How long can a song play in a YouTube Short? 90 seconds

Up to 90 seconds for most songs. YouTube's help page says you can use most songs from the Shorts Audio Library for up to 90 seconds in a Short that runs up to 3 minutes, but some tracks may be limited to 60 or 30 seconds.

The numbers come from YouTube Help, Shorts up to three minutes, read 2026-09-29. The Sume part is from the Timeline 1.0 docs.

What are the song length limits in a Short?

The page gives one rule for library songs and a separate note for royalty-free music.

What changed for Shorts over one minute?

YouTube says that starting September 24, 2026, new Shorts longer than one minute (but under three minutes) with an active Content ID claim are no longer automatically blocked and may remain playable. If a claim does block your Short, you can remove the claimed content or dispute the claim, and once it is resolved the Short is viewable and eligible for monetization. There are no changes for Shorts under one minute. Our Content ID post covers that change on its own.

How do I keep a Short's music inside the limit?

YouTube's page does not say what happens to a song used past its limit, so do not rely on a rule it does not state.

• Plan the song part first: for a library song, count 90 seconds as the ceiling and check the track in YouTube, since some tracks are limited to 60 or 30 seconds.
• If the Short is longer than the song limit, put the song under only part of it, or use royalty-free music from the YouTube Audio Library.
• Keep the voice track and the music as separate files until the final mix, so you can shorten the music without re-recording anything.

How do I set a music bed length with Sume?

Sume's Timeline 1.0 takes an optional soundtrack with url, gain_db, loop, fade_out_seconds (10 at most) and duck_db (0 to 20, needs a real audio spine rather than silence). In current behavior, sound in a render comes only from the audio spine and that soundtrack, not from the clips. Set audio.duration_seconds to the Short's length, from 1 to 1,800 seconds.

That controls the music inside a file Sume renders. Music you add inside the YouTube app is a separate step, under YouTube's own limits above.

curl -X POST https://api.sume.com/v1/timeline-1.0/render \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $SUME_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -H "Idempotency-Key: short-music-001" \
  -d '{
    "audio": {
      "url": "https://media.sume.com/artifacts/artf_demo/voice.wav",
      "duration_seconds": 60
    },
    "soundtrack": {
      "url": "https://media.sume.com/artifacts/artf_demo/bed.mp3",
      "duck_db": 12,
      "fade_out_seconds": 3
    },
    "video": [
      { "source_url": "https://media.sume.com/artifacts/artf_demo/a.mp4", "start": 0, "duration": 60 }
    ]
  }'

What are the limits of this answer?

This is one YouTube help page as read on the date above. It says nothing about licensing for music outside the two libraries. For that, see royalty-free music for YouTube Shorts.