Shorts library track limited to 30 or 60 s: share of 3 minutes

YouTube's help page says you can use most songs from the Shorts Audio Library for up to 90 seconds in a 3-minute Short, and that some tracks may be limited to 60 or 30 seconds. In a 180-second Short, that is 50 percent, 33.3 percent or 16.7 percent of the runtime. The rest needs another bed, and a Sume timeline render can carry a separate soundtrack with a loop, a fade and ducking.

What YouTube says

The page also says royalty-free music from the YouTube Audio Library will not receive a Content ID claim.

Filling the rest on Sume

Timeline 1.0 takes an optional soundtrack with url, gain_db, loop, fade_out_seconds up to 10, and duck_db from 0 to 20, which needs a real audio spine rather than silence (Sume docs, read 2026-10-08). A bed with loop on can run under the full 180 seconds, and a duck lowers it under speech.

If you split the Short, a 30-second limit means six pieces to reach 180 seconds (180 / 30 = 6), which is a lot of seams. A single bed that you control is simpler than six licensed segments.

• Render: ceil(180 / 60) = 3 minutes x $0.10 = $0.30.
• Fade out: up to 10 seconds, at most the output length.
• Output default is 1080x1920.

Which to pick

If the track is part of the idea, such as a trending song, plan the Short around the limit and put the strongest section inside the permitted seconds. If the track is only background, use a bed you control for the whole runtime and avoid planning around a limit that can change by track.

The page does not say how to see a track's limit before you pick it, so check in the Shorts creation tools. Do not assume a limit from the track name.

One more consideration is the Content ID side. YouTube states that the royalty-free Audio Library music will not receive a Content ID claim, while the page also describes first-party claims on artist channels when a label's music is synced offline in a 1 to 3 minute Short. If you are not an artist channel, the limit that matters is the seconds on the track.

Whichever bed you choose, set the fade_out_seconds so the track ends cleanly rather than cutting mid-phrase at the limit. The timeline allows a fade of up to 10 seconds.