Two rights in every track
A recorded track is two things at once. The master is the recording itself: the audio file, the performance, the mix. The composition is the underlying work: the notes, the structure, the arrangement, whether or not it was ever written down. Each is owned separately and each can be licensed separately.
If you wrote the piece and recorded it alone in your room, you hold both. If a label paid for the recording, it may own the master while you keep the composition. If you co-wrote with someone, the composition is shared. Most confusion about music rights comes from not separating these two.
Nothing in this guide is legal advice. When money is involved, read the paper or ask someone who does this for a living.
Publishing, and what a collecting society does
Publishing is the business side of the composition: registering works, licensing them and collecting what they earn. You can be your own publisher, which most emerging artists are, or sign with one.
A collecting society, often called a PRO, is the body in your country that collects performance royalties when compositions are played publicly and pays them to registered writers and publishers. SADAIC in Argentina, ASCAP and BMI in the United States, PRS in the United Kingdom, SACM in Mexico. Some countries have separate bodies for performers and for record producers.
Membership is your choice. The Music For Work application only asks you to confirm the music is yours to license; it does not ask whether you belong to a society.
ISRC, ISWC and IPI: three identifiers
Three codes appear on almost every licence, and they are easy to mix up.
- ISRC identifies a recording. One per master. Usually issued by your distributor or by your country's ISRC agency.
- ISWC identifies a work, the composition. One per piece, however many recordings exist of it. Issued through your collecting society when you register the work.
- IPI identifies you as a writer or publisher. One per person, assigned when you join a society.
You do not need the codes to apply
None of the three is asked for in the application. You will want all of them the day a brand asks to license a track, because the paperwork on their side starts with those codes. Getting them early costs little and saves a week later.
Splits must add up to 100
If more than one person wrote or produced a track, the composition and sometimes the master are shared, and the shares are called splits. Agree them in writing before the track goes anywhere: who, in what role (writer, composer, performer, producer, publisher) and what percentage. The percentages on each side must total exactly 100. Thirds are fine as 33.33, 33.33 and 33.34.
A split agreed by handshake and never written down is the most common reason a licence stalls, because the buyer has no way to know who has to sign.
Samples and what they block
A sample is anyone else's recording or composition inside yours. If it is licensed, keep the paperwork. If it is not licensed, the track cannot be licensed to anyone, however small the sample is. Sync and jingle uses in particular need clean masters.
If you work with sample packs, check the licence that came with the pack. Most royalty-free packs allow use in your own recordings, but read the line about resale and sync.
Exclusivity: the deals that limit what you can license
A label deal, a management contract, a booking agreement or a publishing deal may each give someone else a say over how your music is used, in some territory, for some period. That is normal and often fine. What matters is knowing what you signed.
Before offering a track for any licence, check whether a label owns the master, whether a publisher controls the composition, and whether any exclusivity clause covers the use in question and when it expires. If you have never signed anything, you are free, and that freedom is worth protecting.
The sworn statement, and keeping every right
When you send an application you confirm that the music is yours, or that you hold the rights, and that you can license it to Music For Work. You are saying it is true, and you are responsible if it is not. Licences to third parties work the same way, with more detail: ownership of master and composition, splits, samples, exclusivity. Keeping those facts written down per track, even in a spreadsheet, is what turns a licence request from a week of emails into an afternoon.
Applying costs you nothing in rights. You keep the master and the composition. The way your music is used in sessions and how you are paid is set out in a written artist agreement before anything is played. Whatever else you do with the same tracks, on other platforms or with a label later, is up to you and the paper you sign there.
By the Music For Work curators