Licensed AI music for commercial use: a checklist for video ads

Licensed music for a commercial ad comes down to a paper trail: which service made the track, which terms applied on the day, and whether those terms allow paid advertising. Vendors now describe licensing in different ways, so do not treat any single headline as clearance. Sume's music docs list Lyria engines and make no licensing claim, so for a track made there you would read the engine's own terms.

What are vendors saying about licensing?

Read the pages, not summaries. Suno announced v6 on its blog on 2026-09-09. ElevenLabs' Music v2.5 page, as read, says commercial use is permitted with ElevenMusic credit required, and that downloads are blocked on tracks that reference other artists' songs. Stability AI's Stable Audio 3.0 page says it was trained on fully licensed data and ships under a Community License, with an Enterprise License for organizations with $1M+ revenue.

Each of those is a statement about that vendor's product and terms; none applies to another service.

What should I record before a track goes into an ad?

Save the vendor, model id, plan, generation date, a copy or link of the terms you read, and the file itself. On Sume, that means job.model, job.request.routed_model (the engine that ran, such as lyria-3.5) and the media.sume.com artifact URL. Attach any credit line a vendor requires to the ad's project file.

Does Sume say its music is cleared?

No. Sume's music pages describe a fixed $0.125 price and Sume-hosted artifacts, and say nothing about clearance. That absence is not a yes. Before a paid campaign, confirm the terms of the engine that ran your job, and for broader background-music choices see background music for commercials.

Do the terms change with the size of my company?

They can. Stability AI's Stable Audio 3.0 page describes a Community License and a separate Enterprise License for organizations with $1M+ revenue, so an agency and a solo creator may not be on the same license. Ask which tier applies before you assume a track is free to use in a client campaign.

What is the short version?

Licensed is a claim about a vendor's product, not a clearance for your ad. Keep the terms, the plan, the date, the model id and the file together. Sume's music docs say nothing about clearance, so for Sume-made tracks the record should point to the engine that ran and its terms.