Comprehensive Guide to Commercial Use and Licensing
Version 1.0.0 | Last update: 30 June 2025.
It seems that each artist has different view of commercial use (Thanks Jona12 for pointing this out) so I decided to clear things out at least under my terms.
Table of Content
What you get without commercial use
Commissioned work without commercial use falls under 'personal use' and is almost equivalent to fanart. If the artwork refers to a streamer, content creator, or similar, they may use it for thumbnails and schedule art.
In addition, you can do all of these as long as there is no commercial activity involved:
- Post and share the artwork somewhere else with credits.
- Modify the artwork so it fits your needs (e.g., customized wallpaper, profile picture, etc.)
- Use the artwork as part of your unmonetized creations (e.g., fan video, clip, meme, etc.)
- Print the artwork, as long as it's not for sale or marketing/advertising purposes (e.g., personal item, gift, etc.)
Basically, you will receive the artwork with permissions identical to those of CC BY-NC 4.0. You also have the privilege to grant any of these permissions to anyone.
What requires commercial use?
If the work is used directly in a setting that involves commercial activities, it requires a commercial use. For example:
- Works that are used as merchandise for sale.
- Works that are used for a monetized or sponsored medium (e.g., monetized channel arts, monetized websites, sponsored posts, promotional art, cover album, etc.)
- Works that are used to raise funds with rewards tied to the contributions (e.g., subathon-type of content, crowdfunding with incentives, etc.)
Things that I don't consider as commercial activities:
- Videos/streams that have monetization turned off, even if the channel is in partnership or eligible for monetization.
- Gifts and appreciation purposes. (Fans may send the commissioned work to their streamer to be displayed live on monetized streams.)
- Donations in their traditional sense—voluntarily given without the expectation of receiving something in return.
I need more than commercial use!
It is possible to request a specific license. We can discuss it. Someone has commissioned me to create a special mascot for free/open source software, which they needed to be licensed under public domain/CC0. It can be done.
I'm still uncertain if I need a commercial use
Just tell me your case.