1Two different things
This page covers two separate situations, and it is worth keeping them apart:
- A commissioned score. Music written for your picture, under a quote or an agreement. Sections 2 to 11 apply.
- A catalogue release. An album, sound library, tool or object bought from a listing in the catalogue. Section 12 applies, along with the licence stated on the listing itself.
Buying a sound library does not licence a cue from the showreel, and commissioning a score does not give you the composer's back catalogue. They are different products with different paperwork.
2The default grant for a commissioned score
This is the studio's standard position, not a fixed legal requirement. Every element of it can be changed before a quote is issued, and a signed agreement overrides it completely. It is published so that a producer can see the starting point rather than discover it in a contract.
On payment in full, the studio grants and assigns to the production the entire copyright in the commissioned score, as a work made for hire where that characterisation is available and otherwise by present assignment of all right, title and interest, for the picture and all versions of it, in all media now known or later devised, throughout the world, in perpetuity.
In practice that means the production may:
- Use the score in the picture, in every cut, version, edit and re version of it.
- Distribute, exhibit, broadcast and stream the picture with the score in it, in any territory and any format.
- Use the music in the picture's trailers, clips, festival submissions, press materials and awards campaigns.
- Archive, restore and re master the picture with the score in it.
Rights transfer on payment, not before. Until the balance is settled, the studio retains ownership and licences the delivered material to the production for internal review and festival submission only. This is not a threat, it is standard practice, and it is waived the moment an invoice is paid.
3Licence options
Where a full buyout is not the right instrument, these are the alternatives the studio works with. The fee moves with the grant: a narrower grant costs less, and a wider one costs more.
| Structure | Copyright | Typical use | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Buyout (default) | Transfers to the production on full payment | Features, series, distribution deals, anything with a sales agent attached | Composer retains writer's share and credit; publisher's share follows section 4 |
| Exclusive licence | Stays with the composer, licensed exclusively to the production | Shorts and festival runs where a picture may never get wide distribution | Usually term and territory limited, with a purchase option at an agreed figure |
| Non exclusive licence | Stays with the composer | Student films, micro budget work, internal and educational use | The music may be licensed elsewhere; cheapest route to an original score |
| Step deal | Transfers on a trigger event | Productions financed in stages or contingent on distribution | Fee split across production, delivery and a distribution trigger |
If your production has a preferred structure, name it in the inquiry. The studio has worked all four and has no ideological attachment to the buyout.
4What the composer keeps
Under every structure above, including the buyout, the composer retains:
- The writer's share of public performance royalties, which is not assignable in most territories and stays with the writer as a matter of performing rights practice.
- His performing rights organisation affiliation and his writer and publisher identifiers.
- The right to be credited as set out in section 7.
- The right to use excerpts of the score in his reel, portfolio, press kit, interviews and award submissions, once the picture has premiered or been released.
- Ownership of the pre existing materials described in section 5, which are licensed into the deliverables and not assigned.
- Moral rights to the extent they cannot be waived in the relevant territory, exercised reasonably and never to block a distribution.
The publisher's share of public performance royalties follows the grant by default: with a buyout it is the production's to collect or assign, with a licence it stays with the composer. If your production does not want to administer publishing, say so and it can stay with the composer at no change to the fee.
5Pre existing material and custom instruments
A composer arrives with a working vocabulary: themes written before your film, custom instrument builds, sample libraries of his own recordings, processing chains and patches. Those are not sold with your score, because they are the vocabulary of the next one.
Where pre existing material is used in your score, it is licensed into the deliverables non exclusively, in perpetuity, for the same scope as the grant, at no additional fee, and it is disclosed in writing at delivery so your music department can see exactly what is bespoke and what was already in the room.
Session files, project data and the composer's own stems beyond the delivered set are not part of the grant. If your post house needs them, ask at quote stage and they become a deliverable.
6Third party material
The composer warrants that the delivered music is original composition and does not infringe a third party's copyright in a musical work. Commercial sample libraries and virtual instruments used as tools in production are cleared for that use by their own licences.
Anything you supply is your responsibility to clear: temp music, source music, a song you want interpolated, dialogue, field recordings, lyrics, a sample of an existing recording. The studio will not clear third party material on your behalf unless that is agreed as a separate service, and it will flag anything in a temp that looks like it needs a licence before it becomes a problem at delivery.
7Credit wording
Credit is a material term. It is how the next production finds the composer, and it is worth two lines of end crawl. These are the exact strings, and each one is copyable.
Music by Zazie Kanwar-Torge
Original score by Zazie Kanwar-Torge (Zazie Productions)
Zazie Kanwar-Torge Music Department: Composer https://www.imdb.com/name/nm17333332
Variants such as Original Score by, Music Composed and Produced by or Sound Design and Music by are all fine where they fit the picture's other credits. What matters is the name, spelled correctly, in the picture and in the listings.
If a genuine constraint means the credit cannot be carried where it should be, raise it early and an alternative placement will be agreed rather than argued about. An omission nobody mentioned until the premiere is the version that damages a working relationship.
8Cue sheets and performing rights
The cue sheet is filed with the performing rights organisations by the production or its distributor, because it travels with the picture's delivery paperwork. The composer supplies the music side of it.
At delivery the studio provides: cue titles, durations, usage type for each cue (background, feature, theme, logo, bridge), instrumentation, and the composer's writer and publisher details with his performing rights organisation and IPI numbers.
Ask for that data at delivery rather than during a distributor's deadline. It takes five minutes to hand over in week one and it is the single most common thing that goes missing in week twelve.
The composer's specific performing rights organisation and identifiers are supplied per project on the cue sheet. They are not published here, because publishing a full IPI on a public page invites identity and royalty fraud.
9Festival, press and promotional use
Included in every structure, with no extra fee and no separate permission: festival screenings and submissions, clips and excerpts for press, trailers and teasers, poster and one sheet use of the composer's name and approved stills, awards campaigns, and the picture's own distribution in any form.
For its part, the studio will list the picture in its portfolio, reel and press materials once it has premiered, and will keep an embargoed project dark for as long as you ask.
10Soundtrack album release
Releasing the score as a commercial album is not covered by the default grant. It needs its own agreement covering the release format, the distributor, the royalty split, the artwork, the mastering and whether the album is credited to the composer, the production or both.
Raise it before delivery if you want it. An album master is prepared differently from a picture master, and re mastering a delivered set after the fact costs everybody time.
11Machine learning and synthetic media
Three positions, stated plainly:
- No commissioned cue is composed by a generative model. The composer writes, performs and produces the music. Synthesis, sampling, signal processing and algorithmic tools are used as instruments, which is what composers have always done with the technology of their decade, and is not the same as asking a model for a cue.
- The grant does not licence the music for machine training. The score, its stems and its session data are not licensed for use as training data, for fine tuning, or to build a system that imitates the composer's work. The studio asks that this restriction survives into any production agreement, and it does not affect the production's ability to distribute the picture normally.
- Catalogue releases are licensed for use, not for training. Section 12 sets out what a purchased library may be used for.
If a production needs a different position, for example because a distributor's standard terms address synthetic media, send the language and the studio will work with it in writing rather than by silence.
12Catalogue releases
A purchase from the catalogue is fulfilled by the marketplace that hosts the listing, and the licence attached to that listing governs the purchase. In general terms:
- Records. A personal licence to download and listen, as granted by Bandcamp at checkout. A download is not a synchronisation licence: using a track in a film, game or advertisement needs a separate sync licence, which the studio will quote.
- Sound libraries. Use in your own productions, including commercial ones, without further fee. No resale, redistribution or republication of the files as a library, and no repackaging into another sample product.
- Tools and scores. As stated on the listing. The Renaissance manuscript facsimiles are reference material for study and performance; the vertical glitch and immersive packs are for use inside your own projects.
- Plug-in vault. A curated archive of discontinued third party instruments, sold as an archive. Each instrument inside remains subject to its own developer licence, which travels with the instrument and is not altered by the purchase.
- Physical objects. Sold as collectables and working curiosities. Descriptions on the listing state condition and function.
Where a listing is silent on a use you have in mind, ask before you rely on it. A written answer costs nothing and beats an assumption.
13Infringement and takedown notices
If you believe material on this site infringes your copyright, send a notice to zaziediya@gmail.com identifying the work, the page or file concerned, your contact details, and a statement that you believe in good faith that the use is unauthorised and that you are the rights holder or act for them.
The studio responds to valid notices, removes material it does not have the right to publish, and expects a notice to be made in good faith. A counter notice will be considered on its merits, and nothing here prevents a party from seeking a court order.
Conversely: if you find the studio's music used somewhere without a licence, the studio would rather hear about it and resolve it than discover it in a takedown. Send the link.
14What controls
A signed agreement for the project, then a written quote accepted by you, then this page. The detail is in clause 2 of the terms.
Nothing on this page is legal advice, and it does not replace the composer agreement your production's counsel may require. Its purpose is to make the studio's position legible before anybody spends money on paper.