How to Access TikTok Commercial Music Library

Using the right sound on TikTok can be the difference between a video that lands with a thud and one that goes viral. For brand accounts, navigating music copyright can feel like tiptoeing through a minefield. The good news is that you don’t have to risk your account by using popular but unlicensed music. This guide will walk you through exactly how to access and use TikTok’s Commercial Music Library to find great, brand-safe audio that still resonates with your audience.

What’s the Difference? General Music Library vs. Commercial Music Library

First, let's clear up a common point of confusion. Why can some TikTok accounts use chart-topping hits from Doja Cat or Taylor Swift while others can't? It all comes down to licensing agreements and account type. TikTok has two distinct audio libraries.

• The General Music Library (For Personal/Creator Accounts): This is the massive library most people are familiar with. It includes millions of popular, copyrighted songs from major artists and labels. TikTok pays licensing fees for these tracks so individual users can include them in their videos for personal, non-commercial entertainment. That last part is the key.
• The Commercial Music Library (For Business Accounts): This library contains over 1 million songs and sounds that are pre-cleared for commercial use. This means the artists and rights holders have explicitly agreed to let brands and organizations use their audio for marketing, advertising, promotions, and anything else business-related. The tracks are completely royalty-free for your brand to use on the platform.

Using a popular radio hit to promote your product without a license is a copyright violation. The artist and label haven’t given you permission to associate their art with your brand. To protect brands from legal trouble and itself from licensing nightmares, TikTok automatically restricts Business Accounts to the Commercial Music Library (CML). This prevents you from accidentally - or intentionally - using a sound you don’t have the rights to.

First Things First: Are You Using a TikTok Business Account?

Before you go searching for the library, it’s worth double-checking what kind of account you're running. If you're managing social media for a company, you’re almost certainly (or should be) on a Business Account to access e-commerce features, powerful analytics, and the ad manager. Here’s how to confirm in just a few seconds:

1. Navigate to your profile page in the TikTok app.
2. Tap the three horizontal lines (the "hamburger" menu) in the top-right corner.
3. Select "Settings and privacy."
4. Tap on "Account."

At the top of the next screen, you'll see one of two options. If it says "Switch to Personal Account," congratulations, you are currently using a Business Account. If it says "Switch to Business Account," you're on a Personal or Creator account. While this gives you access to the General Music Library, it might limit your access to crucial business analytics and paid advertising tools.

How to Access the TikTok Commercial Music Library (Step-by-Step)

The best news is that if you already have a Business Account, you’re likely already using the Commercial Music Library without even realizing it. Accessing it is seamlessly integrated into the video creation process.

Inside the TikTok App

Finding brand-safe audio is woven directly into your normal workflow. You don't need to enable a special setting, TikTok does the work for you.

1. Start creating a video: Tap the "+" icon at the bottom of the screen to open the camera.
2. Record or upload your clips: Film your new video or select footage from your camera roll.
3. Head to the audio section: Look for the "Add sound" button at the top of the editing screen and tap it.
4. You're in! The library of sounds you're browsing is the Commercial Music Library. TikTok automatically gates Business Accounts to this library to keep you compliant.

Once you’re in, you can start looking for the perfect track. Use the search bar for specific queries, scroll through TikTok's "Recommended" tracks, or check out the curated playlists, which are often grouped by theme, mood, or genre.

On Your Desktop Through the Creative Center

One of the most underutilized resources for brands is the desktop version of the audio library inside TikTok’s Creative Center. It offers a more robust way to find and vet your audio before sending it to a video editor or making plans in your content calendar.

1. Visit the TikTok Ads Creative Center on your desktop browser.
2. Click on "Audio Library" from the top navigation menu.
3. Select "All Music" to see Playlist View or "Top Songs" to toggle over to a chart-based view.

The Creative Center dashboard is fantastic for planning. Its powerful filtering tools let you search and discover audio by:

• Keyword: Enter anything from "inspiring corporate" to "funny background."
• Theme: Categories like Fashion &, Beauty, Gaming, Food, Travel, etc.
• Genre: Rock, Latin, Pop, R&,B &, Soul, Electronic, and more.
• Mood: Uplifting, Peaceful, Exciting, Quirky, etc.
• Duration: Find sounds that match your intended video length.
• Region: Check which songs are trending in a particular country to better tailor your content to a local audience.

This approach helps you to be much more intentional with your audio choices instead of just grabbing whatever is recommended on a given day.

The Secret to Finding Great Tracks in the Commercial Library

A frequent complaint from brand marketers is that the Commercial Music Library is "boring" compared to the chart-topping hits available to personal accounts. While you won't find the latest Drake single, the CML is far from a musical desert. The challenge isn't a lack of good music, it's learning how to find it. Here are some strategies to uncover hidden gems.

Mine the Curated Playlists

Don’t ignore the playlists TikTok curates for you. They put them there for a reason! Look for playlist names like "TikTok Viral Business," "Trending: Business," or even themes related to upcoming holidays or seasons like "Spooky Season." These playlists are essentially TikTok telling you, "Hey, these are the commercial sounds other brands are using successfully right now." They’re a fantastic starting point when you feel stuck.

Think Like a Search Engine

The search bar is your best friend. Instead of thinking strictly in genres, search for the feeling or vibe you want your video to convey. A real estate agent showing a luxury property might search for "elegant," "sleek," or "calm." A fitness brand demoing a high-intensity workout could search for "epic," "high energy," or "powerful." The more descriptive you are, the better your results will be.

Create Your Own Soundtrack

While chasing trends is part of the game on TikTok, building a consistent brand is even more important. After a while, you may notice that certain types of audio perform best for your audience or simply fit your brand's voice. Don't be afraid to create a shortlist of go-to sounds. When you find one you love, tap the bookmark icon to save it to your Favorites. A SaaS company might consistently use upbeat, inspiring electronic music, while a handmade craft store might lean on folksy, acoustic tracks. This consistency can help build brand recall through audio.

Use a Track's Data to Your Advantage

The desktop Creative Center also gives a helpful overview for select songs. You can see a chart illustrating a song's popularity over the last 30 days and discover basic audience demographics linked to specific sounds (age, relevant interests, etc.). That’s powerful information when it comes to refining a sound’s relevance among your potential audience. You can even click an icon to use a clip in your video project as a templated CapCut video.

The Tempting Workaround (and Why It's a Bad Idea)

Savvy marketers might think, "What if I just switch to a Personal Account, find the viral song I want, post the video, and then immediately switch back to a Business Account?" It seems like a clever way to bypass the system, but it comes with serious risks that can damage your account's health and reach.

Why You Should Avoid It:

1. Your Audio Will Get Muted: TikTok's algorithms are incredibly advanced at detecting commercial use. It can identify sponsored content, product placements, and brand messaging even if you don't use a hashtag like #ad. When it detects a business-style video using a non-commercial sound, it will often mute the audio or remove the video entirely, sometimes days or weeks after it's posted. All that hard work is suddenly gone.
2. Your Account Could Be Flagged or Suspended: TikTok takes copyright issues seriously. A single violation might just get a slap on the wrist, but repeated offenses can lead to account strikes, temporary feature blocks, or in severe cases, a permanent ban.
3. You Lose Access to Business Tools: Even being temporarily switched to a Personal account means you temporarily lose crucial data and features. And there’s no guarantee those features will return immediately upon reverting back to Business Account status, depending on current TikTok guidelines.
4. It's a Direct Copyright Violation: Ultimately, using a song for promotion without permission is copyright infringement. While it's unlikely a major record label will come after a small business for a single TikTok video, the risk, however small, is not zero.

The potential for a short-lived viral moment is never worth the long-term risk to your account’s standing. Staying compliant by using the Commercial Music Library is the only sustainable strategy for a brand on TikTok.

Final Thoughts

Accessing the TikTok Commercial Music Library isn't a complex hack, for Business Accounts, it's the default experience. The key is to shift your mindset from chasing every trending pop song to strategically discovering the vast collection of brand-safe audio that can enhance your content, protect your account, and resonate with your target audience. Mastering the library's search and discovery features is an essential skill for any serious marketer on the platform.

Once you’ve found the perfect sound, keeping a steady stream of content on your calendar is the next challenge. At Postbase, we work to make that process less chaotic. We built our scheduling tools with a big focus on the short-form video that dominates social media today. This allows us to upload a video once, plan its caption and hashtags, and schedule it across TikTok, Reels, and YouTube Shorts from one clean, visual calendar. It helps remove the friction from the final planning and scheduling workflow so that we can focus our energy on our creative concepts.