If you write and produce your own music and you’ve ever gotten a deal offer that mentions “our library” or “our exclusive roster” or “we upload your song under a different title so it can be non-exclusive with us and exclusive elsewhere,” you’ve been offered one of three structures.
The three shapes have unglamorous names. They also have very different economics and very different downstream consequences for what you can and can’t do with your catalog after you sign. Independent artists lose real money — often for years — because they don’t know which shape they just signed.
This post is the working-desk version of the three. I’ll call them by their honest names: non-exclusive, exclusive, and retitling. I’ll use the acronym NERD — Non-exclusive, Exclusive, Retitling Deal — to keep the shapes distinct in your head. Then I’ll walk through the six questions you should ask any offer before you sign it, in the order that matters.
The three shapes, side by side
Non-exclusive
You retain full ownership of the master and the composition. The representative (agent, library, or platform) has the right to pitch your song to buyers, and to sign a sync license on your behalf when a buyer wants it. You retain the right to have other representatives pitch the same song at the same time. You retain the right to self-pitch. You retain the right to withdraw the song from the rep on some reasonable notice.
How the rep gets paid: a percentage of the upfront sync fee on any placement they close, taken at the point of license. Typical range is 20-50% of the sync fee, with smaller boutique reps that give more human attention per song sitting higher in that range and large self-service platforms sitting lower. The rep does not collect on your writer’s share, your PRO income, your mechanical royalties, or your SoundExchange income. That’s the entire point of the structure — the artist keeps everything the sync fee doesn’t touch.
Why you’d choose it: if you have a small catalog, you want to keep working with other reps or self-pitching, and you don’t want anyone to have a permanent claim on your publishing.
The catch: because you can be represented by anyone at once, a supervisor might see the same song from multiple sources with slightly different pitches. Reputable non-exclusive reps mitigate this by keeping their supervisor lists clean of overlap; some don’t. A supervisor who sees your song five times in a week starts to assume it’s saturated and passes.
Exclusive
You grant one representative the sole right to pitch your song to sync buyers for a defined term. During the term, no other rep — and, per the contract, often not even you — can pitch that song. Ownership of the master and the composition still stays with you (this is different from an exclusive publishing deal, which is a different animal — see below).
How the rep gets paid: typically a smaller percentage of the sync fee than in a non-exclusive deal, because they’re taking the whole pitching risk on the song. Typical range is 15-35% of the sync fee. Still typically no publishing claim — the artist keeps writer’s share, PRO income, mechanicals, and SoundExchange.
Why you’d choose it: if you’re partnering with a rep whose supervisor relationships you strongly believe in, and you want the song pitched hard, in one clean voice, without competing versions of it landing in the same inboxes. A smaller cut in exchange for a stronger, more focused pitch is often worth it if the rep is a strong fit.
The catch: the term. An exclusive that runs forever is not a partnership, it’s a lockup. Reasonable exclusive terms include a defined length (one to three years is typical), a per-song withdrawal right on some kind of notice (30-90 days), and a matter-of-course release for songs the rep hasn’t pitched or hasn’t placed within some window (a “shelf clause” or “sunset clause”). If the exclusive contract you’re offered doesn’t have all three of those, it’s not really an exclusive, it’s a permanent transfer wearing exclusive clothing.
Exclusive publishing (a distinct fourth shape — worth calling out here)
Because the word “exclusive” gets used two different ways, one more distinction: some deals labeled “exclusive” are actually exclusive publishing deals. In an exclusive publishing deal, you’re not just granting sync-pitching rights — you’re assigning your publisher’s share of the composition to the publisher for a defined term (and sometimes forever), and the publisher collects from your PRO, from The MLC, and from foreign societies on your behalf during that term.
That’s a different structure, and it’s not what most independent artists mean when they say “I got an exclusive sync deal.” If a contract labels itself exclusive and also asks you to sign over publishing rights or PRO collection, treat it as a publishing deal, not a sync deal. Read the assignment language carefully. This post is about sync structures; the exclusive-publishing analysis is its own conversation.
Retitling
Retitling is the shape you should treat as a red flag by default.
In a retitling deal, the representative uploads your song to their pitching platform under a different title. The same underlying recording and composition, with a fabricated new name — “Golden Hour” becomes “Distant Horizon” in their system. The rep pitches “Distant Horizon” as an exclusive to their clients. You keep pitching “Golden Hour” through your other channels.
The pitch to the artist is usually: “This lets your song be non-exclusive with us and exclusive with them, so you get the best of both worlds. The only cost is a different title in our system.”
The actual cost is much bigger than that. Retitling:
- Corrupts your PRO reporting. When “Distant Horizon” plays on a network, the PRO tries to reconcile it against your registered work “Golden Hour” and often fails. The performance royalty either doesn’t pay out, pays into a suspense account, or pays out under the retitled name to whoever registered that name — sometimes the retitling entity, not you.
- Breaks clearance. A supervisor’s clearance department checks that the song being licensed matches the work registered at the PRO. If those don’t match — and they don’t, by design, in a retitling arrangement — the clearance fails, or it succeeds under an untethered title and the money paths get scrambled.
- Erodes trust across the buyer side. Supervisors talk. When a supervisor discovers “Distant Horizon” is the same song they’ve already been pitched three times under three different names, the supervisor stops taking pitches from the retitling entity. The song is now radioactive across every desk that discovered it.
- Introduces a shadow rights-holder. Some retitling deals include a claim on the composition or master of the retitled version. You now, technically, have a co-writer or co-owner on a song you wrote alone. Untangling this later is expensive.
Every reputable US sync agent I know refuses to retitle. Verilux does not retitle. If a company is offering you a “deal” whose core mechanism is retitling, the deal is not worth the paperwork.
There are edge cases — a genuinely orphaned or renamed release under limited circumstances — but the deal shape called retitling in the sync industry is the exploit shape, not those edge cases. If you’re offered one, treat “no” as the default answer.
Which one is the honest fit
Independent artists are usually best served by non-exclusive representation until they find a specific rep or publisher they trust deeply enough to go exclusive with, and even then, only exclusive on some songs, or under an exclusive publishing deal with clean terms and a clean sunset clause.
The reason is math. A non-exclusive relationship is reversible. Every other structure — exclusive sync, exclusive publishing, and especially retitling — reduces the reversibility of your catalog decisions in exchange for something. Sometimes that something is worth it. Often, for an independent artist early in a career, it isn’t.
The mental model I use when I’m advising an artist who’s shopping for representation is:
- Start non-exclusive. Keep the doors open. Learn what real supervisor briefs feel like when they come in.
- Move a subset of songs to exclusive with a specific rep only if that rep’s supervisor network is clearly better for those songs than the aggregate of your non-exclusive channels, and only with a real sunset clause.
- Sign an exclusive publishing deal only if you understand which of your income streams the publisher is now touching, in which territories, at what percentage, and for how long. If you can’t recite those four numbers on demand, you’re not ready to sign one.
- Never sign a retitling deal.
That mental model is Verilux’s honest position; it’s also the position most careful sync people I’ve worked with adopt privately, even when their day job involves selling the artist a different structure.
The six questions to ask before you sign anything
Ask these of any deal offer. If the rep, library, or platform can’t answer any one of them in writing, don’t sign. Getting a “we’ll get back to you” on a term question is a real answer, and it’s usually “no.”
1. What percentage do you take, and of what specifically?
The clean answer is a percentage of the upfront sync fee only, and 0% of everything else your song generates. If the answer is anything else — a percentage of your publishing, a percentage of your PRO income, a share of your writer’s percentage, a share of any master royalties — every one of those additional claims needs to be justified separately, and each one changes the structure.
Verilux’s own answer for reference: 40% of the sync fee on the non-exclusive tier, 30% of the sync fee on the exclusive tier, 25% of the sync fee plus 20% of US-only publishing royalties collected at source on the exclusive-plus-administration tier. The writer’s share is non-assignable on every tier. That’s the shape of a clean answer. Every artist deserves that level of specificity in every deal they consider.
2. Is retitling involved in any way?
If the answer is anything other than a flat “no,” the answer is yes. “We use alternate titles for administrative purposes” is yes. “We assign a version ID that functions like a title” is yes. “We use retitling on a case-by-case basis” is yes.
3. What is the term, and how do I get out?
The clean answer includes:
- A defined length (a specific number of years, not “in perpetuity” or “until terminated”).
- A per-song or catalog-wide withdrawal right on some kind of notice (30-90 days is typical).
- A shelf clause: songs the rep hasn’t placed within some defined period revert.
If the term is perpetual, or termination requires the rep’s consent, or there’s no shelf clause, the answer is a partnership that only ends if the rep wants it to. That’s not a partnership.
4. Are you claiming any interest in the writer’s share, the publisher’s share, the master, or PRO/MLC/SoundExchange collections?
Sync-only deals typically claim none of those. Exclusive publishing deals claim the publisher’s share and often the writer’s share collection during the term. Master-inclusive deals claim a share of the master. Each type is a distinct structure; every claim is a separate line to read carefully.
5. Do you require me to leave my PRO, my publishing administrator, or any other existing relationship as a condition of this deal?
Some platform deals — especially at the “library” end of the market — require the artist to give up existing PRO membership as a condition of the deal. If the answer is yes to any of these, that’s not a sync deal, it’s a full-catalog restructuring dressed as one.
6. What is your typical placement volume, and where can I verify it?
This one’s less about a specific number and more about specificity. A rep who names actual shows, ads, brands, or specific supervisors they’ve worked with (understanding that specific placements are usually under NDA and the answer will be somewhat generalized) is a rep with real relationships. A rep who won’t answer, or answers only with unnamed “our supervisor network,” may not have the network the pitch implies.
Never accept a specific dollar promise or placement guarantee as part of the answer to this question. Any deal that promises placements or promises dollar figures is either uninformed or dishonest. Reputable reps promise effort, not outcomes.
What Verilux does (for reference)
Verilux is a boutique non-exclusive rep by default, with an exclusive tier and an exclusive-plus-US-publishing-administration tier for artists whose catalog is deep enough and whose paperwork is clean enough to justify a heavier structure. Verilux does not retitle. Verilux takes a percentage of the sync fee only on the non-exclusive tier, and never a share of your writer’s income. Verilux administers publishing in the United States only, never worldwide, and only on the tier that explicitly says so in the contract. Applications go to a single person who reads them.
If your song is one-stop, easy-clear, and passes the six checks I run at intake, the /apply page is where the door is.