ListenHub FAQ: licensing, publishing and commercial use

Licensing questions almost always arrive as some version of the same one: am I actually allowed to do this with what I made? Publish it. Sell it. Put it on a client's channel. Run ads against it.

In most cases the answer is yes, and it's shorter than people expect. But the edges matter: voice cloning, watermarks, and the difference between selling your work and reselling the product. This post covers the questions that come up most.

One caveat before the answers: this is a plain-English summary, not the contract. The Terms of Use are the authoritative document, and where this post and the terms disagree, the terms win.

Who owns what you make

You do.

The terms split everything into Input (the prompts, text, audio, links and files you bring) and Output (the audio, images and video ListenHub generates from them). Subject to your compliance with the terms, ListenHub assigns you all rights and interests in the Output you generate.

That covers the episode, the narration, the explainer video, the images, the deck. You don't owe a royalty, you don't share revenue, and you don't need to come back for a separate license before you use it.

The flip side is responsibility. You warrant that you had the rights to the Input in the first place, and you're responsible for making sure the Output you publish complies with the law and doesn't infringe on anyone else. Feeding in a book you don't own the rights to doesn't launder it into something you do.

What ListenHub keeps

Two things, and they're narrower than the ownership question makes them sound.

First, a license to your Content to operate, improve and promote the Service. It's a broad grant — worldwide, royalty-free, sublicensable, perpetual — and it's worth reading sections 3 and 4 of the terms yourself rather than taking a blog post's word for it.

Second, the technology. ListenHub retains all intellectual property in its voice cloning and speech synthesis models, algorithms and systems. You own the audio that comes out. You don't own the model that produced it, and you can't claim one because you used the other.

Can I publish it to YouTube, Spotify, or my own feed?

Yes. You can absolutely post the podcasts you generate to your YouTube channel, and the same goes for Spotify, Apple Podcasts, an RSS feed you host yourself, a client's channel, or anywhere else.

There's no distribution restriction in the terms, and no approval step. Export it and publish it.

What ListenHub can't do is exempt you from the rules of wherever you're publishing. Platforms set their own policies for labeling AI-generated and synthetic media, and those apply on top of anything here. Check the policy of the platform you're publishing to — it changes more often than ours does.

Do I have to credit ListenHub?

No. Attribution is not required.

If you want to mention where an episode came from, that's welcome and it helps us. It isn't a condition of publishing, monetizing, or anything else.

Note that attribution and branding are two different things. Attribution is a credit you choose to give. Branding is what appears in the file itself — a watermark on a video, an intro and outro on a podcast — and that's controlled by your plan, not by a licensing requirement. More on that below.

Can I make money from it?

Yes. Ad revenue, sponsorships, a paid course, a paywalled feed, client work billed at your day rate — the rights assigned to you under the terms are what let you do all of it. There's no revenue share and no per-use fee.

One line does exist, and it's easy to state: you can sell what you make with ListenHub; you can't resell ListenHub. Renting, licensing, sublicensing or otherwise commercializing part of the Service itself needs our prior written authorization. Publishing a monetized show made with the podcast tool is fine. Wrapping the generation API in your own product and selling access to it is a conversation, not a default.

Agencies and freelancers ask a narrower version of this: can I deliver generated audio to a client as work product? Yes. The Output rights are assigned to you, and nothing stops you passing them down the chain — as long as what you deliver clears the same bar on infringement and disclosure that anything else you publish would.

Do I need a paid plan for commercial use?

No. The terms are explicit that usage rights for Output do not depend on your subscription status. Something you generated on the free plan is yours on the same terms as something generated on Max.

A plan changes what you can produce, not what you're allowed to do with it:

The pricing page has the current numbers. If you're trying to work out what a given episode or video will actually cost you, how ListenHub credits work breaks down the deduction rules and per-job costs.

Branding, watermarks and AI identifiers

These get conflated constantly, and they behave very differently.

ListenHub branding is the watermark on generated video and the intro and outro on generated podcasts. Removing it is a plan feature: Basic and above include ListenHub Branding Removal. Two details that catch people out — it covers both the video watermark and the podcast intro and outro, and it applies to content generated after you subscribe. Subscribing does not retroactively strip branding from files you already made. If you need a clean version of something, regenerate it once you're on a paid plan.

AI identifiers are a different thing entirely. ListenHub may add markers indicating that content is AI-generated, both the kind a listener can perceive and the kind embedded in file metadata, where laws and regulations require it. You may not delete, alter, forge or otherwise misleadingly modify them. Removing branding is a feature you can pay for; stripping an AI identifier is a violation of the terms.

The terms also ask you to prominently indicate AI-generated content when you publish or distribute it. In practice, that lines up with what the big platforms are asking for anyway.

Whose voice am I allowed to clone?

Your own, or one you're genuinely authorized to use. That's the whole rule, and everything else follows from it.

When you upload a voice sample you warrant two things: that you own or control the rights to it, or have obtained every authorization needed; and that the sample doesn't infringe anyone's rights — copyright, voice likeness, privacy, or a contract someone signed.

The prohibited uses are stated bluntly in the terms. You may not use voice cloning or speech synthesis to create or distribute audio that impersonates someone, misleads the public, violates privacy, or is used for fraud. Accounts suspected of it can be suspended or have content removed.

Some practical guidance that isn't legal advice:

• Your own voice — no issue. Record it and go. Voice cloning walks through the setup, and cloning a voice from a chat covers the conversational route.
• A colleague, client or narrator — get consent in writing, and be specific about what the clone will be used for. "You can use my voice" and "you can use my voice in ads for anything you like, forever" are not the same permission.
• A public figure, an actor, a character, a voice you found online — no. Fame doesn't make a voice public domain, and voice likeness rights are real in a growing number of jurisdictions.
• Catalog voices — the voice catalog is there to be used, and the terms assign you rights in the Output without carving out an exception based on which voice you picked. What you can't do is claim ownership of the voice or the model behind it.

Voice samples are treated as sensitive information: processed only as far as the cloning and synthesis features require, protected by encryption and access controls, and deletable on request where that's technically feasible.

What I can't publish

Independent of who owns the file, the acceptable use policy rules out generating or distributing content that:

• Breaks applicable law, or infringes intellectual property, privacy, or other rights
• Is defamatory, obscene, pornographic, violent, hateful, inflammatory, harassing, intimidating, or discriminatory
• Harms or targets minors
• Misuses someone's personal identifying information in a way that could hurt them

There's also a category that isn't about malice: ListenHub isn't for medical, legal, investment or other high-risk decision-making. An AI-generated explainer is a fine way to teach a concept and a bad way to tell someone which drug to take.

If you believe something published with ListenHub infringes your rights, the terms set out a notice process — send a written notice to support@marswave.ai with proof of your rights and identification of the content. Valid notices can result in removal without prior notice, and repeat infringers lose their accounts.

Where the real answer lives

This post is a summary written to be readable. It is not the contract, it doesn't cover every clause, and the terms change.

For anything with money or a lawyer attached, read the Terms of Use directly — sections 3 and 4 cover content and intellectual property, and section 5 covers acceptable use. For a question this post didn't answer, email support@marswave.ai.

Related reading

• How ListenHub credits work — what each job costs and how balances are spent
• Create your first AI podcast — the five-minute version
• Clone a voice from a chat — consent-first voice setup
• Pricing — plans, branding removal, and voice clone allowances