Follow-up, contracts and clauses: exclusivity, licensing, assignment and masters.

A “yes” to a demo is the best moment and the most dangerous: enthusiasm drives negotiation and people sign documents they had never read. Between submission and signature comes a stage of its own—follow-up, waiting and replies—then another: reading the contract, which decides exclusivity, the licence, assignment and ownership of the master.

This guide treats both stages with the same rule: nothing you cannot explain in your own words. If a clause is unclear, do not sign yet. The goal is not to frighten you with contracts, but to give you the vocabulary to read them; commercial negotiations over rates and fees have a complementary reference in the guide to DJ contracts and invoicing.

Follow-up without burning the contact

Follow-up is the single reminder email sent after a reasonable time without a reply. Around two weeks is the usual industry reference; larger labels with longer queues may need three or four. Before writing, check whether the submission has been played: many demo platforms show plays, and a rising counter usually means someone is considering it.

How to do it well:

• Reply to the same thread. The A&R person then has your original email, link and context in front of them.
• Two lines. Confirm you are still available and ask whether anything else is needed. Do not rewrite your introduction.
• Only one more attempt. After the second unanswered follow-up, close politely: “I’ll leave it here; I hope to send you new material”. That ending keeps the door open for the next track.

What is unnecessary: asking whether they listened, requesting a reason for rejection or sending the same file again. Silence is already an answer and usually has nothing to do with the music’s quality.

What not to do when sending demos

What not to do is as useful as knowing what to do. These mistakes close doors fastest:

• Mass-emailing several labels. A BCC with ten recipients is clearly visible and exposes a mass submission.
• Chasing frequently. Emails every few days accelerate nothing; they only get you archived.
• Arguing with rejection. “It does not fit” is useful information, rather than an insult. Arguing turns a no into a block.
• Lying about the track’s status. Sending unfinished work as finished, then requesting changes, breaks trust at the first exchange.
• Attaching everything. Large files, press PDFs and photographs make the email look like spam.
• Ignoring instructions. If a label requests a form and three tracks, use the form and submit three tracks.

The positive counterpart is simple: most submissions fail through carelessness rather than lack of talent. A short, well-targeted email with a working link already places you in the quarter worth listening to.

The contract before signing anything

A label contract is not a bureaucratic formality: it determines what someone can do with your recording for years. Before signing, make five checks in this order:

1. Subject matter. Which track or repertoire does it cover? Exclusivity over “all future works” is a time bomb.
2. Term and territory. Three years in one country is not the same as ten worldwide.
3. Label obligations. Release date, minimum promotion, revenue sharing and what happens if the label does not release.
4. Remuneration. Percentages, payment frequency and included income: streams, sales, synchronisation and live performance.
5. Exit. What happens when the term ends: who removes the track, within which deadlines and under which conditions.

Ask in writing if anything is missing. A serious label replies; one that evades the question has already answered. Always retain the signed version and every appendix: technical specifications, schedules and promotional commitments often live there.

Exclusivity, licensing and assignment in practice

These three words are used interchangeably in corridor conversations, but are not synonyms. Exclusivity is a reservation: while it lasts, that track cannot be released elsewhere. A licence is permission with limits: the label exploits the recording for a time, in specified media and territories, while you retain ownership. Assignment is transfer: ownership of the recording passes to the label.

The table above summarises what you grant and retain in each case. Look at the key-question column: nearly all later problems are answered there by four details—term, territory, uses and reversion—that should be written down.

One important nuance: these are separate decisions. You can accept two years’ temporary exclusivity without assigning anything, or assign the master in exchange for promotional investment. What you cannot do is sign a page saying “all of the above” without translating every term into something you understand.

Finally, remember that master and composition are two distinct works with distinct owners: the label may take the recording while the song’s rights remain on the composition side. That leads into the following sections.

Masters, publishing and splits

The master is the specific recording: the audio you hear. Publishing concerns the composition: lyrics, music and exploitation—publishing, synchronisation and performance. Splits are the percentages dividing each of these two things among their creators.

Three classic mistakes:

• Confusing masters with publishing. Signing master distribution does not give or remove composition rights, and vice versa.
• Leaving splits as a conversation. “We’ll divide it later” frequently ends in dispute. Put it in writing before release, with names and percentages adding up to one hundred.
• Forgetting collaborators. Whoever contributed percussion, vocals or the remix also has a share: without inclusion in the split, they receive neither payment nor credit.

In practice, allocation happens on two fronts. Recording income—streams and sales arriving through the distributor—is split according to the master agreement. Composition income—publishing and public-performance royalties—is split according to composition shares. Keeping both sheets clear prevents an inexplicably low payment month turning into conflict.

If you prefer assigning nothing, self-release models let you retain ownership and buy only the services needed; platforms such as TuneCore and DistroKid work this way, leaving ownership with the artist and offering automatic collaborator splits.

Negotiate without damaging the relationship

Negotiating with a label is not an arm-wrestle: it is your first work together. Three useful ideas:

• Ask rather than demand. “How do you handle promotion?” opens more doors than “I need an advance”.
• Compromise on small details, not structural ones. Dates, format and collaborator lists can be negotiated; exclusivity duration and master ownership are structural.
• Everything in writing. Email agreements go into the contract. If it is not written, it does not exist.

Once the contract is clear, the next step shifts focus: prepare public release with a distributor, codes and schedule. Digital distribution: distributor, aggregator, ISRC and UPC covers that stage, and copyright registration should be completed before the release date is fixed.

Next step

Once the agreement is signed, infrastructure matters: who sends the music to platforms, and with which codes. Continue with Digital distribution: distributor, aggregator, ISRC and UPC.