Contract lifecycle management, for music.
From the draft nobody has signed to the option nobody diarized — every agreement your team is running, with the terms out of the paper and into fields you can search.
Stop reading the contract to answer the question.
The advance, the term, the splits and the reversion are already captured. Answering "what did we actually sign?" takes a look, not an afternoon in a PDF.
The whole life of an agreement, not just the filing
Contract lifecycle management is the general term for this: drafting, negotiating, signing, storing, and tracking what a contract obliges you to do after everyone has moved on. Most tools built for it are built for procurement, where a contract is a purchase order with lawyers attached.
A music agreement is not that. It runs in option periods, it splits income four ways, its obligations are songs you have not written yet, and the thing it pays out on arrives two years later from somebody who is not a party to it.
What is in it
Drop in the agreement, the terms come out. Upload the file and the deal comes back populated — parties, dates, rates, splits — for you to check rather than type. Every attempt is kept, so a failed extraction can be run again instead of vanishing.
Send it for signature without leaving the deal. The contract already on the record goes out for e-signature from there, and comes back signed to the same place. More on that here.
Terms as fields, not prose. Advance, term length, delivery requirement, payment schedule, territory, reversion, and the performance, mechanical, sync and other-publishing splits — each on its own option period.
A status that says whose move it is. Needs review, counterparty action, client signature, counterparty signature, fully executed, terminated. That is the only question that matters between draft and signature.
Every version of the paper, kept. The agreement file has a history rather than a filename ending in -FINAL-v3-signed.
Every deal type your team actually signs. Publishing, record, master, brand, catalog, sync, live and PRO agreements, each carrying the fields that type needs — plus the management and agent agreements behind your own income.
What happens after execution. Invoices raised from the deal. Royalty setup tracked from needs-setup through to income arriving. Signing is the middle of the job, not the end of it.
Why music contracts resist normal contract tools
A music deal is not one term, it is a sequence. A publishing or record deal runs in option periods, each with its own advance and delivery commitment. A tool that stores one start date and one end date has already lost the shape of the thing.
The money is split several ways at once. Performance, mechanical, sync and other publishing income can each carry a different split, in the same deal, in the same period. A single royalty percentage is not a simplification, it is wrong.
The deal and the catalog are the same question. What a term delivered is a list of songs or masters. If the agreement lives in one system and the works live in another, nobody can answer whether the commitment has been met.
Signature is not the finish line. After execution comes registration, setup and collection, and the delay between the three is where income quietly does not arrive.
Four things worth getting right
Capture the terms when the deal is signed, not when someone asks. The person who negotiated it remembers what it means. Six months later, nobody does.
Track whose move it is, not just whether it is done. Most deals do not stall because of disagreement. They stall because both sides believe they are waiting on the other.
Keep the agreement next to the works it covers. Separating them guarantees the delivery question gets answered by estimate.
Diary the option and reversion dates the day you sign. They are the two dates nobody remembers and the two that cost the most when missed.
Common questions
Is this contract lifecycle management, or a document store?
Lifecycle. The file is kept, but the point is what happens around it — terms extracted into fields, signature sent and tracked, options and reversions dated, invoices raised against it, and royalty setup followed through after execution.
Can I send contracts for signature?
Yes, from the deal itself, and the signed copy comes back to the same record. There is a dedicated page on how that works.
Do I have to type the terms in by hand?
No. Upload the agreement and the deal comes back populated for you to check — parties, dates, rates and splits. You review and correct rather than transcribe.
Can it handle option periods and multiple terms in one deal?
Yes. Each term carries its own advance, delivery requirement, payment schedule, splits and status, and the works counting against a term's delivery commitment are tracked against it.
Know what you signed. Without opening the PDF.
