ARIA RECORDSMUSIC COLLECTIVE
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Five

Before you sign anything

None of this is legal advice and none of it replaces a lawyer. It is the read-through an hour of a lawyer's time would give you, which is roughly three to five hundred dollars, and which most people skip because they cannot afford it and sign anyway.

The clauses to find first, in any agreement

Term and perpetuity How long does this last? "In perpetuity" means forever, with no way back. A term with a defined end, or a reversion clause that returns rights to you after a period or if certain things do not happen, is the difference between a deal and a disposal.
What happens to the master Who owns the recording when the dust settles, and for how long. Many agreements transfer it permanently in exchange for a royalty percentage. That may be a fair trade; it should at least be a conscious one.
Publishing share Separate from the master, and frequently buried. A producer agreement that assigns a share of the composition is taking part of your PRO and MLC income for the life of the copyright, which is decades longer than the song will be relevant.
Cross-collateralisation Can losses on one project be recouped from the earnings of another? If so, a successful record can earn you nothing because an unsuccessful one is still being paid off. Watch especially for it reaching across different kinds of income, such as recording costs recouped out of touring or merchandise.
Recoupment and what counts as an expense An advance is a loan against your own future royalties, not a payment. What matters is what can be charged against it: if "expenses" is undefined or open-ended, the advance can grow after you have spent it.
Gross or net A percentage is meaningless until you know what it is a percentage of. Commission on gross income and commission on net income after undefined deductions are entirely different deals at the same headline number.
Assignment Can the other party sell this contract to somebody else without asking you? If so, the person you trusted and chose is not necessarily who you end up working for.
Exclusivity and its edges What exactly are you prevented from doing elsewhere, and for how long? Exclusivity that covers features, production work for others, or a whole genre can quietly end a career's worth of side income.

By the deal you are most likely to be handed

A beat licence

most common trap

A lease is not a purchase. Read the play and sale caps, whether the producer can keep selling the same beat to other people, what happens when the licence expires on a song that is still live, and whether an exclusive upgrade is available and at what price.

The one to check hardest: what publishing share the producer keeps, and whether you can license the song for sync without needing them to countersign. A cheap beat with an unreachable producer attached is a song you can never place.

A producer agreement

Separate the fee from the points. A flat fee for the work with no ongoing share is clean. A reduced fee in exchange for master points and a publishing share is a real and common trade, but it should be written down before the session, not negotiated after the song turns out well.

Check whether the producer's share is of gross receipts or of your net after distribution, and whether they are credited as a writer on the composition or only paid on the master.

Distribution

Flat annual fee or a percentage, and whether there is a percentage on top of the fee. Then the part almost nobody checks: can you leave, and what comes with you? Look for how long takedowns take, whether you keep your ISRCs and UPCs, whether your existing streaming numbers and playlist positions survive a move, and what happens to royalties accrued but not yet paid when you go.

Management

Commission percentage and, more importantly, the sunset clause: after the deal ends, how long do they keep commissioning, on what, and at what declining rate? An agreement with no sunset means paying somebody a percentage of work they are no longer doing, indefinitely.

Also define what income is commissionable. Management commission on recording income is standard; commission on income from deals signed before they arrived is not.

A 360 deal

The label takes a share of income beyond recordings: touring, merchandise, brand deals, sometimes publishing. This is not automatically a bad deal, but the share should be matched by real work in those areas. A label taking a percentage of your merchandise while doing nothing about your merchandise is simply a larger commission with a longer name.

⚠
The one sentence worth memorising.

If somebody will not let you take the agreement away to read it, that by itself is the answer. No legitimate deal in this business expires this afternoon.

Where this leads
The one agreement worth reading twice Sync, honestly → And the offers to walk away from What you are sold that is free →

Nothing here is legal, tax or financial advice. Rates, statutory splits, platform rules and organisation fees all move, and every figure was checked in September 2026 against at least five independent sources. This is written from a United States starting point. If something is wrong, tell us on the forum and it gets fixed.