Creative Commons vs All Rights Reserved — How to Decide

The default is All Rights Reserved

When you write and record a track, you own the copyright by default. “All Rights Reserved” means: nobody can use it without your permission. This is the default state — and it’s what sync deals, master licences, and licensing income are built on.

Creative Commons is a separate choice you make. It replaces some of those rights with a standardised public licence. Choosing CC is a deliberate trade.

When All Rights Reserved is the right call

All Rights Reserved is the right call when:

• You’re building a licensing catalogue and want each track on a per-licence basis.
• You’re actively pitching tracks to brands, agencies, or publishers.
• You want to control every downstream use including commercial sampling.
• You’re not actively marketing the track and you’d rather it stay quiet than get misused.

When Creative Commons is the right call

Creative Commons is the right call when:

• You want a wide portfolio of tracks you’re not actively monetising.
• You want to be useful to podcasters, filmmakers, indie game devs, or content creators who won’t go through per-licence friction.
• You’re deliberately building a reputation as a composer who gives back to a community.
• You’re sampling or remixing others (and want your own work open-source in turn).

The portfolio approach

Most serious independent composers mix both. A handful of CC tracks on the catalog to give the world something to use without licensing friction. The rest All Rights Reserved, individually licensed.

A typical mix:

• 10–20% of tracks under a CC licence (e.g. CC BY or CC BY-NC) — for community use, portfolio, marketing reach.
• 80–90% of tracks All Rights Reserved — actively licensed to buyers through a catalog like LicenseTrack.

The mistake to avoid

Don’t put a signature track, your highest-value production, or a track you’re already pitching under a CC licence. CC licences are irrevocable — once you’ve released under CC BY, you can’t retrospectively pull it back to All Rights Reserved.

If you’ve already made that mistake, you’re not alone — and the practical workaround is to keep publishing NC variants of your newer work under tighter licences, while letting the older CC releases stay CC.

How monitoring matters even when you’re CC

CC licences still need enforcement. The “non-commercial” clause on a CC BY-NC track is meaningless if no one’s watching for commercial reuse. Tools like LicenseTrack list every match so you can decide whether to send a polite credit request, a note about the licence, or a takedown for misuse.

Internal links

• Read more on royalty-free vs Creative Commons.
• See how LicenseTrack covers Instagram for CC enforcement.
• Catch every match on YouTube.