How Clearhly works

A rights holder posts catalog and grants rights; a licensee browses, requests clearance and licenses music. We run KYB verification for registered rights-holder businesses, not individual applicants; licensee accounts are instant. You can have both: an account can be entitled to the holder workspace and the licensee workspace at the same time, and the role switcher in the workspace top bar moves you between /workspace/holder and /workspace/licensee. Switching the view never changes your data, only which side of the product you're looking at.

No. Licensees can be individuals. Sign up at sign-up, choose the licensee path, and you can browse, preview, save listings, create projects and submit clearance requests straight away: no KYB, no business application, no waiting for approval. KYB applies only to registered businesses using the rights-holder side.

Only if you're posting listings as a rights holder. We run KYB (Know Your Business) verification for registered businesses, not individual applicants. Supporting documents can be uploaded with the application or added later if requested, and we aim to review submissions within 3 to 5 business days. Licensee accounts are instant, with no KYB required to browse and submit clearance requests.

The application provides upload slots for a certificate of incorporation (or equivalent registration document), beneficial ownership declaration, a government-issued photo ID for your representative, and a signed rights-ownership attestation. You can submit the initial application without files and add requested documents later. Accepted formats are PDF, JPEG, PNG and WEBP, up to 15 MB per document.

We aim to review submissions within 3 to 5 business days. While your business is pending you can sign in, finish your profile and use the licensee side of the product normally. You cannot create listings until the business is approved. Your current status is always in Settings → KYB.

Yes, by default once your business is verified. Approved rights holders grant Eternal Media UG a non-exclusive, revocable license to feature a listing (title, artist name, cover art, and up to a 30-second excerpt of rights-holder-uploaded preview audio) in Clearhly's own marketing. Spotify-embedded audio is excluded. This includes social media and paid advertising promoting the platform or that listing. It transfers no rights and authorizes no other use. You can switch it off in Settings → Business at any time: that stops new use, anything already published stays as is. Where reasonably practical we credit the artist by name.

You'll always be given a specific reason. Rejection without an explanation isn't possible on this platform. Go to Settings → KYB (the rejection notification links straight there), read the reason, update or re-upload the relevant documents, and resubmit. That moves your business back into the review queue, and you're notified again when a decision is made.

There's no toggle that converts a licensee account into a rights holder account, because becoming a rights holder means being verified as a business. If you started as a licensee and now want to list catalog, apply as a rights holder using the same signed-in account. Once that business is approved you keep your licensee side and gain the holder workspace on top.

Yes. An account can access businesses it owns or has joined, and a rights-holder business can invite multiple people from Settings → Team. Owners have full control, including billing, KYB and team management. Admins can manage the team and approve, counter and sign clearance requests, but cannot delete the business or remove its owner. Members can create and edit listings and reply in request threads, but cannot approve, counter or sign. Team invitations expire after 7 days.

Settings → Danger zone. You can delete a single business or your whole account. Deleting a business closes all of its listings and removes it from the marketplace; if it has active or approved clearance requests you must acknowledge that first. Deleting your account closes every listing you own, removes saved listings, saved searches, notifications and notification preferences, deletes the login, and anonymises the profile. Clearance requests remain on record, including signed clearance records and license documents, because deleting an account cannot retroactively undo a license you granted or received.

Sync (film/TV/ads/trailers), sample clearance, interpolations, covers, remix-for-release, and full master/publishing licenses. You choose exactly which request types you'll accept per listing, plus an optional "open to anything else" toggle if you want licensees to pitch uses you haven't listed.

The master is the recording, the specific captured performance. The publishing side is the composition: melody, lyrics, structure. They're legally distinct rights, frequently owned by different people, and a licensee usually needs both to use a track. The listing asks for your controlled percentage of each separately because the honest answer is often different for each, for example 100% of a master you paid to record but 50% of a co-written composition.

An ISRC identifies a specific recording (format CC-XXX-YY-NNNNN, e.g. USRC17607839). An ISWC identifies the composition (format T-123456789-0). The listing wizard requires either a valid ISRC or a track imported from Spotify, because that identifier is what lets us detect duplicate listings of the same recording and lets a licensee confirm they're clearing the right master. ISWC is optional, but if you supply one it must be correctly formatted.

The wizard checks the ISRC when you reach the review step and warns you when another listing already uses it. A duplicate isn't automatically wrong: two parties can legitimately control different shares of the same recording, which is why every listing declares its controlled master and publishing percentages. Claiming a share you don't control is what's not allowed. If another listing misrepresents ownership of your work, report it from the listing page or use the DMCA process.

Yes. From Listings, the row menu gives you Edit (reopens the wizard with the listing loaded), Close (removes it from browse but keeps the record and history), Reactivate and Delete. Closing is the reversible option and is usually what you want. Deletion is permanent and is blocked when the listing has a signed or in-progress license, so close it instead in that case. Editing a listing does not reopen the negotiated terms of an approved request.

Three things can do this automatically. A disputed contributor: if someone you invited disputes their split, the listing goes to under review until it's resolved. Reports: enough reports from different users can hide the listing pending a human decision. A single report still enters the queue and an admin can escalate it. Verification lapsed: if a previously approved business loses approval, its existing listings are closed, not reviewed. Your Listings page names the cause where it can. Reporter identities are never shown to you.

You declare your controlled percentage of the master and of the publishing separately, each 0 to 100. If either is below 100%, the wizard requires named contributors covering the remainder before you can continue, so a listing can't quietly claim less than the whole picture. If an invited contributor disputes their share, the listing moves to under review and is hidden from browse until it's resolved. The license document marks every contributor as confirmed, disputed, pending consent or self-declared.

Yes, that's the normal case. Declare your actual controlled share for the master and for the publishing, and name contributors for the rest. What you're offering is your share, and the license document states those percentages so the licensee knows whether they still need to clear anything elsewhere.

A non-exclusive license lets the rights holder grant the same rights to others. An exclusive license reserves the negotiated rights for that licensee during the agreed term, including against the rights holder. An exclusive grant cannot be signed until every contributor declared on the listing has confirmed their consent.

Yes. Choose Duplicate everything to pre-fill all listing fields, then review identifiers and track details before publishing. Choose Duplicate deal terms only to copy commercial terms, territories, usage types and license scope while leaving track details, contributors and artwork blank.

1. 1.Find the track in Browse, filtering by use type, genre, territory, deal structure and budget.
2. 2.Open the listing: check the preview, accepted use types, territories and price range.
3. 3.Press Request clearance.
4. 4.Fill in your intended use and your offer: deal structure, upfront amount and, where relevant, a revenue-share percentage and basis.
5. 5.Submit. It appears on your Requests board as pending and the holder is notified. Messages, counters and signing all happen on that request's page.

Be specific about the use: the project, the medium, where it will run, for how long, and how prominently the music features. A holder pricing a fifteen-second background bed for a regional social campaign is answering a different question from one pricing a national TV spot, and vague requests get slower, more conservative answers. For budget, propose a real number rather than leaving it open; an offer inside the listing's stated range is a normal starting point, and either side can counter.

Territory is fixed to what the holder listed. You're requesting exactly what's on offer, not something adjacent to it. Intended use is constrained to the holder's accepted use types, unless they marked the listing "open to anything else," in which case you can describe a custom use.

It means the holder proposed different terms than you asked for: price, structure or license dates. Yes, you can counter back, and a request can move between pending and countered as many times as it takes. Nothing binds until both sides reach terms agreed and each signs. Use the message thread to explain the reasoning behind a number; it converts far better than a bare counter.

There's no enforced response deadline, so it varies. Independent holders often reply within a day or two; catalogs with legal review take longer. Two things you control: how complete your intended-use description is, and whether you followed up in the message thread. If a request has gone quiet you can withdraw it and pursue an alternative, or raise it with Help & support, which carries the clearance number across for you.

Yes, open the request and choose Withdraw, any time before it reaches a terminal state. Withdrawn requests stay in your history, so the record of what was asked and offered is preserved, but the holder can no longer act on them.

Saving is a private bookmark: it notifies nobody, changes nothing on the listing, and collects candidates under Saved while you build a shortlist. A request is an actual approach to the holder with terms attached, and it starts a negotiation they can see and respond to.

A clearance request is an offer to negotiate, not a binding license by itself. Once a rights holder approves, both sides move into a "terms agreed" step where each party independently confirms and signs. Only after both signatures does the deal become "approved" and a license document (deal memo) generated. Nothing on the platform substitutes for executing your own signed agreement if your situation calls for one.

Flat fee; revenue share only (no upfront, a percentage of net, gross, publisher's share or master's share); flat fee plus revenue share; or fully custom terms described in free text.

The status flips to "approved" and a verification number is generated. A signed deal-memo PDF becomes available to both parties and is generated when one of them first downloads it. It can be regenerated on demand from the signed terms.

It's a signed record of what was agreed on-platform, not a substitute for your own license agreement. It states explicitly that Clearhly isn't a party to the license and doesn't warrant title or chain of rights. Treat it as documentation of the deal, not the deal's governing legal instrument.

The licensee owes the agreed license price and does not pay a Clearhly fee: browsing, previewing, saving listings and submitting clearance requests are free. Once a clearance is approved, the licensee pays the upfront amount through Clearhly and the rights holder's flat success fee is deducted from the payout at release. Full schedule on Pricing.

Free for licensees, and free for rights holders to list. Listing, browsing, previewing, saving and requesting cost nothing on either side. An approved clearance creates a flat success fee for the rights holder under the published schedule, taken out of the payout rather than invoiced separately.

A flat success fee applies to the rights holder only when a clearance is approved. The fixed amount is based on the deal-size bracket rather than a percentage of the deal: $49 below $2,500 · $199 from $2,500 to below $10,000 · $499 from $10,000 to below $50,000 · $1,499 at $50,000+. Revenue-share-only deals are $49. Requests that do not become approved have no success fee. On cash deals the fee is deducted from the payout when the funds are released. The full schedule, with illustrative effective rates, is on Pricing.

The upfront cash portion of the deal, and nothing else. On a flat fee deal that's simply the agreed price. On a flat + share deal it's only the upfront piece: the revenue-share percentage on top never moves you into a higher bracket. A pure revenue share deal with no upfront has no cash amount to bracket against, so it lands in the flat $49 tier, and custom terms with a real upfront amount are bracketed on that amount. Worked example: a $3,000 upfront + 10% of net revenue deal is billed at $199, and stays $199 even if the share later pays out another $40,000.

No. What's billed is the fixed bracket amount. Pricing shows an effective rate beside each tier ($199 on a $5,000 deal is about 4.0%), but those percentages are arithmetic illustrations of the flat fee at specific deal values, not a billing method.

Payments are processed by Stripe. The license fee is collected through Clearhly's Stripe account, held for 14 days after payment is confirmed, then transferred to the rights holder's Stripe account minus Clearhly's success fee. The licensee pays by card through Stripe Checkout. Ongoing revenue-share settlement is not collected by Clearhly and is arranged between the parties.

They are separate checks at different stages. Clearhly first verifies a registered business before it can operate as a rights holder. Later, when that business connects an account to receive payouts, Stripe independently verifies the business, its representatives and payout details because Stripe is legally required to verify who it sends money to. Clearhly cannot skip Stripe's check. Before your first listing goes live, you set up payouts with Stripe once. It takes about 5 minutes. Licensees do not go through Stripe Connect verification; they pay by card through ordinary Stripe Checkout.

Upfront payments are held for 14 days after the licensee's payment is confirmed, then automatically released to the rights holder's connected Stripe account with the success fee deducted. The Earnings page shows the real state confirmed by Stripe for each clearance, including the scheduled release date. Release is paused automatically while a card dispute is open.

Raise the issue in the request's message thread so the other party sees it, and submit the contact form (topic Payments & payouts) so Clearhly can review the record. While the funds are still held, release is paused and Clearhly can refund the payment to the licensee. Once funds have been released, any reversal is handled between the parties or through the card issuer.

An approved request is a terminal state and cannot be withdrawn by either party in the normal request flow. Contact support if both parties need the record reviewed or canceled. If the upfront payment is still inside the 14-day hold, it can be refunded to the licensee; after release, the parties settle it directly.

The signed deal memo records the parties, the work, the grant and the agreed license fee, and both parties can download it from the request page. Stripe emails the licensee a card receipt for the upfront payment, and the Earnings page shows the gross amount, the success fee and the net released to the rights holder. Clearhly does not issue separate tax invoices.

Euro and US dollar. The rights holder picks the currency on each listing, and that choice is locked onto any clearance request made from it, so the offer, the payment, the success fee, the payout and the license document all use the same currency. Fee brackets are the same numbers in either currency, so a 3,000 euro deal and a 3,000 dollar deal land in the same bracket.

Yes. On an approved request both parties get Download license PDF, plus Regenerate from signed terms. The memo contains: the parties; the composition (title, artist, ISRC, ISWC, master and publishing shares, and each contributor marked confirmed / disputed / pending consent / self-declared); the grant of rights (territory, intended use, term); the fee; numbered terms including the payment-and-hold clause and governing law; and a signature block with both parties' e-signed names and timestamps. It also states that Clearhly isn't a party to the license and doesn't verify chain of title.

The public reference for an approved clearance. It's generated when the deal is approved and shown on the request page under Public verification number. The license PDF has its own request reference, so use the verification number from the request page for public lookup.

Give them the number and point them at /verify. They enter it and get the record back, with no account needed. Lookups are rate-limited to deter automated probing.

Always shown: the verification number, status (active, expired, not yet active), signed date, track title and artist, rights holder name, territory, and term. License start and end dates are shown when present.

Opt-in only: the licensee's name and the usage description, revealed only when both parties turn on the reveal toggles on the request page.

Never shown: fees and financial terms, negotiation messages, attachments, contributor splits, KYB documents.

Nothing is deleted. Once the end date passes, /verify reports the clearance as expired instead of active, and the license document stays downloadable as a record of what was granted and for how long. A start date in the future reports as not yet active. Using the music beyond the term is outside the grant, and needs a new clearance.

A blank end date means the grant isn't time-limited: the license document prints the term as "In perpetuity for the specified use, subject to the Terms below", and verify never flips that clearance to expired. It does not mean unlimited use, the territory and intended use still bound it. Leave it blank only if you genuinely intend an open-ended term; for a campaign window, set both dates.

Useful when you want to point a third party (e.g. your own distributor, or someone verifying your rights chain) at the public verification record without sending them the full deal-memo PDF.

Not required to publish. You can list with self-declared splits alone, since real-world rights administration is often slower than a listing needs to be. But you can send each contributor an email invite; they can confirm or dispute without needing an account. Confirmed and self-declared splits are always visually distinguished, on the listing, in contributor rows, and in the deal memo.

Someone listed a track and named you as a co-owner or co-writer with a specific share of the master or the composition. The invite is an email with a private link asking you to confirm that share is right, or dispute it. You don't need an account and you're not signing a license, your response records whether you agree with the stated split. If you don't recognize the track at all, dispute it and say so in the note.

The listing is immediately moved to under review and hidden from browse until it's resolved, and the rights holder is told a contributor disputed their split. Your note travels with it, and any license document referencing the contributor list marks that contributor as disputed, so it can't be presented as settled. Nothing about your dispute appears on the public verify page.

Not by reusing the same link: an answered invite is locked. If the recorded name, role, rights type or split needs correcting, ask the rights holder to edit that contributor entry. A material edit resets the old response, creates a new private link and allows a fresh invite. If the holder will not correct it, reach us through the report form on the contact page with the listing details.

Nothing breaks: invites have no deadline and simply stay in the invited state. The listing stays publishable, because consent was never required to publish, but that contributor keeps showing as pending consent rather than confirmed, on the listing and in every deal memo. A listing with confirmed splits is an easier sell, so it's worth chasing, and you can resend from Contributors.

Open the listing and use Report. Pick a reason, add a note describing what's wrong, and submit. The listing owner never sees who reported it, and you can file one report per listing.

Every report enters a moderated review queue. If a listing accumulates enough reports from different users, it is automatically moved to under review and hidden from browse pending a human decision. An admin can also escalate any individual report when needed. For anything urgent, or any copyright claim, use the formal routes below instead.

Use the DMCA process: submit a takedown notice through the report form on the contact page (category Copyright) with the work, the listing URLs, the good-faith and accuracy statements, and your signature. We confirm receipt in writing within 2 business days for form submissions, and within 5 business days of delivery for postal notices; if the notice is complete on its face we aim to disable the disputed listing within 5 business days of receipt and notify the posting rights holder. The same form covers EU and US law.

You'll see it at sign-in: the message says the account has been suspended and points you at the contact page. Temporary suspensions have an end date; a ban remains until an administrator lifts it. Write to us via the contact form (topic Account, or Legal) from an address we can match to the account, describe what you think happened, and quote the reference number you get back. Signed clearance records and license documents from before a restriction aren't deleted.

Send a notice via the report form on the contact page (category "Breaks Clearhly's Terms") with the listing URL and the facts you contest. The submission is stored with a reference number for review. If you already have a clearance request open with that counterparty, use its message thread to raise the issue with them too. The thread does not replace a report on the contact page when you need Clearhly to review the matter. Where warranted we may facilitate communication and temporarily gate the listing while it's resolved. The full policy is on the DMCA & Disputes page.

Use the contact form. It's the primary channel for support, legal, privacy, copyright, trust and security: submissions land in the review queue the moment you send them, are timestamped on arrival, and you get a reference number to quote. We confirm receipt of copyright and privacy notices in writing within 5 business days; for DMCA form submissions specifically, receipt is confirmed within 2 business days and a notice that's complete on its face is actioned within 5. General support questions go through the same queue without a fixed SLA. Signed in, Help & support is the same form with your details prefilled, plus every message you've sent and its status.

For anything about one deal, the message thread on that request is usually fastest, since both parties and the full history are already there. Every request page also has a "Contact support" link that carries the clearance number into the support form. There is no phone support. The contact form is the primary support channel, and hello@clearhly.com is also published for general enquiries and formal notices.

Same contact form, with the matching category (legal, copyright, privacy, trust & safety, security). Those are triaged separately and acknowledged in writing. DMCA & Disputes sets out the formal notice and counter-notice requirements, Privacy covers data access, correction and deletion, and the Impressum lists our company details and postal notice address.