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The Rights & Licensing Model

This page explains why rights matter, how Feed monitors them, and what obligations that creates for your application.

The Catalog Is Cleared — But Rights Change​

All music in the Feed Clips catalog has been licensed for use in your app. However, licensing is not permanent. Rights for a particular song can change at any time — for example, when song ownership transfers, a license expires, or a rights holder withdraws permission. Feed monitors the rights data for every song in the catalog on a daily basis and reflects any changes through the API as soon as they are detected.

This means that a clip that had valid rights when a user first added it to a piece of content may no longer be valid the next day.

Your App Must Clear Clips Before Playback​

Because rights can change on a daily basis, your app is required to check whether clips are still licensed on a daily basis. You must not assume that a clip is playable simply because it was valid at an earlier point in time. See Clear Clips for Playback for the step-by-step implementation guidance for streaming directly and syncing to video.

Event Reporting Is Mandatory​

Accurate event reporting is a licensing requirement, not an optional feature. This data is ultimately used to:

  • Compensate rights holders. Royalty payments to artists, labels, and publishers depend on accurate records of how many times each piece of music was played and by how many users.
  • Provide customer analytics. The music engagement insights available to you in Clips Studio are derived from the events your app reports.

You must send an event for every key user action. Feed will test your app for proper instrumentation before provisioning production API keys and approving public launch.

Geographic Scope​

Currently, Feed Clips is only available in the US and its territories. For full details on how geographic restrictions work, see Geographic Restrictions.