Licensing Basics
Your License Certificate: What It Is, When You'll Need It
By the Starchild Music team · September 12, 2026 · 4 min read
The short answer
A license certificate is the one-page document proving your song rights: the song, its writers and publishers, you as licensee, the package, the term, and a verification code. On Starchild every purchase generates one, downloadable anytime from your Library, always current with the latest credits.
Sooner or later, someone official asks the question: "do you have the rights to this song?" A distributor running a claim check, a label doing diligence, a platform processing a dispute, a sync supervisor's clearance sheet. The right answer is a document, and every Starchild license comes with one.
What's on it
One page: the song and its catalog, the songwriters and publishers with their registrations, you as the licensee — name, account, and your artist name if you've set one in your profile — the license package, its term (perpetual non-exclusive, or the exact exclusive window), the license date, the order reference, and a verification code pair unique to the document.
It regenerates fresh from the live record each time you download it, which has a quiet superpower: if a writer later corrects their credits or adds a publisher, your certificate reflects it on your next download. Your paperwork can't drift out of date.
Where to get it
Library → your licensed song → License → Download certificate. It's a PDF; keep one with your release assets and send it whenever asked. Licenses that migrated to Starchild from our previous platform generate certificates too — the document notes the license was carried over.
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