How to Credit CC BY Music in Your Videos

CC BY music is free to use in any video, for any purpose, including monetised YouTube content. The license asks for one thing in return: credit the creator. Get that credit wrong or skip it entirely, and you are technically unlicensed, even though the music felt free.

This is a practical guide to doing the attribution correctly, with the exact format and placement, using Kevin MacLeod as the example because he is the composer most creators encounter first.

What CC BY 4.0 Actually Requires

The Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license has four required elements in any credit:

The name of the creator
The title of the work
The source URL (where the work can be found)
The license name and a link to the license text

These four elements together constitute a valid attribution. Any one missing and the credit is technically incomplete.

The Standard Format

To skip formatting it by hand, the free CC BY attribution generator builds the credit for a YouTube description, a web page or on-screen text, and can fill in the details for any track in InkSlop's library.

The clearest way to write a CC BY credit is on three lines:

"[Track Title]" [Artist Name] ([source URL])
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

For Kevin MacLeod's "Sneaky Snitch," that looks like:

"Sneaky Snitch" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

The same structure works for any CC BY creator. Replace the title, name, and source URL with the relevant details from whatever track you used.

Where the Credit Goes

The credit needs to be findable. A viewer who wants to know where the music came from should not have to search for it, but they do not need to see it during playback.

YouTube: put the credit in the video description. Most creators add it after their main links, at the bottom. There is no required position within the description, just somewhere a viewer would look.

TikTok: put it in the caption or a pinned comment. Captions are short so a pinned comment is often the practical choice for multi-line credits.

Instagram Reels: in the caption.

In the video itself: if your format includes an end card or credits screen, the attribution can go there. This is optional unless the track-specific license or the creator requests it.

The credit does not need to be on screen while the music plays. It just needs to be there.

What Happens If You Skip It

The CC BY license is not a soft suggestion backed by community norms. It is a legal agreement between you and the copyright holder. The creator has granted you a licence conditional on providing attribution. Without the attribution, you are using the work without a valid licence.

In practice, the consequences range from nothing (most credits platforms do not check descriptions) to a Content ID claim (if the track is enrolled, which many CC BY tracks are not but some are) to a takedown in edge cases. The bigger practical issue is your legal position if someone ever challenges the use. "I included the attribution in the description" is a solid defence. "I did not know I needed to" is not.

Using Multiple CC BY Tracks

If your video uses three tracks from different CC BY artists, each one needs its own attribution block. Stack them in the description:

"Sneaky Snitch" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

"Digital Lemonade" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

"Groove Grove" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Each credit is independent. If one is missing, that track is unlicensed regardless of whether the others are credited correctly.

How InkSlop Handles This

InkSlop's library includes almost 900 Kevin MacLeod tracks and other CC BY music. When you use any library track in a video and publish to YouTube, InkSlop generates the correct attribution block automatically from the track's metadata.

The format matches the four required elements: title, artist name, source URL, license name, and license URL. If you use multiple library tracks, the description includes a separate block for each one. You can add your own description text above the attribution section, but the credits are pre-filled and correctly formatted by default.

For TikTok publishing, the same attribution text is available to copy from the description field into your caption or comment.

The attribution is generated from the track metadata in the library, so you do not need to remember the format or look up the license URL. It is there and correct every time.

If you want the broader context on how CC licensing works, the plain English CC BY 4.0 explainer covers the full license family. If you got a Content ID claim on CC BY music, the copyright strikes post covers what happened and how to dispute it.