This article covers the basic information and steps to customizing the standard (default) licensing contract that comes with each LicenseQuote publisher subscription account.

How the license contract is set up

Your LicenseQuote publisher account starts with one standard license contract (online template) which is auto-populated at time of sale with the specifics of the licensed track(s), buyer and seller information, license type, pricing and negotiation transcript (optional) if used.

The main body under the AGREEMENT section can be customized, while the header, footer, schedule “A” and schedule “B” are again, auto-populated, based on the specifics of each unique license sale transaction.

This includes, for example, the track/song name(s), negotiation transcript, license pricing and License Type description, etc., which depend on other settings (not directly in the body of the license contract) in various places in your publisher account, most of which are on the Licensing Profile and Pricing Matrix covered in other articles.

Each licensing profile has its own contract

For each Licensing Profile you set up, you can then use the standard contract, or edit, modify or completely replace it as needed. This makes it easy to apply a unique Licensing Profile (along with its Contract) to any number of songs in your catalog and store.

Steps to customize your music licensing contract

When you open up your Licensing Profile (on the Licensing Profiles admin page), click the Licensing Contract “Edit” button. This opens the Contract Editor in a new window. There you can review the standard contract wording, which you can edit, hence, being able to change any part, modify as needed or add new titles, paragraphs or other lines of text, etc. This will effect anything in the AGREEMENT section which originally starts with section
1. License Grant and Performance Rights
and goes down to
9.12 Headings

After you’re done editing, be sure to click the “Save” button. From then on your custom contract will be available for any new license purchases.

The other contract fields are auto-populated

Note, as stated above, the other info that goes above the AGREEMENT is the identification of the seller (publisher) and buyer (licensee), which is filled in (auto-populated) automatically at time of license sales and won’t change the main body of the contract. A summary of this will appear at bottom along with the Schedule “A” which provides the specific licensing details (track/s names, license type, pricing) along with terms, project description and copy of complete negotiation transcript when used between you and the buyer.

Default contract reflects non-exclusive terms

The intial (default) wording for the License Grant (in 1.1) is non-exclusive to use the music. This is the most common kind of music library licensing, but you can easily change this to exclusive or semi-exclusive as needed, depending on your publishing and marketing plans.

If you plan to offer exclusive licensing, you should adjust your pricing (or rate card) accordingly, and mention it in the License Type description fields which you can manage on the Licensing Profile admin page in your account.

With this guide and a bit of practice, you’ll quickly be able to set up and deploy any kind of custom license contract needed to manage your music licensing sales.