music · UnitedMasters
You’re creating on UnitedMasters, which means…
You keep your masters, and the distribution deal ends when you stop using it. The licence you gave just to open the account does not end — it is perpetual, irrevocable, sublicensable, good “for any and all purposes”, and the music contract is written to leave it standing.
UnitedMasters gives you a different contract depending on where you are. This page reads all 2; every clause below says which one it comes from.
What they own
Not your recordings — but neither document says so out loud. Neither contract contains a plain sentence disclaiming ownership of your work. What keeps the copyright with you is one word in the licence you grant, “nonexclusive”, plus a line that puts ownership on your side of the page as a promise you make them: “You agree that you own such User Content”.
What you own
Your masters, and the right to put them somewhere else. The distribution right you hand over is “the non-exclusive right throughout the world during the Distribution Term”, and the Distribution Term runs “until you cease using the Distribution Services, or until UnitedMasters ceases providing you with Distribution Services”. Another distributor can carry the same record. What ends when you go is the distribution deal — not the licence sitting underneath it.
What you don’t
Take back the licence, or keep the money that lands after you leave. The words perpetual and irrevocable appear exactly once in each of the two documents. In the Terms of Service they sit in the main content licence — “transferable, sublicensable, perpetual, irrevocable” … “for any and all purposes” — which has no term and no exit. In the Music Distribution Terms they attach to the AI paragraph: “The rights granted in this paragraph 6 are perpetual and irrevocable and shall survive expiration or termination of the Distribution Term.” Leaving also takes “at least sixty (60) days notice”, and “Termination and deletion of your account results in a forfeiture of any access to UnitedMasters’ Services or any Net Sums based on Gross Digital Royalties received in connection with your Masters after the Distribution Term.”
What they can do with it
Distribute it, license it, sell it and make derivative works of it — and “to do any of the foregoing (or to refrain from doing so) without further payment to you or permission from you.” Under the Terms of Service they can also copy, adapt, modify, “analyze”, and “fully exploit” it for “marketing and other commercial purposes”, hand it to “any third-party AI or machine learning service provider, model developer, vendor, or partner, on such terms as we determine”, and use your “name, image, voice, and likeness” royalty-free “to identify you as the source of any of your User Content”. The money they keep is “ten percent (10%) of all Gross Digital Royalties” as the DEBUT Distribution Fee, and “Twenty Percent (20%)” of what YouTube Content ID earns.
The clauses
The licence with no end date
UnitedMasters Terms of Service — User Content and Feedback. Effective Date: May 1, 2026. ↗
Subject to our Privacy Policy and any applicable Additional Terms, by uploading any User Content you hereby grant us, and our affiliated companies and partners, a nonexclusive, worldwide, royalty free, fully paid up, transferable, sublicensable, perpetual, irrevocable license to copy, display, upload, adapt, perform, publish, distribute, store, modify, analyze, and otherwise use and fully exploit your User Content and its meta data, in any and all media, form, technology or distribution methods now known or later developed and for any and all purposes, including for UnitedMasters’ marketing and other commercial purposes (e.g., creating co-branded or co-sponsored content). You further grant us a royalty-free license to use your name, image, voice, and likeness to identify you as the source of any of your User Content.
This is the wide one
It sits in the general Terms of Service, not the music contract, and it covers everything you upload — not only released masters. The word “perpetual” appears once in this document, and this is where.
No end date, no cancel button
Perpetual means it does not expire; irrevocable means you cannot withdraw it. Nothing in this sentence runs during a term or stops at one, so deleting the account does not take the licence with it.
Which contract wins
The Terms of Service hand priority to the music contract: “if there is an inconsistency between any of the provisions in the Additional Terms and any provision in these Terms, the provision in the Additional Terms will govern.” That is exactly why the Music Distribution Terms had to write a clause saying they do not narrow this one.
Nonexclusive
The word that keeps your copyright. UnitedMasters is taking permission, not title, and the same recording can go to another distributor.
Sublicensable and transferable
They can pass these rights on, and pass the contract itself on. Elsewhere the Terms say you “may not assign these Terms without our prior written consent, but we may assign or transfer these Terms, in whole or in part, without restriction.”
Your voice
Name, image, voice and likeness ride along on a separate royalty-free licence, and that one comes with a stated purpose — “to identify you as the source of any of your User Content”. Narrower than the content licence above it, but for a recording artist the voice is still not an incidental detail.
The AI clause
Without limiting any of the rights granted above, you expressly acknowledge and agree that the license you grant to us in your User Content (including any associated metadata, derivatives, and related information) includes the right, in our sole discretion and at any time, to use your User Content for any artificial intelligence, machine learning, or related purpose. Such purposes include, without limitation: (i) training, developing, fine-tuning, evaluating, benchmarking, testing, and improving any artificial intelligence models, machine learning systems, large language models, generative AI models, foundation models, neural networks, classifiers, recommendation engines, or any analogous or successor technologies, whether owned, operated, or used by us, our affiliates, or any third party; … (iii) providing your User Content (in whole, in part, in transformed form, or in aggregated or de-identified form) to any third-party AI or machine learning service provider, model developer, vendor, or partner, on such terms as we determine; and (iv) deploying, commercializing, licensing, sublicensing, distributing, or otherwise exploiting any of the foregoing models, systems, outputs, derivative works, or datasets, in any media, format, or technology now known or later developed.
… You further acknowledge and agree that we may exercise these rights with or without notice to you, that we have no obligation to compensate, attribute, or seek further consent from you in connection with any AI or machine learning use of your User Content, and that nothing in these Terms obligates us to use your User Content for any particular purpose or to continue any AI or machine learning use once commenced.
An addition, not a carve-out
It opens “Without limiting any of the rights granted above”. This does not replace or narrow the licence above it — it spells out one more thing that licence already allows, on top of everything else.
Generative models, named
This is not a general data clause stretched to cover AI. It names large language models, generative AI models and foundation models directly, and it names your recordings as the input.
To any third party
Your masters can be handed to an outside model developer “on such terms as we determine”. You are not told who, and you do not agree to the terms.
No pay, no credit, no notice
The clause states all three refusals in one sentence: no compensation, no attribution, no further consent, with or without notice.
Commercializing
The right does not stop at building a model. It extends to selling what the model becomes, and the outputs and datasets derived from your work.
The distribution grant, and how long it lasts
Distribution Term: The date you first use UnitedMasters’ Distribution Services, such as by uploading and releasing your Masters and Intellectual Property, and shall automatically continue until you cease using the Distribution Services, or until UnitedMasters ceases providing you with Distribution Services.
… When utilizing the Distribution Services, you grant UnitedMasters the non-exclusive right throughout the world during the Distribution Term. … to copy, display, distribute, publicly perform, and to make derivative works in furtherance thereof, and to market, license, sell and otherwise use, exploit your Masters and Intellectual Property; … to do any of the foregoing (or to refrain from doing so) without further payment to you or permission from you.
This is the good news
The distribution licence is non-exclusive and it is time-limited. It runs during the Distribution Term, and the Distribution Term ends when you stop using the service. Not every distributor writes it this way — but what ends is this licence, not the one in the Terms of Service.
It can also end at their end
The term runs until you cease using the service “or until UnitedMasters ceases providing you with Distribution Services”. Either side can close it, and only one of them owes notice.
The licence is not the master
What you grant here is permission to distribute and exploit — not ownership of the recording. The word the contract uses for your recordings, throughout, is “your Masters”.
Without permission from you
Inside the term, each decision to license, sell or sit on a record is theirs to make alone, and carries no extra payment.
The paragraph that keeps the first contract alive
UnitedMasters Music Distribution Terms — Rights and Responsibilities, paragraph 6. ↗
Notwithstanding anything to the contrary in these Distribution Terms, nothing herein limits, narrows, conditions, or supersedes any rights granted to UnitedMasters in your User Content under the Terms of Service, including the rights to use User Content for artificial intelligence and machine learning purposes set forth therein, all of which continue to apply with full force to your Masters and Intellectual Property
… without limitation of the rights granted to us in the Terms of Service with respect to your User Content, to use your Masters and Intellectual Property … for any artificial intelligence, machine learning, or related purpose, in our sole discretion and at any time … The rights granted in this paragraph 6 are perpetual and irrevocable and shall survive expiration or termination of the Distribution Term.
All of which
The carve-out is not limited to AI. It preserves “any rights granted to UnitedMasters in your User Content under the Terms of Service”, with AI named only as an example, and says “all of which continue to apply with full force to your Masters and Intellectual Property”. That is the whole perpetual licence from the first contract, pointed at your released records.
Why this clause has to exist
Because the Terms of Service say the Additional Terms govern on conflict, the music contract could otherwise have been read as narrowing the licence you gave on signup. This sentence is there to stop that reading.
Two lifespans in one section
The distribution right a few lines above ends with the Distribution Term. The rights in this paragraph are written to outlast it, in those words: perpetual, irrevocable, surviving expiration or termination.
Where those words appear
The words perpetual and irrevocable each appear exactly once in the Music Distribution Terms, and this is the sentence. Inside this document they do not attach to distribution, to marketing, or to the fee — only to paragraph 6.
Ten percent, twenty percent, sixty days
In consideration for providing the Distribution Services, UnitedMasters shall be entitled to retain ten percent (10%) of all Gross Digital Royalties as its Distribution Fee, which may be subject to change at UnitedMasters’ discretion.
… In the event you choose to receive this service, UnitedMasters will retain Twenty Percent (20%) of all Gross Digital Royalties specifically generated from your YouTube Content ID Monetization for the duration of services received by you.
… UnitedMasters will pay you any Net Sums actually collected on your behalf within sixty (60) days after the end of each calendar month or sixty (60) days from the date on which we receive or are credited with Gross Digital Royalties in connection with the User Content, whichever is later. … If you are a DEBUT artist and are owed less than fifty U.S. dollars ($50), your Net Sums shall be carried forward onto the following accounting statement and paid to you once your Net Sums reach fifty U.S. Dollars ($50) or more.
Ten percent of gross, not net
The fee comes off Gross Digital Royalties. What reaches you is Net Sums — gross less the Distribution Fee, less payment processing, third-party charges, other fees, refunds, taxes and tariffs.
Subject to change at their discretion
The ten percent is a number in the contract, and the same sentence says it can move. It is the Distribution Fee charged to DEBUT artists; SELECT and DEBUT+ artists pay a Subscription Fee instead, and if they drop back to DEBUT “the Distribution Fee shall apply in lieu of the Subscription Fee”.
Whichever is later
The sixty days runs from whichever comes later, the month end or the day UnitedMasters is actually paid by the platform. Streaming platforms pay on their own lag; this clause sits on top of it.
The fifty-dollar floor
For DEBUT artists, money under $50 is not paid — it rolls forward until the balance clears the line.
Leaving, and what you forfeit
UnitedMasters Music Distribution Terms — Distribution Termination and Removal. ↗
UnitedMasters reserves the right to remove Masters, Intellectual Property, or other User Content, or to terminate its Distribution Services with respect to your account at any time in its sole discretion. UnitedMasters will collect and pay you all Net Sums in accordance with the Terms prior to the end of the Distribution Term. Termination and deletion of your account results in a forfeiture of any access to UnitedMasters’ Services or any Net Sums based on Gross Digital Royalties received in connection with your Masters after the Distribution Term.
… You must provide UnitedMasters at least sixty (60) days notice to remove your Masters and delete your account, provided that UnitedMasters may (but is not required to) remove your Masters and delete your account at any time prior to the expiration of the notice period.
… all provisions of the Terms which by their nature should survive termination shall survive termination, including, without limitation, ownership provisions, the rights granted to UnitedMasters with respect to artificial intelligence and machine learning use of Masters, Intellectual Property, and User Content, warranty disclaimers, indemnity, and limitations of liability.
The promise, then the forfeiture
The middle sentence is in your favour: UnitedMasters “will collect and pay you all Net Sums in accordance with the Terms prior to the end of the Distribution Term”. It covers what is collected before the term ends. The sentence after it covers what arrives once it has, and forfeits that.
Royalties that arrive late
Streaming money lands months after the stream. Anything received after the Distribution Term ends is forfeited on termination and deletion — so the tail of your last months on the platform may not reach you.
Sixty days each way
You owe sixty days’ notice to take your catalogue down. They owe none — removal or termination on their side is “at any time in its sole discretion”.
What the survival list holds
Survival clauses usually run to indemnities and disclaimers. This one has those, plus ownership provisions, and it names the artificial intelligence and machine learning rights explicitly. It is the second place in this document saying those rights do not end when you do.
Takedown isn’t guaranteed
The clause promises only “reasonable efforts” to remove your masters, and says such removal “is out of UnitedMasters’ control” once a platform has them.
The 2 agreements
Due Dilly reads the paperwork and reports what it says. This is not legal advice.