Adding Licenses

There's two places you can add licenses, directly on the file, or in the token metadata.

Each comes with their own unique characteristics. One is involving a specific upload of a file, and the other is involving a collection of files, with rarities and token ids.

Where To Add

To add a license on your track, just upload a file at ar://listen, and when you're about to upload, look for the licenses button, and apply a license to your file.

To use licenses on your tokens, get a lawyer and figure it out! Someone's gotta figure it out, you can be one of the first! The idea is the same, you would put a link to a larger file in the "license" field of the song metadata which would go to a larger document with all the details of the license provided similar to the UDL tag. Except for your tokens you would have your own custom license, rather than a standardized one.

Licenses On Files

You can add a license to an Arweave upload with tags. This is applied directly to the file. The most common licenses to add are a Creative Commons license (CC) or a Universal Data License (UDL).

You can put licenses on audio or metadata files (which have files inside of them).

You can read the UDL document here. In short, a UDL is an allegedly upcoming feature of Arweave that is supposed to be programmable licenses. Encryption (with decentralized servers) is another tool that's needed to unlock more creative possibilities with your data.

Licenses On Tokens

You can put licenses on tokens separate from the individual files or metadata files that make up the token. When a token has many rarities you can put licenses on each rarity. This is where you can create sync license liquidity and other fun things.

Sync License Liquidity

Imagine if you put sync licenses on a particular rarity and then someone gets a bunch of them thinking they're going to be worth more in the future and then that person basically controls the liquidity for the sync licenses. Interesting ideas. Besides the utility of the license itself, having it tradeable as a token allows for additional utility.

Imagine a independent film that buys sync licenses, but then the film doesn't get made. The sync licenses for the music can be sold on secondary. This lowers the risk of buying a sync license if it's tokenized.

Multiple License Headache

A programmable license will be in the file itself, not the token. Each file in a piece of thicc metadata could have it's own license, as well as the metadata file itself, before ever thinking about a license on the token that is minted of the file. Confusing right?

With great power comes great responsibility.

Be responsible when combining licenses across files and metadata, it can quickly turn into a sticky situation.

You can learn more about data licensing here.