---
title: What you actually bought: nine beat and sample licences, read from the terms
publisher: RapCanon
canonical: https://rapcanon.com/research/what-you-actually-bought-2026/
license: CC-BY-4.0
retrieved: 2026-08-14
---

> BeatStars' unlimited lease expires at ten years. Content ID swapped sides in 2026. Royalty-free is usually in the marketing and not in the grant. Nine beat marketplace and sample service licences read directly from the platforms' own terms, with every unanswered cell marked UNKNOWN rather than inferred.

Home / Research / What You Actually Bought 2026 

 
 
 
Investigation

 
# What you actually bought: nine beat and sample licences, read from the terms

 
 
 
The short answer: we read the operative licence text at five beat marketplaces and four sample services, and the three things most comparisons get wrong are all checkable in one sentence each. BeatStars' "unlimited" lease expires after ten years. YouTube Content ID swapped sides during 2026, so BeatStars no longer offers it and Airbit does. And the phrase "royalty-free" appears in the marketing of most sample services but inside the operative grant of only one of them.

 
And the structural finding, which matters more than any single cell. On three of the five beat marketplaces there is no platform licence to compare at all. Airbit, Traktrain and SoundClick publish a form that each producer fills in, not a contract. Comparing "Airbit's terms" to BeatStars' template compares a form field to a legal document, and every table that puts them side by side is comparing things that are not the same kind of object.

 

 
 9 platforms 
 read 2026-08-13 
 sourced to platform terms only 
 UNKNOWN never inferred 
 
 
 

 
 
 
The anomaly

 
## BeatStars' "unlimited" lease expires at ten years

 
A beat lease normally caps what you may do with the track: so many copies, so many streams, so many videos. The top tier removes those caps and is sold as unlimited. Producers and buyers alike read that word as permanent. It is not. From the default non-exclusive template BeatStars supplies to its sellers:

 "The Term of this Agreement shall be 10 years and this license shall expire on the 10 year anniversary." 
 
Unlimited is a volume word, not a time word. It removes the copy and stream ceilings; it does not extend the clock. A record released under an unlimited lease in 2026 is, on the face of the template, unlicensed in 2036 unless something else is agreed before then. Nothing in the purchase interface says so, because the interface shows the caps that changed and not the term that did not.

 
There is a second reason this is not widely known, and it is worth stating plainly because it explains the state of the public record. The licence text is not in the BeatStars help centre. The site is a client-rendered application and the template is reachable only through the rendered checkout preview. It cannot be read from any public help URL, which means almost everything written about it online was written from somebody's memory of a purchase rather than from the document.

 
 

 
 
 
The freshness kill

 
## Content ID swapped sides in 2026

 
For years the standard comparison ran: BeatStars offers YouTube Content ID, Airbit does not. That has been inverted, and recently enough that most pages still carry the old version.

 
BeatStars Content ID is discontinued. Submissions closed on 2025-12-08 and existing tracks were removed from YouTube, Meta and TikTok by 2026-01-14. BeatStars Publishing and the paid Beat ID detection tool are separate products and remain.

 
Airbit Content ID is live. It runs as a Platinum feature under a separate YouTube Content ID Service Agreement, last revised 2024-09-04, on an 80/20 split in the creator's favour.

 
That 20% deserves attention next to Airbit's headline. Airbit advertises 0% seller commission, and that is true of beat sales. It does not extend to Content ID, where Airbit takes a fifth. Every Airbit account is bound to the Content ID agreement at signup, not at the point of switching the feature on, so the terms apply to accounts whose owners never opted into anything.

 
The practical consequence for a reader: any beat-marketplace comparison written before 2026 has this cell exactly backwards, and it is the cell most likely to decide which platform a producer picks.

 
 

 
 
 
What an exclusive does not buy

 
## A BeatStars exclusive leaves the publishing where it was and the old leases where they were

 
Two clauses in the same template, both routinely misread, and they compound.

 
The composition is expressly excluded. The exclusive transfers the master on a work-for-hire basis, described as the "sole and exclusive right in perpetuity". The composition is not included, and the publishing convention is 50/50 on the exclusive and on the non-exclusive alike. On that axis, the exclusive buys nothing that the lease did not already give you. It is the single most expensive thing on the platform and it does not move the songwriting split at all.

 
Prior leases survive the exclusive. The template states that "any licenses granted by Producer, which precede this agreement, shall remain in effect", and the buyer waives claims against those earlier licensees. So buying the exclusive stops future sales of the beat. It does not clear the beat. Records already released under a lease stay released, and you have agreed not to pursue the people who released them.

 
Put together: an exclusive is a promise about the future, not a cleaning of the past, and it leaves the composition split untouched. Both facts are in the document. Neither is in the price.

 
 The question no template in this set answers 
 
 - What happens when you exceed the cap? The BeatStars template contains no over-cap clause and no upgrade clause. The only mechanism in the document is generic breach plus producer-elected termination.

 - "Just buy the next tier up" is marketplace custom, not licence text. It is what everyone does and what most producers would accept. It is not what you agreed to, and it is not what a dispute would be decided on.

 - No lease tier grants real sync. The template permits promotional video of five minutes or less and then says: "Producer grants no other synchronization rights to Licensee." There is no sync row in the purchase interface to signal the gap.

 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
The matrix

 
## Five beat marketplaces, read from their own terms

 
Every cell below was read from the platform's own terms, licence template, help centre or pricing page on 2026-08-13. No blog, review or comparison site was used as the source for any cell. UNKNOWN means the platform has not published an answer. It does not mean no, and several UNKNOWN cells are probably governed by seller-set terms rather than by platform policy.

 
 
 Platform | 
 Platform commission | 
 Is there a platform licence? | 
 YouTube Content ID | 
 Publishing split | 
 Do prior licences survive an exclusive? | 
 

 
 
 
 BeatStars | 
 0% from the seller, 12% buyer fee on Marketplace | 
 Yes. Law-firm-drafted default templates, customisable and resettable | 
 Discontinued 2025-12-08, tracks removed by 2026-01-14 | 
 50/50 on exclusive and non-exclusive alike | 
 Yes. Earlier licences remain in effect and the buyer waives claims | 
 

 
 Airbit | 
 0% seller, no buyer fee. 20% on Content ID | 
 No. Seller-provided licence; optional editable templates | 
 Live, Platinum feature, 80/20 to the creator | 
 UNKNOWN | 
 UNKNOWN | 
 

 
 Traktrain | 
 0% on MP3 beats. 25% of kit sales on the free plan | 
 No. Producer-configured; custom contracts are a paid feature | 
 UNKNOWN. Zero occurrences of "Content ID" in the terms | 
 UNKNOWN | 
 UNKNOWN | 
 

 
 SoundClick | 
 30% on the free tier. 10% at $10/mo, 0% at $20/mo | 
 No platform template text. Producer-set terms shown per beat | 
 UNKNOWN | 
 UNKNOWN | 
 UNKNOWN | 
 

 
 Soundee | 
 30% on the free plan. Paid: 10% marketplace, 0% own store | 
 Yes. Templates provided, values seller-set at checkout | 
 UNKNOWN. Zero occurrences of "Content ID" or "YouTube" | 
 UNKNOWN. Zero occurrences of publishing, songwriter or composition | 
 Yes, and it says so. Exclusivity does not disturb earlier buyers | 
 

 
 
 
 
Read on 2026-08-13 from beatstars.com, airbit.com, traktrain.com, soundclick.com and soundee.com. Soundee's terms were the freshest in the set, last updated 2026-08-10.

 
 

 
 
 
The UNKNOWN count is the finding

 
## On three of five beat marketplaces there is no licence to compare

 
Count the UNKNOWN cells in the table above and the pattern is not a gap in our reading. It is the answer.

 
Only BeatStars and Soundee publish a readable default template. Airbit, Traktrain and SoundClick publish a user-interface schema whose values each producer fills in: file format, copies, streams, videos, radio stations. Airbit's schema has no sync row at all. Traktrain states that it "is not authorized to grant rights beyond those instructions", which is a clear and honest description of a platform that is a payment rail rather than a licensor.

 
So the sentence "the platform's licence terms" is a category error on three of these five platforms. There is no such object. What exists is a form, and the contract is whatever the individual producer typed into it. That is a more useful thing for a buyer to know than any single cell, because it changes what question to ask: not what does this platform allow, but what did this specific producer write.

 
One platform answers the question everyone else leaves open. Soundee's terms address the exclusive-resale problem directly, stating that "an exclusive License does not transfer copyright to you" unless the licence says otherwise, and that exclusivity "does not affect Licenses the Seller already granted to earlier Buyers". Its §12.4 goes further and says your licence survives if the seller closes or is suspended, with files downloadable for at least 24 months. Producers assume every platform is silent here. On Soundee it is not, and that is worth knowing before assuming the silence is universal.

 
 

 
 
 
What zero percent means

 
## Four of five platforms advertise a 0% that has a condition attached

 
Commission is the number every beat marketplace leads with, and in this set it is the number that most often needs a second sentence.

 
BeatStars: 0% from the seller and 12% from the buyer. Both are true simultaneously. The service fee applies on Marketplace and not on Pro Pages, verified live at checkout where $250 becomes $280. The practical consequence is that the same beat from the same producer is 12% cheaper bought through their Pro Page, and the commission does not vary by seller tier.

 
Traktrain: the 0% is disclaimed inside Traktrain's own terms. The document states that any free-or-zero-percent statement "applies only to the then-current version… and does not limit Traktrain's right to introduce or change fees for future transactions." Separately, the free plan already keeps 25% of kit sales, so the 0% is true of MP3 beats specifically rather than of the account.

 
SoundClick: the free tier is the most expensive in the set at 30%. Zero commission requires the $20 per month Ultimate plan. The framing as a free platform hides the highest headline take here.

 
Soundee: 30% free, and paid plans are 0% only on your own store. Marketplace sales stay at 10% on every paid tier. Soundee's terms say this plainly: "On a paid Plan, everything you sell through your own Store is yours." The sentence is accurate and the scope is the part to read.

 
 

 
 
 
Sample services

 
## "Royalty-free" is usually in the marketing and not in the grant

 
Sample subscriptions are sold on two promises: the sounds are royalty-free, and they are yours forever. We checked both against the operative sentence in each licence rather than against the landing page.

 
Output Arcade is the only one in this set with both words inside the grant. Its terms license the content "on a royalty-free basis… non-exclusive, non-transferable, perpetual", and Output warrants clearance and that you own your output. That is the strongest grant text here, and it is the one product with the sharpest cancellation trap, which is covered below.

 
Splice's grant never says royalty-free. It grants a perpetual, non-exclusive, non-transferable licence to use sounds in combination with others, and states plainly that "Sounds are licensed, not sold… you will not own the Sounds." The phrase royalty-free lives in the marketing and the help centre. In practice the effect is close, since commercial release needs no clearance and sync is unrestricted, but the operative document does not use the phrase people quote back at it.

 
There is a naming trap worth knowing before you search that document. The legal entity is Distributed Creation Inc., so searching the terms of use for the word Splice misses the licence clauses entirely.

 
Loopcloud and Loopmasters never say perpetual, and the licence is expressly revocable on breach. Against keep your purchases forever marketing, that is the gap that matters. And the breach surface is wider than it looks: Loopmasters bars naming the pack or the producer in your credits or promotional material, so courtesy crediting, which most producers would call good manners, is a breach that in principle risks revocation. The licence also does not cover everything sold on the same storefront: other labels, Big Fish Audio and DJ Mixtools each carry different terms.

 
 

 
 
 
The clause that costs people files

 
## Cancelling means four different things at four services

 
There is no shared convention here, and the differences are large enough that assuming one service behaves like another is how people lose work.

 
Splice: cancelling is safe, deleting the account is not. Downloaded sounds stay licensed in perpetuity, including the right to sublicense. Credits expire 28 days after the final billing period. But library access depends on keeping the account, and the terms kill "any saved Sounds and Stacks" if the account goes. Cancel and you keep everything. Delete and you do not.

 
Loopcloud: keep the downloads, lose the points. Downloaded and purchased sounds keep their licence. Unspent points become unusable outside an active subscription and return only if you resubscribe.

 
Output Arcade: keep the licence, lose access to files already on your disk. This is the sharpest one in the set because both halves of the marketing are true at once. Your music is yours forever and you lose access to content you already downloaded. The terms state that anything you recorded "will play back using the last saved sampler as long as Arcade remains installed", while you will not be able to "browse, search, download, or access any downloaded factory content." Installers also disappear from your account page. Only rendered audio is durable, so a project that exists as MIDI is the failure mode, and Output's own support article says the quiet part directly: bounce your MIDI tracks to audio before cancelling. Separately, a past-due invoice converts cancellation into immediate termination.

 
Tracklib: issued licences survive only while you keep reporting. Sample licences already issued remain active "as long as you adhere to the other terms… including reporting and paying the revenue share at least every 6 months." Cancelling downgrades the account and removes credits, saved tracks and collections, but the obligation attached to a released record does not end with the subscription.

 
 

 
 
 
The clause nobody compares

 
## The AI clauses are not equivalent, and one service has none

 
Every comparison of sample services treats the AI restriction as a yes-or-no column. Read against the documents it is four different rules.

 
Splice: a flat ban. No use of the sounds "as source or training material for generative or other types of artificial intelligence models."

 
Loopmasters: the broadest of the set. It reaches beyond training to cover "training, developing or enhancing any content of your own that is generated by AI", which extends into using the sounds alongside AI-generated material rather than only to feed a model.

 
Output: a ban with a written-consent carve-out. Prohibited without explicit written consent from Output, which makes it the only licensable path of the three.

 
Tracklib: no AI or machine-learning clause at all. We verified this by exhaustive occurrence count across 100,939 characters of terms rather than by searching and finding nothing, because a failed search and a verified absence are different claims. That is silence, not permission. An absent clause is not a grant, the terms can be amended, and a use that no document authorises is a use with no document behind it if it is ever questioned.

 
 

 
 
 
The cost that is not the fee

 
## Tracklib's clearance is fee-free and takes 2 to 35% of both sides, forever

 
Tracklib sells pre-cleared samples from real records, and it is genuinely a different product from a royalty-free library: it clears the underlying recording, with no approval step, so you register the release and the licence issues. The pricing headline is that clearance is fee-free on the paid plan. That is true and it is not the cost.

 
The cost is a revenue share on both the master and the publishing, by category and sample length. Category C runs 2%, 10% or 20% for samples up to 2, 15 or 60 seconds. Category B runs 5%, 15%, 25%. Category A runs 10%, 25%, 35%. Over 90% of the catalogue is Category C. The share has no end date, and it comes with mandatory reporting at least every six months. Miss the reporting and you are out of compliance on a record that is already released.

 
You also acquire nothing durable: "you will not acquire any rights in the Original Sounds," and the original rightsholders must be included in your works registration at your PRO.

 
It binds beat producers in a way the pricing page does not surface. You must license before showcasing a beat publicly, including on BeatStars. You need an ISRC. You must disclose the sample. And your buyer must obtain their own Tracklib licence. You do not share revenue on the beat sale itself, so the producer's economics look clean, but the obligation travels to a customer who in most cases will never fulfil it, and the record that results is the one carrying the exposure.

 
 Where Tracklib's own documentation disagrees with itself 
 
 - The plans. The rate card still names LITE, PREMIUM and MAX tiers while the live pricing page sells a single plan at $14.99 per month.

 - The credits. The cancellation article says credits become unusable; the credits article says they last until renewal.

 - We are reporting the disagreement rather than picking a side, because we cannot tell from outside which document is the current one, and guessing would put a number in your head that the company has not committed to.

 
 
 
 

 
 
 
The matrix

 
## Four sample services, read from their own terms

 
 
 Service | 
 Does the grant say royalty-free? | 
 Does the grant say perpetual? | 
 What cancelling costs you | 
 AI clause | 
 Ongoing revenue share | 
 

 
 
 
 SpliceDistributed Creation Inc. | 
 No. Marketing only | 
 Yes | 
 Credits after 28 days. Everything, if you delete the account | 
 Flat ban | 
 None | 
 

 
 Loopcloud / Loopmasters | 
 "Without payment of any further fees or royalties" | 
 No, and expressly revocable on breach | 
 Unspent points, returned only if you resubscribe | 
 Broadest. Reaches enhancing AI-generated content | 
 None | 
 

 
 Output Arcade | 
 Yes, inside the operative grant | 
 Yes, inside the operative grant | 
 Access to downloaded content on your own disk | 
 Ban with a written-consent carve-out | 
 None | 
 

 
 Tracklib | 
 Yes for Original Sounds. Original Songs need a sample licence | 
 "Without limit in time" for Original Sounds | 
 Credits, saved tracks, collections. Issued licences survive if you keep reporting | 
 None at all. Verified across 100,939 characters | 
 2 to 35% of master and publishing, forever | 
 

 
 
 
 
Read on 2026-08-13 from splice.com/terms, loopcloud.com, output.com/legal/terms and tracklib.com/terms.

 
 

 
 
 
Method and limits

 
Every cell above was read directly from the named platform's own terms, licence template, help centre or pricing page on 2026-08-13. No blog, review or comparison site was used as the source for any cell. Where a platform publishes no answer the cell reads UNKNOWN rather than being inferred from a competitor or from marketplace custom. Absences in the sample-service rows were confirmed by exhaustive occurrence counts across the full terms text, so they are verified absences rather than failed searches.

 
 - Licence terms change, and a stale cell here costs a reader money. Every cell carries the date it was read. Check the document before you rely on it.

 - On beat marketplaces the licence is usually seller-authored. Only BeatStars and Soundee publish a readable default template. On Airbit, Traktrain and SoundClick the platform publishes a schema and the producer supplies the terms, so a platform-level answer does not exist to be found.

 - Airbit's help centre is sign-in gated and could not be read at all. That is the single largest gap in this dataset and it is why Airbit carries the most UNKNOWN cells.

 - BeatStars is a client-rendered application. Its licence text is reachable only through the rendered checkout preview, not from any public help URL.

 - This covers what a licence grants and costs. It does not rank platforms and does not recommend one. Several of these differences are neutral trade-offs rather than failings, and a term that is wrong for one artist is right for another.

 
 
What would change our mind: if BeatStars publishes its template at a public URL, if Airbit opens its help centre, or if any platform adds the over-cap clause none of them currently carry, the central structural finding here, that three of five platforms have no licence to compare, would need rewriting rather than updating. If that happens this page will say so and the original text will stay visible.

 
Nothing on this page is affiliate-linked. RapCanon sells no beats, no samples, no distribution and no clearance service, and has no position on which platform you use. Outbound links to commercial parties carry rel="nofollow" so they pass no ranking benefit.

---

## How to cite this page

**APA**
RapCanon. (2026). What you actually bought: nine beat and sample licences, read from the terms. Retrieved from https://rapcanon.com/research/what-you-actually-bought-2026/

**BibTeX**
```bibtex
@misc{rapcanon-research-what-you-actually-bought-2026,
  title  = {What you actually bought: nine beat and sample licences, read from the terms},
  author = {{RapCanon}},
  year   = {2026},
  url    = {https://rapcanon.com/research/what-you-actually-bought-2026/},
  note   = {Accessed: 2026-08-14}
}
```

**Wikipedia**
```
{{cite web |title=What you actually bought: nine beat and sample licences, read from the terms |url=https://rapcanon.com/research/what-you-actually-bought-2026/ |publisher=RapCanon |access-date=2026-08-14}}
```

Licensed CC-BY 4.0. Reuse it, including commercially, with attribution and a link back.
Canonical HTML: https://rapcanon.com/research/what-you-actually-bought-2026/