Music license

The short version

Every release on Probably Not Robots is free to share, remix, and use in your own projects — including monetized ones like YouTube videos, Twitch streams, and podcasts — as long as you credit the artist. You can’t resell our tracks or repackage them into a commercial product without talking to us first.

The long version is below.

1. The base license: CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

Unless a specific release page says otherwise, all music published by Probably Not Robots Records (“PNR,” “we,” “us”) is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (“CC BY-NC-SA 4.0”).

Under that license, you are free to:

• Share — copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format.
• Adapt — remix, transform, and build upon the material.

Subject to the following terms:

• Attribution — You must give appropriate credit (track title, artist name, and “Probably Not Robots Records”), provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made.
• NonCommercial — You may not use the material for commercial purposes, except as expressly permitted in Section 2 below.
• ShareAlike — If you remix, transform, or build upon the material, you must distribute your contributions under the same license as the original, including the additional permission in Section 2.

This page is a summary, not a substitute for the full license text, which controls if there’s a conflict.

2. Additional permission: monetized platforms

The standard “NonCommercial” term in CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 can be read very strictly — strictly enough to cover a video that happens to run ads. We don’t think that’s reasonable, so PNR grants the following additional permission, on top of the base license:

You may use our music in content uploaded to monetized creator platforms — including, for example, the YouTube Partner Program, Twitch (with ads or subscriptions enabled), monetized podcasts (with ad inserts or paid subscriptions), and similar services — even though that content may generate advertising or platform revenue for you, provided that:

• you give attribution as described in Section 1;
• the track itself is not the product being sold — i.e., you’re not selling the music as a standalone download, ringtone, sample pack, stock-music library entry, NFT, or similar; and
• your use otherwise complies with the rest of this license and the platform’s own terms.

This permission travels with the work under the ShareAlike term: if you publish a remix or derivative, you may pass along this same permission to people who use your version, alongside the CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.

3. What still requires our permission

The following uses are not covered by CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 or the additional permission above, and require a separate agreement with us:

• Reselling or sublicensing our tracks or stems as a standalone product — sample packs, stock-music libraries, ringtones, NFTs, etc.
• Including a track in a commercial product offered for sale — for example, a game, app, software package, or physical media sold to others — even if the track itself isn’t sold separately.
• Synchronization licensing for advertising, film, television, or similar commercial media.
• Any use that removes or alters the required attribution or the license itself.
• Any use the platform classifies as a paid sync or commercial license claim.

If any of this sounds like what you’re doing, that’s great — it means people want to pay for human-made music, which is the dream. Email sync@notrobots.fyi and a person will work out a license with you.

4. No warranty

The music is provided “as is,” without warranties of any kind, to the fullest extent permitted by law, as described in the CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 license. Probably Not Robots Records and its artists are not liable for how you use the material.

5. Questions

If you’re not sure whether your use is covered, ask us. Email sync@notrobots.fyi — a human reads these, and would rather say “yes, that’s fine” up front than sort it out later.