A stock-music licence excludes work you do not own

Soundraw’s and Beatoven’s own licences show a generated temp cue can breach terms before a composer delivers the real one.

Site publication

September 18, 2026

What happened

Composers increasingly use background-music generators to sketch a temp cue against picture before scoring the real one. The licences attached to two such services, current as of 16 September 2026, set limits a temp-cue workflow can quietly cross. Soundraw’s licence permits commercial use “in all of your projects,” listing video games among them, but excludes “video content not owned by the user (Movies, TV, ads, etc.)” and synchronized theatre content. Beatoven’s terms grant “a non-exclusive, limited, royalty-free, perpetual, worldwide right” to sync generated music with a user’s own video, podcast or game, while retaining Beatoven’s own copyright in the generated audio.

What the documents say

Both licences turn on ownership of the project the music is placed into, not on whether the use is temporary. Soundraw’s terms distinguish content the user owns from content they do not, and a composer scoring someone else’s film or game for hire does not own that project even while working on a temp track for it – so the “not owned by the user” exclusion can apply to a hired composer’s sketch just as much as to a finished score. Beatoven’s terms similarly scope the permitted use to the licensee’s own content, and prohibit selling the generated music as a standalone file or uploading it to streaming services. Neither licence distinguishes a temp track that will be replaced from a delivered one; the restriction is about whose project it is, not how long the cue survives in the edit.

Why it matters for makers

The mechanism is that “just for reference, we’ll replace it later” is a production habit, not a licence term, and licences do not recognise it. A generated sketch dropped into a director’s edit is a use inside someone else’s project – the case Soundraw’s licence appears to exclude for a hired composer. A scoring contract typically obliges the composer to deliver a fully cleared, original composition registrable through a body like ASCAP, a requirement a generated placeholder was never built to satisfy.

What to check before you use it

This is an editorial checklist drawn from the cited licences, not a substitute for reading a specific contract. Check whether a generator’s licence permits use in a project the composer does not personally own, since several services, as shown here, do not. Keep any generated sketch as a private reference rather than sending it into a shared edit or client cut, to stay inside a personal-project reading of the licence. Confirm the delivery contract’s requirement for an original cue is met by the finished replacement, not the placeholder that guided it.

• Does this generator’s licence cover use inside a project the composer does not own?
• Has the generated sketch been shared into an edit, or kept as a private compositional reference?
• Does the scoring contract’s delivery requirement point to the final cue, not the temp track?

A temp cue is a legitimate communication tool between a composer and a director. But the licences that make it cheap to produce were generally written for the maker’s own content, and a hired composer’s brief is, by definition, somebody else’s.

Sources & reading trail

States permitted commercial uses including video games, and excludes content not owned by the user such as movies, TV and ads.

Source published: Not established · Retrieved: 16 September 2026

Grants a licence to sync generated music with the user's own video, podcast or game content while retaining Beatoven's copyright and prohibiting standalone distribution.

Source published: Not established · Retrieved: 16 September 2026

States that ASCAP licenses the public performance of its members' registered musical works, the framework a delivered, cleared cue must ultimately satisfy.

Source published: Not established · Retrieved: 16 September 2026

Papers, terms and official documents establish the record; the maker reading and the checks are Signal to Song editorial analysis. This retrospective draft does not imply the site published on the event date.

Continue reading

• A performance licence from ASCAP or BMI does not cover picture
• Soundraw and Beatoven license background music, not a master
• Browse the complete the archive

Published September 18, 2026, not on the date of the event described.