How To Turn Off Commercial Sounds on TikTok if You Are Using Your Personal Account

Part of the fun of making a TikTok video and adding sound is putting a fun trending audio or top 40 song. This also helps with visibility so other users are more likely to see it and, by extension, see your account. So when some users realized their only available audio included commercial sounds, they were pretty put off.

But how do you turn off commercial sounds on TikTok? Commercial sounds, for reference, are sounds or songs that are royalty-free and won't get your account taken down if you use them. The only thing is, most accounts that use commercial sounds are business accounts.

Now, some users with personal accounts have reported being restricted to commercial sounds only.

Apparently, it's all about the type of account you use and what sort of content you are making. Even if you are on a personal account, if you post a video with an ad or content about selling products, TikTok might perceive the video as part of a business account and restrict the kinds of sounds you can add to it.

According to one TikTok, the most important thing you can to try and avoid this issue is make sure you are on a personal account. Another user reported that, unexpectedly, her account was switched to a business account. She had to go into her privacy and settings to change it back and, after some time, other sounds and songs were made available to her.

For another user who was met with the limited amount of sounds for his own video on the app, he shows a pop-up he got that asks him to confirm the "Music Usage Confirmation." But, it seems, as long as users switch to personal accounts and don't use those accounts to promote, well, anything, they will be able to use other sounds and songs besides the commercial ones.

And, for what it's worth, the commercial sounds issue on TikTok may be a temporary problem, at least for some creators. Users on Reddit reported the issue with the commercial sound and music usage on their personal accounts.

But, one Redditor noted on the post, "Yes there seems to be an app-wide bug affecting users."

TikTok Support explains online in its category about commercial music on TikTok that users have to use legally cleared music for their promotional videos.

The Support page says, "When you post content that promotes a brand, product, or service, we recommend that you only use music from our Commercial Music Library (CML), as it's pre-cleared for commercial use."

TikTok users who have a TikTok Shop or use their content to sell products are not legally permitted to use copyrighted music. That's what the commercial sounds are for. So if other users are getting restricted, they might need to take a closer look at their settings and their content.