Personal and non-commercial use of our music3 min read

We sometimes get asked by nice people who just want to use our music for non-commercial, personal or non-distributed projects, and about whether they have to pay the Standard License fee for this.

Non-commercial, non-monetized YouTube video with our copyright claim (Free use)

We allow completely free use of our music in YouTube videos, so long as we get to keep a soft “copyright claim” on the video. It doesn’t matter if your video is for business or personal. When we have an active copyright claim on your video, we get a microscopic income for each time your video is viewed, from advertising placed before, during, or after your video. (This “micro money” comes from advertisers on YouTube – not from you.)

This offer is for YouTube only. No other distribution. 

The “copyright claim” does not cause the video to be blocked or muted. A Copyright Claim means that YouTube automatically detected somebody’s music in your video, and now some tiny income is going to that person or company, for the use of their music. It does not have any negative effect on your YouTube account standing. It only means that you won’t be able to monetize your video unless the copyright claim is released. This is why we often refer to it as a “soft copyright claim”.

If you would like to use our music in your YouTube video completely free of charge:

1. Create a user account (free) on our site Shockwave-Sound.com. Just go to our main front page and click Sign up. You must have an active (free) user-account with us before we send you the music.
2. Fill in our contact form with your request. Let us know which track you would like to use, and your YouTube channel. 
3. We’ll review your email and send you a link to download the music track you asked for.

Your video will get our Copyright Claim on it, from which we will make a microscopic income (paid for by YouTube advertisers – not by you). Everybody’s happy.

If you would like to monetize your YouTube video, you need to get the copyright claim released from your video. We release any copyright claim from videos by users who bought the Standard License for that music track. 

Personal project, family and friends, not for distribution

If you want to use our music for personal projects that are not distributed outside your circle of friends and family, we allow this for a fee of USD 2.95 per music track. 

The project must not be put on any publicly available social media page, or publicly accessible internet page. You may send the project/film etc. only to your circle of friends and family. 

1. Create a user account (free) on our site Shockwave-Sound.com. Just go to our main front page and click Sign up. You must have an active user-account with us before we send you the music.
2. Fill in our contact form with your request. Let us know which track you would like to use, and a brief description of the project. 
3. We’ll review your email and send you a link to download the music track you asked for.

Personal listening only

If you simply want to listen to the music for your own listening pleasure, please do not contact us and ask us to send you the music file. You can find most of our music on YouTube, Spotify, Deezer or SoundCloud, for personal listening. Just search these places for the artist’s name and track title, and hopefully, you will find it. Happy listening!