1.14 Billion Views: What We Found About Music Use in Brand Content
We analysed 200,000 TikTok posts from 800 brands over 12 months. Here's what we found about commercial music use, and what it means for rights holders, brands, and artists.
Nick Payne
Founder
Featured
1.14 Billion Views: What We Found About Music Use in Brand Content
We analysed 200,000 TikTok posts from 800 brands across an 18-month period to understand how music is actually being used in commercial social content. This is what we found.
The headline figure is significant: over 16,000 posts with no clear evidence of commercial licensing, representing more than 1.14 billion views, 60 million likes, 4 million shares, and 1.3 million comments. But the more useful picture is in the detail, which patterns emerged, how the gap between music use and documented licensing plays out at scale, and what the data means for the different parties involved.
How we conducted the research
The methodology was straightforward. We selected 800 brands with active TikTok presences across a range of sectors and sizes, and collected data on 200,000 posts published over a 12-month period.
For each post containing music, we identified the recording using audio fingerprinting, matching the specific recording to rights data to identify the artist, title, label, and publisher/s. We then assessed the licensing context: was there clear evidence of commercial licensing for that use, or was the picture unclear?
We classified posts as having "no clear licensing evidence" where the music used was from major label catalogues or significant independent releases, and where we could find no evidence of a direct commercial licence, sync agreement, ad-spend, or Commercial Music Library listing that would cover the commercial use.
This is not a finding of infringement. Establishing infringement requires legal process and detailed rights holder data. What the research measures is the gap between the scale of commercial music use and the scale of documented commercial licensing.
The scale of unclear commercial licensing
The 16,000-plus posts with no clear licensing evidence represent a meaningful subset of our total dataset. Spread across 800 brands, that's an average of roughly 20 posts per brand where the commercial music licensing position is ambiguous at best.
The 1.14 billion views attached to that content is the measure of how widely that content has circulated. This isn't music in unpublished drafts. It's music in content that audiences have watched, shared, liked, and commented on at scale.
The 4,100-plus unique titles identified in this category shows the breadth of the catalogue involved. This isn't a small number of viral tracks used repeatedly. It's a wide cross-section of music from major and significant independent catalogues appearing in commercial content without a clear licensing trail.
How patterns emerged across brands
The 800-brand dataset reveals patterns that go beyond individual cases.
Music use in commercial social content tends to follow trend cycles rather than deliberate licensing decisions. When a track gains momentum on TikTok, through a viral sound, a trending audio clip, or cultural momentum, brand accounts respond quickly, using the same audio because it's what audiences are engaging with. The decision is creative and reactive, not licensing-led.
This means the brands most likely to have unclear licensing positions are often those moving fastest on trends, not those with the least compliance awareness. The pattern is structural, it's built into how fast-moving social content is produced.
Sector patterns were also visible. Brand categories with younger target audiences and higher-frequency social content production showed higher rates of unclear licensing. Categories with established legal and compliance functions showed lower rates, not because the legal rules were different, but because licensing considerations were more embedded in the content workflow.
What the data means for rights holders
For labels, publishers, and the artists they represent, 1.14 billion views of content with no clear commercial licensing evidence represents a significant body of activity that current monitoring systems may not be capturing at the level of commercial specificity needed for effective licensing conversations.
Rights holders have access to identification technology. The question is whether they have a complete, commercially contextualised view of brand activity specifically, which brands, which tracks, what scale, what context. The data we collected suggests that commercial social content is a significant category of music use that sits outside the picture that mainstream monitoring currently provides.
What the data means for brands
For brands, the research reflects a structural issue in content workflows rather than deliberate disregard for licensing. Music decisions are made quickly, platforms make it easy to add music, and the commercial licensing implications of those decisions are rarely part of the production process.
That's not a comfortable finding, knowing that a meaningful number of posts have an ambiguous licensing status is useful information. But it's also a solvable problem. Brands that understand what's in their content, and why certain categories of music use carry licensing uncertainty, are better positioned to make informed decisions about their content workflow and licensing practices.
What the data means for artists
The 1.14 billion views figure deserves consideration from the artist perspective. The 4,100-plus unique titles in our dataset belong to artists who recorded them and writers who composed them. That content has been seen by audiences at a significant scale. In many cases, neither the artist nor anyone in their team knows which specific brand posts used their music, or that it was contributing to that kind of commercial reach.
That's a visibility gap that goes beyond licensing. It's a gap in basic knowledge about where music is going and what it's being associated with. Artists making decisions about sync placements, brand partnerships, and catalog development would benefit from knowing what commercial activity their music is already part of.
The methodology's limitations
We want to be direct about what this research does and doesn't show.
"No clear licensing evidence" is not the same as "unlicensed." Rights holders may have licensing arrangements we don't have direct visibility into. Some commercial use may be covered by agreements not publicly accessible. Our assessment is based on available evidence, not on comprehensive rights holder data.
The research is designed to measure the scale of the visibility gap, how much commercial use of music is happening at a level that's not clearly documented and traceable. What that means in any individual case requires more detailed investigation.
Why we published this
We built Trakr to provide visibility into how music moves through social and digital content.This research is part of that mission: making the scale of the gap between music use and documented licensing visible, because that gap affects brands, rights holders, and artists differently, and understanding it is the prerequisite for any of the conversations that follow.
The full dataset is available to qualified rights holders and brands on request.
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