Owning your masters is the difference between renting your career and building one. A master is the specific recording of a song — separate from the composition underneath it — and whoever owns it controls how that recording gets licensed, streamed, and sold.
Masters versus compositions
Every release is really two pieces of property. The composition is the melody and lyrics; the master is the finished recording. They can be owned by different people, and they generate different royalties.
- Composition — pays songwriters and publishers
- Master — pays the performer and whoever funded the recording
If you wrote, recorded, and paid for the session yourself, you likely own both. That is worth confirming in writing before anyone else has a reason to disagree.
Prove it before you need to
Ownership disputes are won with documentation, not memory. Keep the session files, the invoices you paid, and a signed agreement with everyone who performed on the track.
The cheapest contract you will ever sign is the one you write before the record does well.
What to do this week
- Write down who owns what percentage of each recording
- Get a signed split sheet from every collaborator
- Register your compositions with your PRO
- Store your masters somewhere you control
None of this is glamorous, and all of it pays for itself the first time a placement or a catalogue sale comes along.