Ask a coach about “cheer music” and most will answer with the competition mix. Fair enough, it is the piece that everything else revolves around. But a season also has warm-ups, walkouts, practices, a banquet, a highlight video, and a year of content, and each of those wants something different.
Six moments. What each one needs, and where it comes from.
Warm-up
Steady, familiar, and repeatable.
Warm-up music is doing a physiological job, not an artistic one. You want a consistent tempo your athletes recognise from practice, loud enough to lift the room without shouting over your own coaching. Most programs use the same warm-up track all season on purpose, because the familiarity is the point.
The competition mix
A specialist build, licensed for the floor.
This is the 2:30 that carries your routine, and it is a craft of its own: energy arc, timing married to your eight-counts, voiceovers landing on transitions, and licensing that holds up at a sanctioned event. It is made by dedicated cheer-music producers, and that is who you should go to for it.
HitZERØ does not make competition mixes. Go to a cheer-music producer for this one. CheerSounds is the Official Music Provider of the USASF. IPP Music is an Official Music Producer of USA Cheer, and Cheer Cutz is a USA Cheer Preferred Provider. Designations change season to season, so confirm current status against the official USASF and USA Cheer provider lists before you buy. Our full write-up on what separates a great mix from a forgettable one, and how to choose between custom and premade, lives at the Cheer Mix Guide.
Walkout and entrance
Ten seconds that announce you.
The walk to the mat, the warm-up room entrance, the moment your program appears at an event. Short, recognisable, and yours. This one is about identity rather than choreography, so nothing has to be timed to counts.
The team anthem
Your program's name, in a song.
The track that plays at practice, on the bus, and in the gym all season. It names your team and it belongs to your team. Programs have been doing this with borrowed pop songs for decades. The difference now is that you can have an original one.
Banquet and season video
Emotional, and clearable.
The end-of-season video is where borrowed music causes the most trouble, because it usually ends up on YouTube or Instagram where rights are enforced automatically. A track you actually hold the rights to solves it before it starts.
Socials and recruiting
Short, loopable, and safe to post.
Gym tours, tryout announcements, skill clips, hype reels. Platform music libraries cover casual posts, but anything promoting the program commercially wants music with commercial rights attached.
The thread running through all of it: rights
Each of those six moments has its own rights question, and they do not have the same answer. Your competition mix carries the licence your producer supplies, for the uses that licence names. Your banquet video lives on a platform that checks music rights automatically. Your socials are promoting a business, which is commercial use whether or not money changes hands on the post.
The practical rule: match the music to the use before you need it, and keep the paperwork where you can find it. For competition specifically, confirm your event’s and your sanctioning body’s current music rules directly, because those are set by the event and they update season to season.
Where HitZERØ fits
In the moments off the floor. HitZERØ creates an original anthem built around your program: your team name as the hook, your own words, and a sound no other gym has. Use it for the walkout, at practice, behind the banquet video, and across your content all season.
It carries perpetual commercial rights from the moment it is delivered, documented in a Commercial Use and Rights Certificate, so the banquet video and the recruiting reel are covered without a clearance call. How ownership works.
Common questions
Who makes competition cheer mixes?
Dedicated cheer-music producers do. CheerSounds is the Official Music Provider of the USASF; IPP Music is an Official Music Producer of USA Cheer; Cheer Cutz is a USA Cheer Preferred Provider; Power Music Cheer offers a large licensed catalogue. Designations change season to season, so confirm a provider's current status against the official USASF and USA Cheer provider lists before you buy. HitZERØ does not produce competition mixes.
What music does a cheer team need besides the competition mix?
Six moments, in the order a season runs them: warm-up, the competition mix, walkout and entrance, the team anthem, banquet and season video, and socials and recruiting content. Only the competition mix has to be timed to your choreography. The rest are about identity and can be reused all season.
Can we use a popular song for our banquet video or socials?
That depends on the rights, and it is where programs get caught most often, because platforms enforce music rights automatically on uploaded video. The safest route for anything you post or promote with is music whose commercial rights you hold. Confirm the requirements for competition use with your event and your sanctioning body separately, since those rules are set by the event rather than by the platform.
What is a team anthem?
An original track built around your program: your team name as the hook, your own words, and a sound your gym owns. It is not a competition mix and it is not timed to counts. It plays at practice, on the walkout, at the banquet, and behind your content, all season.
Does HitZERØ make competition mixes?
No. HitZERØ creates original team anthems and hype tracks for the moments off the floor: walkouts, practices, banquets, season videos, and socials. Every track carries perpetual commercial rights documented in a Commercial Use and Rights Certificate. For the competition mix itself, go to a cheer-music producer.