Licensing
A price list, not a negotiation
Sync, editorial, commercial and venue licences, each with a price you set, a term and a territory. A licensee buys one the way they buy anything else, and the licence document is in their inbox the minute the payment clears.
Why it stalls
Most licences die waiting for somebody to name a number
An editor finds the right track on a Thursday with a Friday deadline. They write to an address on a website. Nobody answers, or somebody answers on Monday asking what the budget is, and by then the cut has a different track in it.
A stated price ends that. The licensee reads it, decides, pays and has the licence in writing. You did not have to be at your desk for any of it.
The four kinds
What a licence covers, before anybody asks
Sync
Picture use — a film, a series, a game, an advert. Write in your terms how far it goes, and price it for the use you would say yes to.
Editorial
Press, publishing, a podcast, a documentary, a museum wall. Cheap, fast, and the one most often bought at four in the afternoon.
Commercial
A brand's own channels, a product, packaging, a shopfront. The territory and the term are stated on the page beside the price.
Venue and performance
A bar, a gallery, a festival, a class. A price for playing the work in a room — give it a twelve-month term and it is an annual one.
How a licence is bought
Four minutes, no email
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They pick the licence
Each kind of use on the release page has one price, one territory, one term and your terms beside it. The whole record or one track, and whose name goes on it. -
They pay
At the counter, through Stripe, with no account to make. Our 8% and Stripe's fee come off; the rest is paid out to you. -
The licence is issued
A numbered licence naming the work, you as the rights-holder, the licensee, the use, the territory, the term and the price, with your terms under it — emailed as a PDF the moment the payment clears.
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It stays as it was sold
Change the price or the terms tomorrow and every licence already issued still reads exactly as it did when it was bought. Refund one, and it is revoked.
When it needs a person
Some licences should be a conversation, and those still can be
Only the uses you put a price on are for sale. A national campaign, an exclusive, anything with a term you would want to think about — leave it off the price list, and it is not for sale here. A licensee who wants one writes to hello@phyrne.app, and we pass the note to you with their address, for the two of you to settle directly.
And a price can come down again. Take a licence off the page and nobody new can buy it; the ones already sold stand as they were written.
I license from Phyrne because the price is on the page and the person who owns the track is the person taking the money. That is two emails I do not have to send and one clearance I do not have to explain.
Questions about licensing
Who is the licence between?
What if I do not own all of it?
Can I set different prices for different countries?
Does a licence expire?
Put a price on the uses you would say yes to
The ones you would rather discuss stay off the list and stay a conversation. The rest can happen without you.