What Is a Music Cue Sheet? A Producer’s Guide
A cue sheet is the document that reports every piece of music in a production — title, composer, publisher, duration and how it was used. The production company files it, not the composer. It costs nothing, takes about twenty minutes, and without it nobody gets paid.
Almost everything written about cue sheets is written for composers, telling them to chase one. This is the other side of that conversation: you are the producer, it is your deliverable, and it is genuinely straightforward once you know what the fields mean.
What is a cue sheet?
A cue sheet is a standardised report of the music in an audiovisual production. One line per piece of music, in the order it appears, with the information a collecting society needs to match a broadcast to a composition and pay the right people.
Societies cannot detect music in a broadcast. They rely on being told. Without the cue sheet the performance is simply unidentified, and unidentified performances are unpaid ones.
Is the licence not enough?
No, and this is the point most often missed. A licence and a cue sheet are different documents doing different jobs at different times.
Put simply: the licence authorises the use, the cue sheet reports it. Hold only the licence and the composer goes unpaid. File only the cue sheet and the use was never authorised. Productions need both, and having one does not excuse the absence of the other.
Who has to file it?
The production company. Not the composer, not the library, not the broadcaster. In practice it is usually the production manager or post supervisor, because they are the ones holding the locked edit and the timings.
Most broadcasters treat it as a delivery item alongside the master and the subtitle file. If it is missing, delivery can simply be refused — which turns an administrative task into a schedule problem.
What information goes on it?
Two things trip people up. The music title must be the registered title, not
your file name — final_mix_v3.wav matches nothing. And the
duration is the music actually used, not the length of the track you licensed.
If you used 34 seconds of a three-minute cue, the sheet says 34 seconds.
What to enter, by type of music
| Type of music | What to credit |
|---|---|
| Library / production music | Composers and publishers exactly as supplied by the library. Do not retype from memory — ask for the data. |
| Commercial recordings | Songwriters, publishers and label. Add ISWC for the composition and ISRC for the recording where you have them. |
| Commissioned score | The composer and publisher who created the work for this production. |
| Public domain | Still list it, marked as public domain. If it was arranged for you, credit the arranger — some societies recognise arrangement royalties. |
What are the use type codes?
Every cue needs a code describing how the music appeared. These look like trivia. They are not: societies weight them very differently when distributing.
A theme entered as background instrumental can cut the composer's payout by an order of magnitude. This is the single most common cue sheet error, and it is almost always careless rather than deliberate — the person filling in the form picks the first code in the dropdown.
When does it have to be filed?
ASCAP asks for television cue sheets as soon as possible and ideally within three months of the original broadcast. For a theatrically released feature, the sheet should be on file before the first foreign theatrical performance, so that overseas societies can process it. Other societies differ in the detail but not in the principle: file it at delivery and it is done.
Miss the window and it is recoverable, but slowly. ASCAP will accept retroactive performance claims back through the last completed survey year — the deadline is 31 January for composers and 31 December for publishers. Corrections after submission also delay payment, which is why getting it right at delivery is worth the twenty minutes.
One sheet per episode, or one per series?
One per episode. Societies track performance royalties by individual broadcast event, so a single sheet covering a whole series cannot be matched to air dates and cannot be processed. Most broadcasters require episode-level sheets as a delivery item anyway.
The same logic applies to a campaign with several cuts: each version that airs as its own spot needs its own line, with its own duration.
The five errors that cost the most
- The wrong use type. Themes filed as background. The most expensive error on this list, and the easiest to avoid.
- File names instead of titles. A title that does not match the registration matches nothing at the society.
- Track length instead of cue length. Inflates or deflates the entry and invites a query that delays the whole sheet.
- Missing publisher or share. Without a share split the society cannot divide the payment and holds it.
- Filing one sheet for a whole series. Cannot be matched to air dates; usually rejected outright.
Frequently asked questions
What is a music cue sheet?
A standardised report of every piece of music in an audiovisual production, listing title, composer, publisher, duration and use type. Collecting societies use it to match broadcasts to compositions and pay performance royalties.
Who is responsible for filing the cue sheet?
The production company, usually the production manager or post supervisor. Not the composer and not the music library — although a good library will supply the data you need for it.
Does a cue sheet cost anything?
No. Cue sheets are free to create and free to file. The broadcaster already holds a blanket licence with the society; the sheet only tells the society how to divide money that has already been collected.
Do I still need a cue sheet if the music is royalty free?
For broadcast, yes — unless the composers are genuinely not registered with any collecting society. Royalty free describes how you pay the library, not whether performance royalties exist. If the composer is a society member, the broadcast generates royalties that need a cue sheet to be distributed.
What happens if the cue sheet is missing or late?
The performance goes unidentified and the composer is not paid. For the production, the more immediate consequence is that broadcasters commonly treat the cue sheet as a delivery item and can refuse delivery without it. Late filings can be claimed retroactively within the society's deadlines, but the process is slow.
Do I need a separate cue sheet for each episode?
Yes. Societies track royalties by individual broadcast event, so one sheet for a whole series cannot be matched to air dates. Each episode or discrete production unit needs its own.
What do BI, BV, VV, MT and ET mean?
They are use type codes: background instrumental, background vocal, visual vocal, main title and end title. Visual means the music is performed on screen. Societies weight themes far above background use, so the code materially changes what is paid.
Can a cue sheet be corrected after submission?
Usually yes, but it is slow and it delays payment. Societies may require a corrected or replacement sheet, and rights holders often only spot the error when money fails to arrive. Accuracy at delivery is the only reliable safeguard.
Getting the data out of your music library
Everything above assumes you can get composer, society, IPI number and share for each cue. For a commercial recording that means asking the label and publisher. For library music it should take one click.
On our track pages the cue sheet data sits with the track: composer with society and IPI, publisher and share, ISRC, and the exact duration. You can open it while you are still choosing the music, not three weeks later when the post supervisor asks. That is the whole feature — it is not clever, it is just the information you will need, kept where you will need it.
Related reading
- Sync licensing explained — what a licence costs and what drives the fee
- One-stop music clearance — where the cue sheet data comes from
- AI music in commercials — why a named composer matters
Sources
- ASCAP guidance on cue sheet submission timing and retroactive performance claims
- BMI guidance on cue sheet contents for television and film
- Industry guidance on crediting library, commercial, commissioned and public domain music, and on correcting submitted sheets, 2025–2026
- Broadcaster delivery specifications treating the cue sheet as a required deliverable
Last reviewed 17 August 2026. Society deadlines and field names change; the structure of the document does not.
Cue sheet data, with the track
Composer, society, IPI, publisher, share, ISRC and duration sit on every track page — so the sheet takes minutes at delivery instead of an afternoon of emails.