Licensing Basics
How Much Does It Cost to License a Song?
By the Starchild Music team · September 4, 2026 · 5 min read
The short answer
On Starchild Music, licensing an original song costs $30–$60 for standard licenses (recording and release rights), $60–$150 for exclusive terms of 3–12 months, $99 for a royalty-free buyout where offered, and $295–$895 for full stems packages. Licensing a famous charting hit is a different market that costs orders of magnitude more.
Ask a music lawyer what it costs to license a song and the honest answer is "it depends, call me." Ask a marketplace and you get a price list. Here's ours — every number below is live on the site right now.
The tiers
- Song License — $30. Record and release your own version.
- Song + AI Personalization — $40. The song, plus a production tailored toward your style.
- Song + Instrumental — $50. Adds the full instrumental mix for performances and sessions.
- Personalized Productions — $60. The song rendered in your chosen production style, optionally shaped around your voice.
- Stems Package — priced per song by the catalog owner (typically $295–$895). Every element separated for full production control.
- Exclusive License — from $60 for 3 months, $100 for 6, $150 for 12. The song leaves the open marketplace while your term runs.
- Royalty-Free buyout — $99 where the writer offers it, on top of a base license: perpetual use with no ongoing royalty considerations.
Why the numbers can be this low
Traditional licensing prices in lawyers, intermediaries, and rights-chasing across labels and publishers. A marketplace with unified rights prices those out: each song here arrives with its rights consolidated by the catalog partner who listed it, so a license is a checkout, not a negotiation. The songwriter still gets paid on every sale — the margin that disappeared was the friction, not the artist's share.
One honest caveat: these prices are for Starchild's catalog of original, mostly unreleased songs. Licensing a charting hit for a commercial is a different market with different zeros. If that's what you need, budget accordingly — and if what you actually need is a great song nobody else has, start here.