Blanket Licence

Instead of clearing songs one at a time, a blanket licence lets the holder use everything in a catalogue for a set fee, normally negotiated with performing rights organisations or a publisher. Radio stations, television networks, venues and streaming platforms all operate this way.

What matters to creators is what it does not do for them. YouTube's deals with rights holders cover YouTube, and none of that reaches you, so a track being playable inside somebody else's product gives you no permission to put it in your video. Subscription music libraries sell something similar at creator scale, and the terms usually tie the licence to one channel and to videos published while the subscription is live.