Exclusive Only

What is a non-exclusive license?

It's a rental. You pay a small fee to use the beat for a while, but the producer keeps selling that same beat to other artists. Your song ends up sharing its instrumental with dozens of others, and your rights come with caps on streams, sales, and time.

Who is a non-exclusive license right for?

A non-exclusive license can work if you're making music for fun, posting casually, or putting out something that isn't heading for serious distribution. If the song is for the moment and not the career, it'll get the job done.

What makes an exclusive license better?

An exclusive license flips all of that. The beat comes off the store the moment you buy it, and no one else can license it. Once your song is out, your rights don't expire, your song has no caps on streams or sales, and you're not fighting other artists' Content ID claims on the same instrumental, because yours is the only song built on it.

The song you create is yours to release, and that beat isn't licensed to anyone else.

So which one is right for you?

This comes down to how serious you are about the song.

If you're making music for fun, posting casually, or releasing something that isn't meant to scale, a non-exclusive license gets the job done. Cheap, quick, and the limits won't catch up with you.

If you're serious about building a catalog, chasing placements, or turning your music into something real, exclusive is the only move. Non-exclusive limits catch up fast when a song starts to work. Streaming caps. Content ID flags. Producers asking for more money to keep your rights alive.

Only you can decide which side of that line you're on.

I write my own hooks. What do I keep?

We're co-writers: you hold 50% of the writer's share and 50% of the publisher's share, and I hold the other 50% of each (through Sanktifyd Music). An exclusive license isn't a sale of the beat; I keep the copyright in the instrumental. Mechanical royalties and sync income from the song split 50/50 the same way.

The recording you make is yours to release, and its streaming income is yours, with no cap. Release the song within 36 months (see "Is there a deadline to release my song?"). Only a separate buyout transfers the beat itself to you.

Credit reads "Produced by Moody." Your name goes on the writing.

Is there a deadline to release my song?

Yes — 36 months from purchase. It's a safeguard: an exclusive beat is one of one, and I'd rather it be heard than sit on a hard drive. Thirty-six months is a long runway, and I'll do what I can to help you get the song out. If you need more time, message me before the deadline and we'll work it out. If the song isn't out and we haven't agreed on more time, the exclusive rights come back to me, the beat can find another artist, and the license fee isn't refunded. "Released" means your song, with your vocals, out on streaming platforms or physical media.

So which one is right for you?

For serious artists, exclusive is the move. You get a beat no one else can use, you keep your song growing without limits, and the cost stays reasonable. We share the royalties, which keeps both of us invested in the song's success.

A buyout makes sense when you want zero shared ownership going forward. You keep every royalty the song earns, with no splits and no reporting back to me. The tradeoff is cost: the buyout fee is substantially higher because it replaces every royalty I'd otherwise earn over the life of the song.

Either way, you walk away with a song that's yours. The only question is how much you want to keep.