Old Posts.
Fresh Liability.

Your brand's social feed may be costing you money right now.

Major label music licenses for social media content are almost never perpetual. They're written for a specific term, one year, two years, the length of a campaign, tied to a specific platform, usage type, and territory. When that term expires, the license expires. But the post doesn't come down automatically. It stays live. And the rights holders know it.

Rightsholders and their legal teams actively monitor brand channels for content that uses licensed music beyond its authorized term. The financial stakes are substantial: damages for unlicensed music use can reach six figures per post, per rights holder. For brands with large content libraries and a history of music-forward campaigns, this is not a hypothetical risk. It's a bill waiting to arrive.

A Clearinghouse Sync social media music audit systematically reviews your brand's active social content and identifies posts that carry music licensing risk, before anyone else does.

Why this happens so often

Campaign ownership is siloed. The agency that handled clearance for a 2021 campaign may not be the agency working the 2024 campaign. License records don't always follow content when teams or agencies change.

Social media moves fast. Content is produced quickly, and licensing is often treated as a box to check rather than a long-term asset to manage. No one sets a calendar reminder for a license expiration two years in advance.

Platforms don't flag it. Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube don't have a mechanism to flag user-uploaded content operating on an expired negotiated license. That infrastructure doesn't exist.

Old campaigns, long memories. Posts from a campaign that wrapped in 2022 may still be performing well and earning impressions. No one thinks to review the license status of content that's still working.