SoundFX · Legal
Commercial rights for audio generated with SoundFX
Audio you generate with SoundFX is meant to be shipped in work you sell. You own the output, you owe no royalties on it, and you are not required to credit anyone. This page sets out where those rights come from, what they mean for the kind of work you actually do, and the short list of things they do not cover.
Effective
Where these rights come from
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The person who generates the audio owns it
SoundFX produces audio by calling ElevenLabs’ sound-effects API. Their terms allocate rights in generated output to the account that generated it rather than to the model provider. Read it precisely: the allocation is between those two parties, and the account here is SoundFX’s — which is exactly why step 4 matters.
ElevenLabs Terms of Service (non-EEA) § 4(c)(ii) — “Except as expressly set forth herein, as between you and ElevenLabs, you retain all rights in and to your Output.”
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ElevenLabs draws its line between free and paid accounts
ElevenLabs draws its main line between free and paid accounts: free accounts may use the service for non-commercial purposes only, while paid accounts may use it commercially. The rest of this chain assumes SoundFX generates under a paid plan. That assumption is currently unverified and pending: as of 31 August 2026 the SoundFX account was on the free tier and no paid plan had been purchased. Until that changes, read the commercial statements below as our intended position rather than an established one.
ElevenLabs Terms of Service (non-EEA) § 1(c) — Use Restrictions, free vs. paid
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Whether the free-tier conditions reach you depends on SoundFX’s plan
You generate through SoundFX, not through an ElevenLabs account of your own — you do not need one, and you are not a party to their consumer terms. The conditions people associate with their free tier, namely non-commercial use only and a requirement to put “elevenlabs.io” or “11.ai” in the title of anything you publish, are conditions attached to an ElevenLabs account rather than to you personally. Whether they reach audio generated here therefore depends on the plan SoundFX itself holds, which is unverified and pending — see the previous step. For paid use, their public guidance does not decide the attribution half at all; it defers to the subscriber’s own agreement, and the subscriber is SoundFX rather than you. See the FAQ below for what that means in practice.
ElevenLabs help centre — “Can I publish the content I generate on the platform?” (free-tier conditions; paid plans include a commercial licence)
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So your rights come from SoundFX
What you may do with a clip is set by your agreement with SoundFX rather than by anyone else’s consumer pricing page. That is the whole purpose of this document: to state what we pass on to you, so that shipping your work does not require you to reason about a third party’s terms. Everything below that carries no source is our own position.
What you get
These are the rights we intend a clip to carry. The first item is sourced upstream; the rest are terms SoundFX sets for itself. Where something is still an open business decision, it says so rather than guessing.
You own the output
Upstream, rights in generated output are allocated to the account that generated it rather than to the model provider. SoundFX holds that account and passes ownership through to you: we do not claim ownership of the clips you make.
ElevenLabs Terms of Service (non-EEA) § 4(c)(ii) — the upstream allocation only
Royalty-free, however well the work does
SoundFX charges no per-play, per-copy, per-seat or per-view royalty. Once a clip exists, using it costs nothing further — a hundred downloads and a hundred million downloads carry the same fee, which is none.
Worldwide, with no territory carve-outs
SoundFX places no territorial limit on where you may use a clip. You do not need a separate licence to release in another market, and there is no region where the audio becomes unusable.
Your rights do not expire when your subscription does Pending
SoundFX does not claw back or terminate your rights to clips you have already generated if you stop paying. Work you have already shipped stays shipped. This is our own undertaking rather than an upstream term — the published terms are silent on what happens to output rights after a subscription ends — and it is written against a subscription structure that is not finalised.
No credit required Pending
SoundFX requires no attribution: you need not credit SoundFX, ElevenLabs or anyone else, anywhere in your work, its credits or its description. The credit line people ask about is a condition of an ElevenLabs free-tier account; which tier SoundFX generates under is unverified and pending — see the rights chain above and the FAQ below. Credit is welcome. It is not a condition.
No reporting and no usage accounting
SoundFX does not ask you to register your projects, declare where clips were used, file usage reports, or account for units sold. Generate, download, ship.
Which SoundFX plans carry these rights is still being decided Pending
The rights above describe what a clip is meant to carry. Which SoundFX plans convey them — and whether there will be a free tier, and what it would permit — has not been settled. Rather than publish an answer we would have to change, we are leaving it open here. When it is fixed, this page is where it will be stated.
What you cannot do
These are limits SoundFX sets, plus the ordinary legal ones. They are narrow, and most of them exist to stop the service being used to rebuild the service.
Do not resell the audio as a sound library
Ship generated audio inside your game, video, podcast, app or client deliverable — that is what it is for. What you cannot do is repackage the clips as the product itself: a sample pack, a stock-audio catalogue, a sound-effects library sold or given away as raw assets, competing with the service that produced them. The test is whether the sounds are an ingredient in your work or the thing being distributed.
Do not use the output to build a competing model or service
Generated audio may not be used as training data for, or otherwise to develop, a competing AI audio model, generator or service.
Your audio is not exclusive to you
Nothing here is an exclusive licence, and nothing stops another user entering a similar prompt and generating a similar sound. You own your clip; you do not own the space it occupies. If a project genuinely requires provably exclusive audio, generated audio — from any provider — is the wrong tool for it, and it is better to know that now.
Nothing unlawful, and nothing passed off as a real recording
The ordinary limits apply: the audio may not be used for unlawful purposes, and it may not be used to impersonate a real person or organisation or presented as a genuine recording of a real event when it is not. This one is not ours to waive — upstream, the commercial permission is granted subject to compliance with ElevenLabs’ Prohibited Use Policy, which binds paid and free use alike.
ElevenLabs Terms of Service (non-EEA) § 1(c) — “in either case, your access and use of the Services and any Output must still comply with the Prohibited Use Policy”
Everything else in your project still needs its own clearance
This page covers the audio SoundFX generates for you, and nothing else. Music, footage, trademarks, voice recordings and other material you did not generate here still need their own rights. Generated audio clears the generated audio; it does not launder the rest of the project.
What this means for your work
Game developers Pending
Can I ship these sounds in a game I sell?
Shipping generated audio inside a commercial game is the case this product is built around: any storefront, no cap on units sold, no per-copy fee. Baking clips into your build counts as use, not redistribution — the redistribution limit is about selling raw sounds as assets, not about the game they are part of.
Covered
- Paid and free-to-play titles on Steam, itch.io, console storefronts and mobile stores
- Unlimited units and unlimited revenue — no per-copy, per-seat or per-install fee
- Paid DLC, expansions, remasters and ports of the same title
- Trailers, store pages, demos and marketing for the game
- Jam entries and prototypes you later turn into a commercial release
Not covered
- Publishing the raw sound files as a downloadable asset pack or sample library
- Handing the raw files to other developers as a shared resource, in or out of a marketplace
- Telling players or a publisher that the sounds are exclusive to your title
Podcasters Pending
Can I use these in a show that makes money?
Stings, beds, transitions and effects are meant to go into episodes carrying advertising, sponsorship or a paid subscription tier. There is no royalty and no credit requirement, so nothing has to change in your show notes or your ad read.
Covered
- Ad-supported, sponsored and subscription episodes
- Simultaneous distribution across every podcast platform
- A back catalogue that stays published indefinitely
- Show branding — intros, outros, idents, promos and trailers
- Live shows and video versions of the same programme
Not covered
- Releasing the sounds themselves as a downloadable pack for your listeners
- Claiming a sonic identity that nobody else is permitted to generate
Video editors and creators Pending
Can I monetise a video that uses these, and can I hand them to a client?
Both are intended to work: generated audio in monetised video and paid advertising, and in work you deliver to a client as part of a finished edit. Because the audio is not registered with any rights-management database, there is no rightsholder record for an automated content-matching system to match it against.
Covered
- Monetised video on YouTube, TikTok, Instagram and anywhere else
- Paid advertising, branded content and sponsored segments
- Client work delivered as a finished edit
- Broadcast, cinema and streaming placements
- Reuse across as many projects as you like — a clip is not single-use
Not covered
- Delivering the raw sound files to a client as a standalone library for their future use
- Registering the audio with a content-matching system as though you held an exclusive recording
Agencies and client work Pending
Who holds the rights when I make this for someone else?
You can use generated audio in work you are paid to produce, and deliver it to the client inside that work. The limit is the ordinary one: you cannot transfer more than you hold. The client receives audio subject to the same terms described here, including the absence of exclusivity — so if a client contract promises them exclusive or fully assigned audio, generated audio will not satisfy that clause. Worth catching at contract stage rather than at delivery.
Covered
- Audio inside campaigns, edits, apps and games produced for a client
- Delivering the finished work with the audio embedded in it
- Keeping the clip and reusing it on other clients’ projects
- Billing your client for the work with no licence fee flowing back to SoundFX
Not covered
- Promising a client exclusivity, or a full assignment of the audio
- Delivering the raw files as a standalone library the client may redistribute
- Sub-licensing the SoundFX service itself to a client
Practical questions
- Will YouTube Content ID or a similar system claim my upload?
It should not, and the reason is mechanical rather than a promise. Automated content-matching systems compare an upload against a database of recordings that rightsholders have registered. Audio generated for you is not in any such database, so there is no reference for a match to attach to. What nobody can prevent is a third party wrongly registering generated audio as their own. If you are ever claimed, the platform’s dispute process is the route; the address below reaches us if you want help framing a response. Be aware of what we cannot offer: SoundFX keeps no per-user generation history, so we cannot certify after the fact that a particular clip came from here. Keep your own project files if provenance is likely to matter.
- If I stop paying, do I lose the rights to audio I already generated? Pending
Our intention is that you do not: what lapsing costs you is the ability to generate new audio, not the licence to what you already have, and not the work you have already shipped. Stated plainly, this is SoundFX’s own undertaking — the published upstream terms say nothing either way about output rights surviving cancellation — and the subscription structure it refers to is still being settled.
- Do I have to credit SoundFX or ElevenLabs?
No — SoundFX asks no credit of you. It is worth being precise about why, because the published answer is narrower than it is usually reported. The “elevenlabs.io” (or “11.ai”) credit line people cite is a condition of an ElevenLabs free-tier account. Which tier SoundFX generates under is unverified and pending — see the rights chain above. For paid use their public guidance sets no attribution rule at all — it defers the question to the subscriber’s own agreement. That subscriber is SoundFX, not you. So whatever obligation exists sits with us, and we pass none of it on.
- Can I edit, layer and process the audio?
Yes. Trim it, pitch it, reverse it, layer it, run it through your own effects, use it as one element inside a larger sound design. What you make from a clip is yours on the same terms as the clip itself.
- Do I have to disclose that the audio is AI-generated?
SoundFX does not require it. Some platforms, storefronts and broadcasters do. That obligation comes from where you publish rather than from this licence, so check the rules of the platform you are shipping to.
- Who do I ask if this page does not answer my question?
Write to legal@soundfx.app, or call 216-505-1050 — the full contact details are at the foot of this page. Ask before you ship rather than after: a rights question is far easier to answer in advance than to unwind once the work is out.
- Which SoundFX plan do I need for commercial rights? Pending
Not settled yet. Plan structure, and which tiers carry commercial rights, are still being decided. We would rather leave the question visibly open than answer it now and change the answer later. This page is where it will be stated once it is fixed.
Questions about rights
If your situation is not covered here — an unusual distribution model, a client contract with a clause you are unsure about, a platform or publisher asking for a licence document — ask before you ship rather than after. Rights questions are far easier to answer in advance, and a plain description of what you are trying to do is enough to start.
- Email legal@soundfx.app
- Phone 216-505-1050
- Located in Ohio, United States