A music licensing company is a business that represents music to sync licensees (filmmakers, brand agencies, video game studios, TV networks) and collects licensing fees on behalf of the composer or rights holder. Music licensing companies typically take 30 to 50 percent of every license fee in exchange for catalog representation, supervisor relationships, and licensing administration. In 2026, the major categories are curated catalogs (Musicbed, Marmoset), sync agencies (Position Music, Pusher Music), and production libraries (Tonal Chaos Trailers, Outsider Music, Audiomachine). DropCue is the platform composers use to pitch supervisors directly and keep 100% of the deal, alongside (not instead of) submitting to these companies.
Start Free 7-Day Trial →Music licensing companies are businesses that connect composers and rights holders with the productions, brands, and creators who need music. They sit in the middle of the deal — handling discovery, negotiation, and sometimes delivery — and take a percentage of the licensing fee in exchange. That percentage ranges from 30 percent at the low end to 60 percent for some premium curated catalogs, with sync agencies typically sitting around 40 to 50 percent of every placement they close.
There are three distinct categories that get grouped under this label, and they work very differently. Curated music catalogs like Musicbed, Songtradr, and Artlist build searchable libraries of licensed music that filmmakers, ad agencies, and content creators browse and license directly. The platform manages the transaction and splits the fee with the composer. Composers submit tracks for curation review — a process that can take weeks — and then wait for buyers to discover them organically.
Sync agencies like Position Music, Pusher, and Marmoset take a different approach. They sign rosters of composers and actively pitch their music to music supervisors, trailer houses, and advertising agencies. Rather than running a marketplace, they work like a sales team on your behalf. The trade-off is that most sync agencies require exclusivity (at least for the works they represent) and want to see a portfolio of prior placements before they sign anyone new. Breaking into a sync agency without existing credits is genuinely difficult.
Production music libraries like APM, Universal Production Music, and Extreme Music serve the high-volume end of the market — broadcast television, streaming platforms, reality shows, corporate video. They pay smaller fees per use but place music at much higher volume than boutique agencies. For composers who can write music that fits TV-ready templates across multiple genres, production libraries offer steady income.
The working composer’s strategy is not to choose between these but to layer them. Submit your strongest tracks to one or two curated catalogs for passive inbound. Work toward agency representation once you have a handful of placements as a calling card. And for active outbound — where you initiate the pitch, choose the supervisor, tailor the playlist, and follow up — use a direct pitching tool that keeps 100 percent of every fee you close yourself. The math of running both pipelines is simple: passive income compounds slowly from catalog submissions while active outbound converts faster and pays more per deal.
Understanding which type of company you are dealing with matters before you sign anything. Exclusivity clauses, master ownership terms, and co-publishing agreements vary widely. Always have an entertainment lawyer review any agreement that takes a percentage of your publishing or requires exclusivity across your catalog before signing.
Tonal Chaos Trailers — premium trailer music library. Big blockbuster theatrical movie trailers, major streaming TV promos (Netflix, HBO, Apple), and AAA video game trailers. Epic hybrid orchestral, cinematic action, sci-fi, drama, horror, adventure/family. Highly selective on quality and genre fit.
Outsider Music — production music library focused on television shows and advertising commercials. Broadcast-ready cues across genres for episodic TV, reality, and ad campaigns. Submissions by invitation rather than open form.
Artlist — subscription-based royalty-free catalog. Filmmakers, YouTubers, and content creators get unlimited royalty-free music for one annual fee. For composers, Artlist offers steady (smaller) per-license payouts at high volume.
Epidemic Sound — subscription-based royalty-free catalog (Stockholm). One-stop music for unlimited use. Composers signed to Epidemic earn royalties when their tracks get used in monetized content (especially YouTube). Typically exclusive composer deals.
Musicbed — curated catalog. 40-50% cut. Highly selective. Premium positioning + active sales team pitching for composers. Higher-priced than royalty-free subscriptions.
PremiumBeat — royalty-free curated catalog (owned by Shutterstock). Hand-picked royalty-free music integrated with the Shutterstock stock-footage ecosystem.
Marmoset — boutique sync agency + catalog. 50% cut. Reputation for landing premium ad campaigns and prestige TV cuts (Apple, Nike, HBO). Highly selective intake.
Songtradr — open marketplace + curated. 30-50% cut. Mass-market sync platform. AI-driven matching is hit-or-miss.
Position Music — sync agency, 50% cut. Direct relationships with major shows and trailers.
Pusher — boutique sync agency, 40-50% cut. Reputation for landing prestige TV cuts.
APM Music / Universal Production Music — production music library. High volume of placements, smaller fees per use.
Audiosocket (formerly Pump Audio) — open licensing platform. Indie-friendly non-exclusive licensing.
Both, in sequence. Most working composers start by pitching directly while building a portfolio of placements (this is when DropCue is most useful — you keep 100% of every fee). Once you have 5-10 sync placements under your belt, sync agencies become receptive to signing you, and they bring scale you cannot get on your own. The two-pipeline strategy: submit to 2-3 licensing companies for passive inbound + pitch supervisors directly with DropCue for active outbound.
DropCue is the toolkit composers use to pitch supervisors directly — branded share links, embedded metadata, per-recipient analytics. We do not take a percentage of placements like libraries and agencies do. Use both channels in parallel.
Composer payouts from music licensing companies depend on three variables: the type of company, the use case for the cue, and the negotiating leverage of the catalog itself. Net of the company’s cut, most composers see between 50 percent and 70 percent of the gross license fee on a curated-catalog placement, with sync agencies typically splitting somewhere around 50 percent of every deal they close.
License fees themselves swing dramatically based on use. A regional TV ad in a single country might pay a few thousand dollars in a sync fee. A national advertising campaign for a major brand can run into six figures. A background cue used in a single episode of an unscripted reality show might pay a few hundred dollars and then build over years of reruns through performance royalties. The cleanest way to model your income from a licensing company is not the headline fee but the year-three view: how does this catalog pay across episodic TV reruns, streaming residuals, and library backlist demand twelve months after the original license closes.
Royalty-free and subscription-based catalogs work on a completely different model. Instead of one-off license fees, composers earn a share of the platform’s subscriber revenue, distributed by play count or download count. The per-track payout is much smaller, but the volume is much higher if the music gets surfaced by the platform’s search and recommendation engine. The royalty-free model rewards catalog depth and consistent style more than the boutique sync model rewards individual placements.
The right music licensing company for any composer is the one whose existing roster already places the kind of music the composer makes, in the kind of productions the composer wants to be in. This sounds obvious but it is the single filter that most submissions get wrong. A composer who writes orchestral trailer music has almost nothing to gain from a catalog that licenses lo-fi indie to YouTube vloggers, even if both technically license music.
Start by reverse-engineering the companies whose music already lands the placements the composer wants. If a TV drama is using cinematic instrumental cues for tense scenes, look up the music supervisor in the credits, then look at which catalogs and agencies they license from most often. If a streaming ad campaign uses a particular sound, search the brand and the agency to see who placed it. Three to five names tend to emerge from any honest reverse-engineering exercise.
Then audit the catalog itself before submitting. Does the company actively pitch the composer’s category of music, or is it a single-genre fit. Are the fees disclosed or hidden behind sales reps. Does the contract let the composer keep their masters and split publishing fairly. Is the catalog growing in a way that suggests they are signing new composers, or has the roster been static for two years. Each answer narrows the list further.
Submit to your 2-3 favorite licensing companies for inbound. Use DropCue to pitch supervisors directly for outbound — and keep 100% of every fee on deals you close yourself.
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