Music cue sheet template

What this is about

Every second of music in a broadcast programme is reported, and the report is how rights holders are paid. That makes the cue sheet an administrative document with real consequences for other people's income, which is why broadcasters treat an incomplete one as a delivery failure rather than as an oversight. It is also the production's own record of what it is allowed to do: the row that names the licence and its territory is what answers a question two years later, when the film is reused in a market nobody had in mind. Build it while the mix is fresh, not from the timeline afterwards.

A template is the starting point, not the goal: once it has been filled in by hand twice, it is worth asking whether the document should come out of the plan instead.

What runs differently here

In planning terms, that means:

• One row per cue, not per track: the same piece used three times produces three rows with three in and out points
• Timecode in and out plus the duration to the second, taken from the delivered master rather than from an earlier cut
• Usage type per cue — background, featured, opening or end title — because the category affects how the use is weighted
• Composer, arranger and publisher with the collecting society where known, spelled as in the licence rather than as on the streaming service
• The rights basis with licence reference, territory and term, including the note when a piece is commissioned and owned by the production

Step by step

This order gets you there fastest:

1. Start the sheet with the first temp track, not after the mix, and keep it updated as pieces are replaced during the edit.
2. Export the music track list from the timeline after picture lock and reconcile it against the sheet cue by cue.
3. Read the in and out points off the delivered master so the timecodes match the file the broadcaster will actually air.
4. Record composer, publisher and society details from the licence document itself, since service metadata is frequently wrong or incomplete.
5. Classify each cue by usage type and check the classification against the picture rather than against memory of the mix.
6. Attach the licence references, territory and term, and flag any cue whose licence does not cover the intended use.
7. Deliver the cue sheet together with the master and archive a copy with the licences, so a later reuse question has one place to look.

Common pitfalls

What most often goes wrong in practice:

• Building the sheet from the edit timeline instead of the delivered master, so every timecode is off by the head black
• One row for a track used four times, which under-reports three of the four uses
• Composer details copied from a streaming service, where the arranger is missing and the publisher is a distributor
• A licence that covers online use only, discovered when the same film is scheduled for broadcast

With TillyGen

Where music is planned into a scene from the briefing, TillyGen keeps that intention attached to the scene, so the cue sheet at the end starts from a list of intended uses rather than from a search through the timeline.

Change one constraint and the consequences travel through the whole plan: affected shots are flagged, the call sheet is regenerated, and nobody keeps working from yesterday's version.