Skip to content
Conform
Get Pro

How to make a music cue sheet

A music cue sheet is the official log of every piece of music in a production: title, composer, publisher, performing rights society, duration and usage of each cue, so the societies can pay royalties. List the cues from your final edit with their timings, add the rights details from the licences and composer agreements, and give it to the production company, which files it with the societies.

  • Menus from official docs
  • Checked 2026-11-12
Make the cue list from your edit

Step by step

How to make a music cue sheet

Any edit exported from Final Cut Pro, Premiere Pro, DaVinci Resolve or Avid Media Composer, or as an EDL. Field list as published by BMI.

List the cues from the edit

  1. 1Export the locked cut: File › Export XML… in Final Cut Pro, File › Export › Final Cut Pro XML in Premiere Pro, or an XML, EDL or AAF from your editor.
  2. 2Drop the file on Conform’s music cue sheet page.
  3. 3Tick the audio tracks that hold music. In a Final Cut Pro project, clips with the Music role are picked for you.
  4. 4Check the list: every cue with its number, title, timecode in and out and duration. Pieces of the same track cut back to back count as one cue.

Fill in what the edit does not know

  1. 1Production details: series or film title and AKA, episode title and number, air date, show duration and production company.
  2. 2For each cue: composer, publisher, performing rights society and each party’s share, from the licence, library agreement or composer contract.
  3. 3For each cue, the usage: background or visual, vocal or instrumental, main or end title.

Hand it over

  1. 1Send the finished sheet to the production company or the broadcaster’s music department. BMI says production companies submit cue sheets to it directly.
  2. 2Keep a copy, and redo the sheet if the cut changes after delivery.

When it goes wrong

Common problems and fixes

Sound effects or dialogue show up as music
Untick those audio tracks. In Final Cut Pro, give music clips the Music role before exporting and only they are listed.
One song appears as several cues
A track that comes back later in the programme is a separate cue each time it is used. Pieces cut back to back are already merged into one.

Make the cue list from your edit

Drop the timeline export and download the cue list with empty columns for composer, publisher, society, share and usage, plus a header sheet with the production title and total music. Free up to 40 clips, nothing uploaded.

Open it

Sources

Menu names and behaviour checked against these pages on 2026-11-12. Software updates rename menus; if a step no longer matches, write to conform@niamori.ai.

FAQ

Frequently asked questions

Something else, or a file that will not convert? Write to conform@niamori.ai.

What do the usage codes mean?

Common codes are BI (background instrumental), BV (background vocal), VI (visual instrumental (performed on screen)), VV (visual vocal (sung on screen)), MT (main title theme), ET (end title theme), L (logo). Check the form your society or broadcaster asks for, because a wrong code gets the sheet sent back.

What does a complete cue sheet include?

BMI lists: series or film title and AKA, episode title and AKA, episode number, air date, show duration, production company, and for each cue the title, composer, publisher, performing rights society, music duration and usage.

Can the composer and publisher come from the project?

No. An editing project knows clip names and timings, not who wrote or owns the music, so those columns are left for you to fill in from the licences.

Guides

More guides