“Clearance” Means Three Different Things. This Is One of Them.
If you’ve spent any time around music licensing, you’ve heard the word “clearance” used for at least two completely different things. Before explaining what originality clearance is, it’s worth separating the lanes — because the confusion is real and it matters.
License clearance (also called sample clearance) is the process of obtaining permission to use someone else’s copyrighted material in your work. If you’re sampling a recording, interpolating a melody, or incorporating someone else’s composition, you need to clear the rights before you can release it. This is a licensing transaction. It assumes infringement would occur without permission, and it resolves that by getting permission.
Sync clearance is what music supervisors, advertising agencies, and film and TV productions do when they want to use an existing piece of music in a visual context. It involves obtaining the synchronization rights from the publisher and the master license from the label. Again: a licensing transaction. Someone else’s music, your project, you need the rights.
Originality clearance is neither of those things. It asks a different question entirely: is the music you wrote original enough to be released without risk of infringement claims from existing works? You wrote the song. You’re not sampling anything. You didn’t consciously take anything. But copyright infringement claims don’t require intent — and in an era when similarity lawsuits are common and automated detection tools are everywhere, the question of whether your original work is too close to something that came before is one worth answering before the release date.
What Originality Clearance Is
Originality clearance is a pre-release forensic musicology analysis that examines your composition against potential prior art and produces a written opinion on whether the work is sufficiently original to be released without material infringement risk.
It answers two related questions:
1. Is someone likely to make a claim? This is a practical assessment — whether the similarity, if any, is the kind a plaintiff would plead and an attorney would take.
2. Would such a claim have merit? This is the analytical question — whether the similarity involves protectable expression, or whether it falls in the space of unprotectable common musical elements (chord progressions, rhythmic patterns, genre conventions, prior art) that no song can own.
The analysis produces a written clearance opinion. If the work is clear, that document establishes that you conducted deliberate pre-release due diligence. If the work carries risk, you find out while you can still act on it.
Why Automated Similarity Tools Aren’t Enough
Automated music comparison tools have gotten considerably better at measuring similarity. They can identify shared melodic intervals, flagged harmonic patterns, and rhythmic overlap with increasing precision. What they cannot do is tell you whether any of that similarity is legally meaningful.
The problem isn’t measurement accuracy. The problem is that the legal question is fundamentally different from the measurement question.
Copyright infringement requires similarity in protectable expression. And whether expression is protectable depends on prior art — the universe of music that came before both songs. A melodic phrase that appears in a song from 1973 isn’t owned by whoever recorded it most recently. A chord progression that structures hundreds of songs in a genre isn’t owned by any of them. Two songs can score high on a similarity measurement and have no legally viable infringement claim between them, because the similarity is located in material neither party owns.
Automated tools perform pairwise comparison: they measure Song A against Song B. The relevant legal question requires prior art analysis: does Song B own any of the material it shares with Song A? That’s not a computational shortcut — it requires musical analysis and legal judgment that tools don’t provide and aren’t designed to provide.
There’s also this: as similarity tools improve at measurement, they make it easier to find and quantify overlap, not easier to evaluate it. Every improvement in detection technology produces more raw similarity data. None of it does the filtering. The gap between what tools can measure and what actually constitutes infringement is not closing — it’s widening. That gap is precisely where forensic analysis lives.
What the Written Opinion Does for You
A clearance opinion isn’t just a risk read. It has specific legal utility.
Under 17 U.S.C. § 504(c)(2), statutory damages for copyright infringement range from $750 to $30,000 per work. For willful infringement, that ceiling is $150,000 per work. Willfulness is a factual determination — and documented pre-release due diligence is directly relevant to it. A written clearance opinion, conducted by a qualified expert before release, is evidence that you did not proceed recklessly. It doesn’t eliminate liability if infringement is found, but it significantly narrows the damages exposure and undermines the willfulness argument.
There’s a separate utility in the opinion letter itself: for clients releasing into commercial contexts — advertising, sync, label distribution — the existence of a pre-release clearance analysis is increasingly something that downstream partners want to see. It documents that someone looked.
Who Needs Originality Clearance
Songwriters and producers releasing original music that resembles a specific existing work — particularly where the similarity is in melody or distinctive harmonic elements.
Composers for advertising, film, and television who are writing to a reference track. The closer the brief, the more useful the clearance opinion. “Sounds like” is a creative direction; it’s also a litigation description.
Publishers and labels vetting catalog additions or releases where a prior claim is possible.
Music supervisors seeking documentation that a track was evaluated before placement — particularly for high-value or long-running placements.
Attorneys evaluating a potential claim or defense in the early stages — before committing to litigation or settlement positions — who want an independent musicological assessment.
How It Works
You submit the work and identify the song or songs of concern. Analysis typically takes three to five business days, depending on complexity. The outcome is a written opinion that addresses the specific similarities identified, evaluates each against the relevant prior art, and concludes with a professional judgment on whether the work is clear.
Engagements begin at $500 for a single-work analysis against one or two comparators. More complex analyses — multiple comparators, catalog review, or opinion letters intended for use in litigation — are scoped individually.
To discuss a matter or ask a question — call, email, or schedule a preliminary call.
✆︎ Call: (212) 217-9512 ✉ Email: brianmcbrearty@gmail.com 📅 Schedule: Book a free preliminary call
→ What does a forensic musicologist do?
→ My song sounds like another song — is that a problem?