AI is Changing the Workflow, Not the Standard
In rights and clearances, speed matters. But accuracy matters more.
For brands, platforms, and production teams, the demand for content has never been higher. Campaigns need music, apps need soundtracks, documentaries need archival footage, and social campaigns need talent, clips, images, and creative assets. And all of this needs to feel relevant, recognizable, and culturally aligned.
But every creative choice comes with a question: can we use this?
Behind every song, photo, video, logo, lyric, or piece of intellectual property is a complex web of ownership, permissions, restrictions, and risk. The work we do at Six Degrees Rights & Clearances requires careful research, experienced judgment, a deep understanding of how creative assets are used, and the right contacts.
Now, with the rise of artificial intelligence, we have to adapt to new complications.
AI is a hot topic across the board, but for media and content generation, we’re facing a fresh set of challenges. For many creatives, AI raises real concerns around ownership, authenticity, and artist rights. But it isn’t all bad.
In the rights and clearances process, AI can serve as a valuable tool. Not a specialist replacement. A lot of our work requires high-volume, high-context research, and AI is helping to make this more efficient. We’re making AI an assistant, not an authority.
What is Music Rights Clearance?
Before we dive in, let’s talk about music clearance. It’s often misunderstood as “getting permission to use a song.” But there’s much more to it than that.
A single track can have several rights holders, including the artist, songwriters, musicians, publishers, labels, and even estates. Each of these rights holders may need separate approvals, fees, and terms depending on where the music is used.
On top of general ownership, the use and context of the song also matter. Is it being tied to a specific brand or message? Is it being edited? Or even paired with visuals that could impact the meaning?
Our team does significant research to find attention-grabbing song choices, while also evaluating risk, navigating ownership, and ensuring everything is both legally and strategically aligned.
The Challenge: Too Much Music
The Six Degrees team was recently approached with a growing predicament in the media industry: there were just too many choices and too little time.
A client of ours was in need of a large music library fitting their latest app, but these songs have to fit with the overall feel and purpose of the app.
When it came down to this bulk music clearance, our research and clearance specialist, Lindsey Winger, needed an extra set of hands. It wasn’t just a matter of listening to songs and deciding which ones sounded good.
For this project, our client was targeting a specific audience across a different market, culture, and language from ours, meaning a lot of research, context, and confidence from Lindsey. While we had some music provided by music publishers and labels for easier licensing options, we still have to vet the songs for a range of creative, cultural, and performance metrics.
Each track needs to be reviewed through multiple lenses:
- Does it fit the intended use?
- Is the mood and energy right?
- How many beats per minute?
- Does it have cultural relevance?
- Is it popular or viral?
- Does it appeal to the desired audience?
- Are the lyrics appropriate in both language and cultural context?
- Can the song be easily cleared for use?
Music evaluation requires both quantitative research and subjective creative judgment. A song may be popular, but not appropriate. Lyrically, it could be safe, but too slow for the intended use. It could have gone viral, but now it feels irrelevant.
And when that evaluation isn’t done the right way, the consequences go beyond a creative mishap. They can also be legally and financially disastrous.
Each point offers one piece of the picture, but combined, they help us decide if a song is worth recommending. With so many factors, it’s easy to get bottlenecked.
For a client, sorting through all of that manually can take a lot of time. So for our clearance team, the challenge is finding a way to move faster without giving up the quality of work.
And AI is helping with that.
The Role of a Music Clearance Expert
Lindsey’s workflow starts with human research.
She gathers the songs, reviews the available information, considers the provided playlists, checks chart performance, captures social media data, and pulls together any additional details needed to evaluate.
Then she uses AI to help process and organize all that information.
For this project specifically, one of the most useful applications has been lyric review. Lindsey can use her evaluation tool to translate lyrics, discern potential concerns, explain cultural subtext, identify the best 30-50 seconds of a song, and assess whether the content is safe for a broad age range. The tool can help understand slang and lines that could change meaning depending on context.
This ability to dive deep matters because translation alone isn’t enough.
AI helps Lindsey move through the first layer of review more efficiently, meaning the client gets recommendations on a better timeline. But we know AI output is not the end-all, be-all.
“You don’t want to trust something you didn’t have tangible control over,” Lindsey reinforces.
AI might summarize whether a song is a good fit, but the process has to end in human review.
An AI-Driven Evaluation Process
1. Review the lyrics
AI helps translate lyrics, explain slang, identify cultural subtext, and flag whether content appears safe for all ages.
2. Organize data
The specialist provides screenshots, chart information, playlist data, social use, and other important insights.
3. Consider audience fit
AI helps interpret whether a song has strong, moderate, or limited appeal for the audience based on the provided data.
4. Summarize the recommendation
AI helps turn dense research into a clearer decision: recommended, not recommended, or conditional.
5. Human review
The specialist agrees, disagrees, edits, and verifies before anything goes to the client.
6. Refine the process
Using AI isn’t a clear-cut solution just yet. Our team is continuing to work with AI modules to refine our process to get the best outputs.
Why Human Judgment Still Matters in Rights & Clearances
When it comes to clearances, one of the most important parts of using AI is knowing when not to trust it blindly. The consequences can be serious, affecting licensing, timelines, client budgets, brand safety, and legal risk.
AI is valuable for organizing information, identifying patterns, summarizing research, and making suggestions quickly based on the data provided.
But it can’t fully understand a client’s priorities, guarantee clearances, instinctively understand something that feels off, or take responsibility for the recommendation.
That all still belongs to our specialists.
The AI-assisted workflow isn’t about removing people from the process, but giving our team the tools they need to cull through large volumes of content while maintaining the reliability and expertise that makes Six Degrees so irreplaceable.
Why It Matters for Our Clients
The real value to our clients is that AI helps specialists move through complex research fast while still applying the judgment they can rely on.
With the appropriate use of AI as an assistant, we can offer clearer recommendations, stronger documentation, and better use of time and budget.
And while it’s not yet a perfect solution, our team is refining and learning with AI, rather than being left behind.
AI, Authenticity, and the Future of Clearance
As AI-generated content becomes more common, questions around ownership, legitimacy, and permission will only become more complicated.
While that’s part of a much larger conversation, AI is already changing how creative teams work. But in rights and clearances, the standard can’t be speed alone.
Six Degrees does its work rooted in authenticity. Brands, agencies, and entertainment teams come to us because they know authenticity can’t be manufactured.
When a client comes to us looking for music, or any other media for that matter, it’s because that content carries a weight that can’t be defined by an algorithm. And that makes clearance expertise more important than ever.
As the line between generated and authentic content becomes more and more blurred, brands will need partners who help them understand what they’re using, where it comes from, who owns it, what permissions are required, and what risks may be attached.
The number one question for rights & clearances remains: “can we use this?”
And Six Degrees is here to answer it.
Do You Need Help Navigating Music Clearance for an Upcoming Project?
From research and vetting to full rights clearance, Six Degrees can get you the right content and the right to use it with clarity and confidence.
If you or your team are looking for clearance solutions, we’d love to learn how Six Degrees can help you.
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