Shorts Audio Library music in a brand Short: personal use only?

YouTube's help for enhancing Shorts describes the music library as free of charge to use, but only for personal, non-commercial use. If your Short is an ad, a product video or channel content for a business, read that line before you pick a track from the library. If you need music with terms you control, you can generate a track and check the terms that apply to it.

The quote comes from Enhance your Shorts and the length and claim facts from Understand three-minute YouTube Shorts, both read on 2026-10-02. I am not a lawyer and neither page is a license; treat this as a prompt to read the terms.

What does YouTube say about the music library?

The Enhance your Shorts page says the music library is free of charge to use, but only for personal, non-commercial use. It lists music controls next to it: volume for music, original audio and voiceover, and Sync to beat, which aligns clips to the music rhythm.

The three-minute Shorts page adds the length limit: most Shorts Audio Library tracks are limited to 90 seconds within a 3-minute Short, some to 60 or 30 seconds. It also says royalty-free music from the YouTube Audio Library avoids Content ID claims.

Is Content ID the same question as commercial use?

No. They answer different questions. Content ID is about whether a rights holder will claim your video; the commercial-use line is about the permission attached to the music. YouTube says Shorts over one minute with active Content ID claims are blocked globally and cannot be monetized, so the claim risk is real on a three-minute Short.

Our earlier post on royalty-free music for Shorts covers the claim side. This post is only about the commercial wording.

What can you do with Sume instead?

Sume's Music Router generates a track from a prompt through POST /v1/music-router/generate. The model defaults to sume/music-auto, which is Lyria 3.5 today, the prompt is 1 to 5000 characters, and duration fields are rejected, so you steer length in the prompt, for example by asking for a 30-second track. The result is an audio artifact under result.artifacts[].

The docs do not state licensing terms for generated music, so check the terms of your Sume plan and the engine before you use a track in paid work. Sume also cannot sync a track to a beat inside YouTube's editor.

curl -X POST https://api.sume.com/v1/music-router/generate \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $SUME_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -H "Idempotency-Key: short-bed-001" \
  -d '{
    "model": "sume/music-auto",
    "prompt": "Upbeat acoustic pop, 100 BPM. A 30-second track. Instrumental, no vocals."
  }'

How do you put the track under a Short?

Upload your finished video with the music already mixed in. The track is part of the file, so you are not relying on the in-app library. Our post on building a three-minute Short with a music bed shows the Timeline route. Keep the project's music terms with the master file so the next editor knows where the track came from.