under CC licences up to version 3.0 and optional under 4.0, which matters because most of our radio pool uses 3.0 licences.)
- Author. The creator, under the name they ask for, including a pseudonym. Credit the artist, not the website that hosts the track.
- Source. A link to where the track lives, in full and not shortened.
- Licence. The specific licence, with a link to its deed, such as "CC BY 3.0".
No single format is required. The licences ask for credit "in any reasonable manner", as the CC BY 4.0 deed puts it, but not in a way that suggests the artist endorses you.[2] That deed is a summary with no legal force of its own; the full legal code governs, so check the licence of the track you actually use.
Where does the credit go?
Creative Commons' guide to audio and video recommends crediting both in the content itself and in the description box, where reasonable.[1] YouTube's help page says the same for reusing CC BY work: give the title, author, source URL and licence, in the video (an overlay or voiceover) and in the description.[4]
Three practical placements:
- Video description. The main place. It can hold full links.
- On screen or spoken. A short line at the start or end. For a podcast, say the artist and track name aloud.
- A credits page. Creative Commons suggests publishing a separate web page listing your credits when a work has many; link it from your description.[1]
Worked examples from our radio
The radio draws from Jamendo's Creative Commons catalogue, and the deck shows each track with a title, artist, licence badge and a link to the track page. These examples follow that pattern using real tracks from the pool. Replace the link and licence with whatever your track actually carries, and check the licence yourself before you publish.
YouTube description, CC BY 3.0 track.
Music: "With the lights out" by Detaltactic. Source: https://www.jamendo.com/track/1057406. Licensed under CC BY 3.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
Twitch panel or stream overlay, CC BY 3.0 track.
Now playing: "Disaster" by Lilly Wolf (CC BY 3.0, via Jamendo)
For a rotating overlay this short form is fine, as long as a longer credit with the links is in the panel text or the chat command, so viewers can follow it to the source.
Podcast, spoken credit.
The music in this episode is "Piya-Vaggo (Pleasure)" by Ostenvegr, licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 3.0. You'll find it by searching the title and artist on Jamendo, and the full link is in the show notes.
Say the licence out loud and put the link in the notes. A track with a no-derivatives licence, such as "Space" by Zbigniew Pisarczyk (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0), would not suit this use: see the licence letters below.
A track that has changed: add a note. If you cut, loop or remix a track, say so. Creative Commons suggests a short note such as "cropped from original" for modified material, and the 4.0 deed requires you to indicate if you changed the material.[1][2]
Which licence letters matter?
Credit is the one condition all CC licences share: Creative Commons says every licence requires attribution (BY).[3] The other letters decide whether you can use the track at all.
- NC, non-commercial. Prohibits commercial use of the material.[3] Whether a monetised channel counts as commercial is a question the licence does not answer in one line, so ask the rights holder if your channel earns money. We make no claim that any track is safe for monetised use.
- ND, no derivatives. Prohibits sharing adaptations of the material. Creative Commons' guide says that using a track as background music in a video or podcast is generally an adaptation, because the music is no longer standing alone, so BY-ND and BY-NC-ND tracks should not be used that way.[1]
- SA, share-alike. Anything you build from the track must carry the same licence.
The radio pool is dominated by exactly these restrictions. Of the 17,463 tracks in it, 11,015 are CC BY-NC-ND 3.0, 2,812 are CC BY 3.0, 1,349 are CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 and 1,140 are CC BY-SA 3.0. About 73% carry a non-commercial condition and 67.5% a no-derivatives condition. In plain terms, only about one track in six is attribution-only, so in a video with a background track the BY ones are by far the easiest to use. Our radio page shows the licence badge for each track as it plays, and our guide to Free synthwave for videos and streams: the Creative Commons way explains how to filter for the right ones.
Common mistakes
Creative Commons' guide lists the usual ones, and we have seen them all:[1]
- "Music: Creative Commons." This gives no title, no author, no source and no licence, so nobody can find the track. Creative Commons is not the author.
- Crediting the host instead of the artist. "Via Jamendo" is useful as a source but it is not an author credit.
- Using a different name from the one the artist specified.
- Hiding the credit in metadata or in a place nobody looks.
- Forgetting the licence link. Name the exact licence and link its deed.
- Using a ND track as background in a video or podcast, as above.
One YouTube-specific point: YouTube's help page says you cannot add CC BY to a video that has a Content ID claim, and that CC content may be monetised only if the licence grants commercial rights.[4]
What CC does not cover
A Creative Commons licence covers the music copyright the artist holds. The Creative Commons FAQ says the licences do not license trademark or patent rights, or the publicity, personality and privacy rights of other people.[3] It also notes that collecting societies may hold performance rights, so members of such a society may need to check with it before relying on a CC licence.[3] And if your video includes anything else, such as a clip or a logo, that needs its own permission.
Where to find CC synthwave
Tune in to hear what a licence badge looks like in practice: the Night Drive station (92.0 FM) and Pop station (90.7 FM) play classic and vocal synthwave, and the Chill station (89.4 FM) works as background. The radio page lists all nine stations. The archive itself holds records, not usage permissions, so check each artist's own terms before borrowing from it.
To choose tracks, read our guide to free Creative Commons synthwave; for how the licences play out on a channel, synthwave for YouTube and Twitch; and for builds, synthwave for game developers.
Sources
- Recommended practices for attribution · Creative Commons wiki
- Attribution 4.0 International deed · Creative Commons
- Creative Commons FAQ · Creative Commons
- License types on YouTube · YouTube Help