Music Team Contracts: What to Look For Before You Sign

Which clauses actually decide whether a contract is fair?

Across management, booking, and publicist deals, the same handful of clauses do most of the work. If you only learn five things to read for, learn these. The commission base (what the percentage is taken from). The term and options (how long, and who gets to extend). The sunset (what happens to commissions after you split). Power of attorney (whether they can sign on your behalf). And accounting and audit rights (whether you can ever check the math).

Everything else on the page is detail underneath those five. The difference between a clean deal and a trap is usually one or two lines buried in the middle of the document. I'll take each one in turn.

What is commission taken from, gross or net?

Managers commission gross income, not net. That catches people off guard. Gross means the money is commissioned before your expenses come out, so the manager's percentage is calculated off the top. The industry standard sits at 15 to 20%, with 20% more common at the early stage. Booking agents take a separate 10 to 15%, but only off the per-show fee.

A fair contract doesn't commission the literal gross, though. It uses a modified gross base that excludes money that was never really yours to keep. Standard carve-outs include recording advances, video budgets, tour support, payments to producers and session players, sound and lighting costs, opening-act fees, and merch manufacturing costs. Publishing income is sometimes excluded too if the manager had nothing to do with the deal that created it. Merch is a common middle ground: a lot of managers take net on merch (after you've paid to make it) and gross on everything else.

Some deals use a sliding scale instead of a flat rate: a lower percentage on your first chunk of income, climbing as you earn more. One example structure is 10% up to $100,000, 15% to $500,000, then 20% above that. There's no single correct shape. What matters is what the percentage is applied to. A low rate on a fat gross can cost more than a higher rate on a properly modified base.

How long should the term be, and who controls the options?

Initial management terms most commonly run 1 to 3 years, sometimes longer with options to extend. You want the shortest realistic term. The other side wants to lock in a longer commitment, because their upside comes from sticking around while your career compounds. That tension is normal and it's the heart of the negotiation.

Watch who holds the options. If the contract renews for another term and only the manager or agent can pull that trigger, you're in a deal that's perpetually renewable at their discretion. That's a lock-in dressed up as flexibility. Booking agreements tend to be shorter than management deals, often 1 to 2 years, because the relationship is show-by-show rather than career-wide.

A clean way to bridge the gap is a performance threshold. The contract terminates if you haven't earned a set amount within a set window, for instance if you don't clear $100,000 in the first two years. That protects you from being stuck with someone who isn't moving the needle, while still giving a working manager room to deliver. One more thing to check: outside California there's no statutory cap on how long you can be bound. The termination and option language is the only limit you have, which makes it the most important part of the document.

What a sunset clause does, and why you need one

This is the clause people don't think about until it's too late. When a manager's deal ends, what happens to the deals they set up while they were working for you? A sunset clause answers that. It winds their post-term commission down to zero over a defined period, and it should only apply to income from deals they personally negotiated during the term.

A common shape is a step-down: 15% of those legacy earnings in the first year after termination, 10% in the second, 5% in the third, then nothing. The exact percentages and length are negotiable. What matters is that there's a finish line at all.

No sunset clause, or a sunset that stays at the full in-term rate with no step-down, is a red flag on any management or booking agreement. You'd be paying someone in perpetuity for work they finished a long time ago.

Power of attorney and audit rights: the two clauses most people skip

A power-of-attorney clause lets your manager sign things on your behalf. A narrow, specific one is sometimes reasonable for routine administrative tasks. A broad, irrevocable power of attorney that lets someone enter contracts in your name without your prior approval is the single clause I'd refuse outright. You should never hand any team member the unconditional right to bind you to deals you haven't seen. If that language is in the draft, it goes back to a lawyer before anything else gets discussed.

The flip side is your right to check the books. The contract needs to spell out the manager's obligation to account to you (monthly or quarterly is standard) and your right to audit their records. Without an explicit audit right, you have no way to verify the commission math or resolve a dispute later. Pair that with an expense-approval threshold: the manager should need your sign-off for any expense above a defined amount, so costs don't pile up against your account without your knowledge.

One more for agency deals specifically: the key man clause. If you signed with a particular person at a larger firm and that person leaves, a key man clause lets you terminate or follow them out. Without it, you can get passed to an associate you've never met and have no relationship with. If you're weighing whether you even need a manager yet, that question is covered in the manager guide in this cluster.

Canada versus US: which law governs your contract?

Jurisdiction sounds like boilerplate until a dispute makes it the whole ballgame. The governing-law and venue clauses decide which country's law applies and where any fight gets litigated, and that matters a lot for a Canadian artist signing with a US-based company or vice versa.

In Canada, management deals are typically governed by provincial law, most often Ontario or British Columbia, and there's no Canadian equivalent to California's seven-year cap.

When a template is fine and when you need a lawyer

Not every agreement needs a $1,000 review. A DIY template handles low-stakes paper: a split sheet between friends, a simple co-writing split, a venue performance agreement under $500. For those, a clean template that everyone signs is genuinely enough.

Anything that binds you for years or touches your catalog rights is a different story. Management agreements, booking agency deals, label deals, publishing deals, and any contract with a royalty-bearing clause or options all warrant a lawyer. The reason is simple math: a contract review at a flat $500 to $2,000 is almost always cheaper than the cost of one bad clause running across a multi-year deal. Lawyers also bill hourly ($150 to $500-plus for newer attorneys, higher in major markets) or take 5 to 10% of the deal they're negotiating.

When you do sit down with a lawyer, the more prepared your own materials are, the less you pay in billable hours explaining who you are. A clean one-sheet that lays out your project, your numbers, and your status saves time on both the review and any deal it leads to.

Build a clean one-sheet for your project before your first lawyer or manager meeting →