With the Easy Song Licensing API, you can simplify music rights for your users, add impressive rights handling capabilities to your service, and keep your users inside your application.
We suggest you read this section before writing code. Here, you will learn the intended audience, purpose, scope, and expectations for using the API. At the end of this page we outline first steps for playing around with the API and next steps for starting your integration.
Who is this for?
The Easy Song Licensing API and documentation are for people who are comfortable with computer programming and knowlegable about integrating with RESTful APIs. If that describes you, you're in the right place. If not, you might want to get some help.
About song licensing
The Easy Song Licensing API is primarily used to clear rights for cover songs (also known as compulsory mechanical licenses). If you are new to licensing, you might want to read about it before continuing.
Our article on compulsory mechanical licensing law will help you understand our limitations and why we require certain information.
We will do our best to explain licensing directly in this documentation when appropriate. If you have further questions, please refer to our help center or contact us.
About the API
The Easy Song Licensing API is a RESTful API that supports the JSON serialization format. The API offers access to the following resources we use to clear cover song licenses: Licensees, Albums, Releases, Tracks, Songs, Requests, and WallPosts. The HTTP methods of GET, POST, PATCH, and DELETE are supported for interacting with these resources.
You can use any existing HTTP client library in the programming language of your choice to construct and send your HTTP requests.
Most of our partners will use the API to send us requests to clear permission for cover songs. This can be done by making a POST with the required Licensee, Album, Track, and Song information.
Successful posts are received by us, researched, and processed. Partners can check request statuses using GET methods, update requests using PATCH methods, and communicate with our licensing
experts via WallPosts.
How we define and structure a license request
Because music terms can be interpreted differently, it's helpful to note how we define the following terms and how we model the hierarchy of a license request in general:
Licensee - the entity requesting permission to release a copyrighted song.
Album - a collection of one or more tracks. We define a "single" as an album with one track.
Release - a distribution of an album. Specifies the format, quantity, and release date.
Track - a recording of one or more songs. For licensing, give each song its own track.
Song - a composition of music notes and lyrics, underlying a track/recording.
Request - a request to use a copyrighted song. Note that although we might contact multiple copyright owners, you need concern yourself with only one "request" status.
How to use albums
For simplicity and flexibility, most users will choose the default option of always assigning only one track per "album".
However, you have the option to group multiple tracks on an album if you wish.
For more information, refer to the article dedicated to this topic, using albums.
Warning -
If you group tracks by album, be careful.
In some cases, a single API POST will create a new request for every song on the album.
For this reason, it's important to fully understand how albums work before implementing multi-track albums.
FYI -
At EasySongLicensing.com, we group tracks by album if that most accurately represents the true manner in which the music will be released.
Incorporating our Terms of Use
Because of the sensitive legal nature of our service, we ask that you incorporate our terms of use into your integration.
There are various ways you can do this. You can copy and paste from our terms (make sure to stay current), provide a link to our terms with an explanation, or add an inline link with a checkbox to accept.
How you do it is up to you. However, some integration of our terms is important to cover your liability, ours, and to ensure the accuracy and legality of each song clearance.
Before you write any code, there are some steps you should take:
