Handing your catalogue to a manager without losing control

66 · 2026-10-04 · 20 min read · Español

A manager needs access to your catalogue and authority to act on it, and neither of those is ownership. Every register your catalogue lives on — Spotify for Artists, Apple Music for Artists, YouTube, your PRO, The MLC, SoundExchange — lets you add a manager as a named user with their own login and a role you set, and every one of them keeps paying and writing to the account holder, who stays you. The management agreement decides the rest: what the manager may sign in your name, whether the money is paid to you or through them, and what they are still owed after the term. Set those three in writing, keep every account in your name, and the handover is a set of invitations you can revoke in an afternoon.

Access is a role, not a password. Spotify for Artists, Apple Music for Artists, YouTube, ASCAP, BMI, SOCAN, The MLC and SoundExchange each let the account holder add a manager as a named user with their own login and a permission level, and remove them at any time.
The account holder is the person each register pays and writes to. SoundExchange’s primary contact receives every statement; The MLC pays its Member; ASCAP’s rules let a living member assign royalties in a few listed situations — repaying a loan, a company the member owns, a trust, family or charity — and a manager is not among them. Keep the holder’s name yours and make the manager a user.
Whoever first claims an artist page holds it. Apple Music for Artists assigns the Admin role to the artist or artist manager who first gains access, and Spotify for Artists does not take requests to join a claimed team — you ask the team’s Admin. On YouTube the Owner role cannot be transferred to another user.
A management agreement’s power-of-attorney clause is what lets a manager sign in your name. A transfer of copyright needs a signed writing, and a signature under a general power of attorney is one; limit the clause to short engagements and exclude any recording, publishing or distribution deal and any transfer of rights.
Romano Law puts a manager’s commission at 15 to 20 per cent of gross earnings and says most agreements pay all income to the manager first, who deducts and remits; the Music Managers Forum’s deals guide starts from a 20 per cent basic commission. The alternative is money paid to you and commission paid on a statement. A sunset clause sets what is still owed after the term.

What are you actually handing over?

Working access to accounts that stay in your name, and a written authority to act for you that is limited to what a manager does. Nothing about a catalogue moves when a manager arrives — not the copyright, not the payee on any register, not the login — and the handover is a set of invitations, not a transfer.

A catalogue is not one thing in one place. It is what a dozen registers hold under your name: the recordings a distributor delivered and the codes on them, the works your PRO and The MLC have on file, the SoundExchange registration, the split sheets, the agreements. The master and the song are two copyrights, they live in different registers, and that is why “send me the catalogue” has never once meant one file. A manager’s job is to work inside those registers — pitch the release, fix the credit, chase the statement, file the claim — and every one of them was built to let a second person in without becoming that person’s.

Three things never move. Ownership: a transfer of copyright needs a signed writing, and what owning a recording gets you is a list of rights the owner exercises, on which access to a dashboard does not appear. The payee: the name each register pays is the name on the account, and the third section of this page is about keeping it yours. The credentials: the next section, because every argument for sharing them is the same argument, and the registers have already answered it. What goes in the bundle a manager needs on the first morning — the codes, the paper, the registrations — is the day-one piece, and this page names none of it.

How do you give a manager access without giving them the account?

Add the manager as a named user with their own login and a role you set, and keep the owner role on every register yourself. The day-one piece walks the mechanism register by register — ASCAP’s designated user, SOCAN’s authorized representative, SoundExchange Direct’s guest list, The MLC’s three user levels, the Spotify and Apple team roles — so this page does not repeat it. What it adds is which role you keep.

On every register there is a role above the roles: the one that hands them out. Spotify for Artists calls it Team Admin — “an optional, additional access level” whose holder can “Invite and remove team members” and “Edit team members’ access levels” — and states the consequence in one line: “Only Team Admins can change access levels.” Give the manager Admin or Editor for the work. Keep Team Admin, because it is the login that can undo everything else, and removing a team member is a click only a Team Admin makes. Apple Music for Artists puts the same power inside Admin — Admins “manage who has access to your page” — and lets more than one user hold it, so the manager can be an Admin as long as you are one too. The MLC’s Super User “is authorized to grant access to other users”; a manager who registers works is a Copyright User, a manager who reads statements is a Finance User, and the Super User is you. SoundExchange Direct’s primary contact “receives all statements and email communications” and controls the guest list; the manager is a guest, at “view with repertoire” if they file claims, and you are the contact.

Two registers the day-one piece does not name work the same way. ASCAP tightened its version in August 2026: only the main account holder can now add Account Administrators or give any designated user permission to change bank information, and every existing designated user had to be re-authorised by the holder or see their access lapse — the register itself deciding that the role above the roles belongs to the member. BMI calls it Third Party Permissions, under Account Settings in BMI Online Services: “This allows authorized users to log in with their own credentials while still being able to view and manage your account.” And YouTube, which is a register in the sense that matters because it pays, runs channel permissions from Owner down through Manager, Editor and Viewer and states why the feature exists: granting permissions “is safer than sharing your password or other sensitive sign in details.” A Manager can manage permissions and cannot delete the channel. Only the Owner can, and the next section is about why that matters.

Every one of those registers built the invite so that nobody would ever have to hand over a password, and the argument for handing one over anyway — quicker, simpler, we are all on the same team — can go to hell. An invite is a form. A password is the account.

The distributor is the account that never gets a second key. One distributor says in its own help centre that an account is designed for one person, one email and one password — the day-one piece quotes the sentence in full — and no page read for this one describes roles at any other. So the login stays with you, and the manager gets what you export from inside it: the release list with its codes, and the statements, which is the packet that piece lists.

Whose name goes on the account?

Yours, on every account that pays, reports or takes instructions about your catalogue: the account holder is who each register pays and talks to. Two facts decide it. The register pays the name on the account, and the register takes instructions from the name on the account.

SoundExchange says both out loud. Its primary contact “does not have to be the artist or rights owner the account is registered to — it could be a financial advisor, business manager, or anyone the registrant deems fit for the role,” and the day-one piece read that sentence as a question of access. Read it as a question of payee: the primary contact is the person every statement goes to, and the same organisation keeps a closed list of who it will pay on which a manager does not appear, so a primary contact who is your manager receives every statement about money that can only ever be paid to you. Stay the contact. Make the manager a guest. ASCAP draws the payee line in its rules: a living member may assign royalties to repay an advance or loan, to a company at least 95 per cent owned by ASCAP writer members, to a living trust, or to family, a non-profit or a charity — and a manager is none of those. The writer member is you, the PRO pays the writer’s share to the writer, and the manager is a designated user.

The MLC’s Member is the person or entity authorised to administer the works and to receive the royalties. Authorised to administer is a publisher or an administrator, a manager is neither unless you have signed a publishing agreement that makes them one, and on your own Member account they are a user. The distributor account is the one that gets forgotten. A distributor holds a licence to deliver your recordings, and the party to that licence, the holder of the wallet it pays into and the person who can order a takedown is the account that delivered the release. A manager who puts your record out through their own label account has made themselves that party — the money reports to them, the takedown is theirs to order, and the codes may be assigned under their prefix, which is a page this site already had to write. Deliver from your account. Add the manager to it if your distributor allows that, and hand them the export if it does not.

One distributor feature pays a manager directly by design. DistroKid’s Splits “can split earnings from any song or album and automatically send those earnings to other DistroKid users. You can add your collaborators, producers, bandmates, managers and more, and we’ll send earnings to them directly.” The producer-points piece used that page for the arithmetic; what matters here is the mechanism. A split is a commission taken at source, release by release, at a percentage you typed once, and it keeps paying after the agreement ends until somebody edits it. If you use it for a manager, it is a decision to write down and a date to put in the calendar.

Then the profile pages, where the name on the account is whoever got there first. Apple assigns Admin to “the artist or artist manager who first gains access to a page,” and the day-one piece read the order of that sentence from the manager’s side. Spotify’s page says what the order costs from yours: “You can’t request to join a claimed team. If your team has already been claimed, ask the team’s Admin to invite you.” If the manager claimed the profile first, the person asking permission to enter their own page is you. Claim it yourself, before the first release if you can, and invite the manager in.

YouTube is the sharpest case. The Owner “can do everything on all platforms,” including “delete the channel” and “manage permissions,” and “can’t transfer ownership to other users.” A role that cannot be handed on and can delete everything is not a permission. It is a crown. Create the channel from your own Google account, make the manager a Manager, and never the other way round.

What can a manager sign for you?

Only what the management agreement’s power-of-attorney clause lets them sign, and that clause should cover short engagements and nothing that transfers a right. Everything else a manager does — the email, the pitch, the phone call — needs no authority at all.

A power of attorney is the clause that turns a manager’s signature into yours. Romano Law’s guide to the agreement puts it in one sentence: “A power of attorney clause will allow a manager to make binding decisions on the artist’s behalf.” The reason it belongs on a page about control rather than a page about contracts is three pieces long. A transfer of copyright needs a signed writing. A signature binds when the person giving it had the authority to, and an agent under a general power has it. So a manager with an unlimited power of attorney can sign the label deal you have not read, the publishing agreement that makes somebody else The MLC’s Member for your songs, or the assignment that takes thirty-five years to undo — and every one of those signatures is yours in law.

Limit it, in writing, and this is our recommendation rather than a rule anyone has written down. A limited power of attorney lists what it covers: performance agreements and appearances under a stated value, the paperwork of a booking, endorsing cheques payable to you for career income into an account in your name. It carries a ceiling, in dollars or in months. And it says, in a sentence, what it excludes: any recording, publishing, distribution or management agreement, any assignment or exclusive licence of any right, and anything that binds you past the term. A manager who needs more than that for a specific deal can ask for it for that deal, with your signature on the ask.

The clause arrives inside a longer document, and the longer document is the hour a music lawyer is for; what the hour buys is somebody who has seen the clause before, reading yours against the three sentences above.

Where does the money go, and who takes the commission out?

Each register pays its registrant, which is you, and the commission is the percentage the agreement names, deducted by whoever the agreement says collects. The percentage is the smallest fact in the clause. What it is a percentage of, and whose hands it passes through first, are the clause.

Two sources state the number, and this page states neither as its own. The Music Managers Forum’s Management Deals Guide describes the range of deals its members negotiate “from a 20% basic commission, through to a whole range of varying arrangements for increased service provisions.” Romano Law: “Managers typically receive 15% to 20% of the artist’s gross earnings (before any expenses are deducted),” with the deductions — recording costs, payments to producers, co-writers’ shares — a matter of what the agreement lists. What gross excludes is the definitions clause and the lawyer’s hour, and what a label deal does to the base before any commission is calculated is its own page.

The sentence that decides control is the one about collection. Romano Law again: “Most manager agreements will specify that all of an artist’s income is paid to the manager first, who will deduct his or her commission and then pay the balance to the artist.” Read that the way it will feel in month four: you are on a salary from your own catalogue.

That clause is a reasonable thing to agree and an unreasonable thing to inherit. The alternative is the ordinary one: the money is paid to you, and you pay the commission against a statement both of you can read. Where a manager genuinely has to collect — a promoter who will only pay one party — the account it lands in is one you can both see, and the commission comes off on a statement, not on the way past. Half of this is already enforced for you. SoundExchange pays the featured artist and the recording’s owner, and its short list of who may stand in for them does not include a manager; your PRO pays the writer’s share to the writer; The MLC pays its Member. The registers that will not pay a manager are the reason a paid-first clause never quite means all income, whatever it says, and the reason a manager who wants everything to run through one account is asking for something the registers were built to refuse.

How do you take it back when the manager leaves?

Remove the manager’s user everywhere, change the email and password on any account they held, revoke the authority in writing, and read the sunset clause. Do it the day the term ends, in that order, and it is an afternoon.

Remove first, because it is the step that needs nobody’s cooperation. Every register above lets the holder do it alone: Apple, “remove users at any time”; SoundExchange, guests removed “at any time”; SOCAN, permissions “modified at any time”; The MLC, from the Super User’s permissions page; Spotify, one click for a Team Admin; ASCAP, “the member can change or delete permissions for a DU at any time” — and ASCAP’s help page carries the sentence this whole section is: “If you ever change teams, you should consider changing your designated users as well.” Consider is a soft word. Change them.

Change the email before the password, on any account the manager held rather than joined. BMI’s FAQ has an entry for this — “The email on my account is not mine, but belongs to someone on my team, how do I change that?” — and the existence of the entry is the point: an account whose email is somebody else’s is an account whose every password reset lands in an inbox you do not own. That is every key to your catalogue on one ring, in one pocket, and the pocket is not yours. Email first, then password, then the invite that makes the manager a user again if the relationship continues on new terms.

The register the manager built leaves with you, not with them. The spreadsheet of codes, the folder of paper, the notes on which register holds what — the fields that make it a register are their own page — was built about your catalogue, out of your codes, and the day the term ends it is the first file you ask for, in a format you can open without them. A manager who kept it in their own tool hands over an export; a manager who kept it in yours hands over nothing, because it was never theirs to hold.

Revoke the power of attorney in writing, and tell anyone it reached — the agent, the promoter, the distributor — that it is revoked; a counterparty who was never told is a counterparty the old signature still works on. Then read the sunset clause, because it is the one part of the agreement still running. Romano Law: “A sunset clause reduces the percentage commission the manager is entitled to down to zero, typically over a three-to-five-year period after the contract term ends,” on earnings from work connected with the manager during the term. Erin M. Jacobson, a music lawyer writing in 2016, describes the other shape — sunset commissions at the full rate and sometimes “in perpetuity, which means forever” — and her sentence is the reason the clause is read before signing: “an artist should not be paying a manager his/her full commission rate forever when the manager is not currently working for the artist anymore.”

Do it in the order the registers pay — the distributor, SoundExchange, the PRO, The MLC — and then the profile pages, and export the statements while the login still works. Then run the audit, which already says when: before anything moves, and a new manager is the first thing on its list. The next one gets an invitation. That is the whole method, and it fits on one line: everything in your name, everyone else a role.

FAQ

Should my manager be an Admin on Spotify for Artists?

Give the manager Admin or Editor for the work — pitching, the profile, campaigns — and keep Team Admin, the separate level that invites and removes members, on your own login. Spotify’s own line is that only Team Admins can change access levels, so the login holding it is the one that can undo everything else.

Can my royalties be paid to my manager directly?

Not by SoundExchange, whose stated list of who it will pay does not include a manager; not by ASCAP, whose rules list the assignments a living member may make and a manager is not among them; and yes, at source, by a distributor split such as DistroKid’s, which pays a named percentage of a release’s earnings to whoever you name until you change it.

What if my manager already has all the logins?

Change the email on each account to yours, reset the passwords, and then invite the manager back as a user with a role. That is the same order ASCAP imposed on every member in August 2026, when it made the main account holder re-authorise every designated user or see the access lapse.

Does a manager keep earning after we part?

Only what the sunset clause says: commonly a commission on income from deals made during the term, tapering to zero over three to five years, and sometimes the full rate with no end date. It is the one clause still running after the term, which is why it is read before signing and not after.

Sources

Spotify for Artists, Access levels in Spotify for Artists — the Admin, Editor and Reader table; payment methods as Admin-only; Team Admin as “an optional, additional access level” that can invite and remove members, edit access levels and see team activity; “Only Team Admins can change access levels.”
Spotify for Artists, Getting access to Spotify for Artists — “You can’t request to join a claimed team. If your team has already been claimed, ask the team’s Admin to invite you”; requests reviewed manually over a few days; one active request per artist profile.
Spotify for Artists, Removing team members from Spotify for Artists — for Team Admins, at manage.spotify.com/teams or in the app.
Apple Music for Artists, Manage users on your account — “The artist or artist manager who first gains access to a page is assigned the Admin role”; the Admin, Analyst and Profile Editor roles; “Remove users at any time”; Label Rep requests expiring after 30 days.
YouTube Help, Add or remove access to your YouTube channel with channel permissions — granting permissions “is safer than sharing your password or other sensitive sign in details”; the Owner who “can do everything on all platforms,” can delete the channel and “can’t transfer ownership to other users”; the Manager who can manage permissions and cannot delete the channel.
ASCAP Help Center, My ASCAP Membership — the answers sit in a collapsed list on one page, so it is linked once: “What’s the difference between a designated representative and designated user?”; “Can I give someone else viewing or editing access to my Member Access account?”; “How do I assign a designated user on my account?”, with “If you ever change teams, you should consider changing your designated users as well”; “I hear ASCAP made changes that impact designated users. What changed?” and the August 2026 rules on Account Administrators, bank-information permissions and re-authorisation by December 10, 2026; “Can I assign my ASCAP royalties to someone else or an organization?” and its list of permitted assignments.
BMI Creators FAQ, How do I grant someone access to my BMI account? — Third Party Permissions in BMI Online Services; “This allows authorized users to log in with their own credentials while still being able to view and manage your account”; and the neighbouring entry “The email on my account is not mine, but belongs to someone on my team, how do I change that?”
SOCAN, Authorized Representatives — the definition, the examples, member-selected permissions “which can be modified at any time,” the backup documentation, and “Without a complete authorized representative application from the member, SOCAN will not accept direction from anyone other than the member.”
The MLC Help Center, New Member Checklist: Adding a User — the opening question about adding a manager or assistant; the Super User, Finance User and Copyright User permissions.
The MLC Help Center, What is a user? How do I create a user account? — a Member as “the person or entity that is authorized to administer musical works and receive digital audio mechanical royalties related to their use,” and a user added by a Super User limited to the permissions assigned.
SoundExchange, Primary & Guest Access in SoundExchange Direct: Everything You Need to Know (dated 2020-11-24 in its address) — the primary contact who administers the account, receives all statements and need not be the artist; guest access for up to 50 guests, removable at any time, at “view only” or “view with repertoire.”
DistroKid Help Center, Using Splits To Pay Your Collaborators Automatically (updated 2026-01-26) — “You can add your collaborators, producers, bandmates, managers and more, and we’ll send earnings to them directly”; collaborators see only their own percentage; splits changeable at any time. Read through the help centre’s article API, because its pages refuse automated reads.
Music Managers Forum, Managing Expectations: Management Deals Guide — the landing page’s description of deals “from a 20% basic commission, through to a whole range of varying arrangements for increased service provisions.” The guide itself sits behind an email form and is not cited.
Romano Law, Key Contract Terms for Musicians and Managers (2024-11-14) — the power of attorney clause; 15 to 20 per cent of gross earnings; “Most manager agreements will specify that all of an artist’s income is paid to the manager first”; the sunset clause tapering to zero over three to five years.
Erin M. Jacobson, Key Clauses in Management Agreements Part 3: Sunset Commissions (2016-06-03) — sunset commissions at the full rate and sometimes “in perpetuity, which means forever,” and the sentence on why an artist should not pay a manager who has stopped working for them.

Every page cited here was read on the date at the top of this piece. ASCAP’s and BMI’s help pages refuse automated readers and were read in a browser; DistroKid’s was read through its help centre’s article interface. The roles, permissions and limits on this page are each platform’s own words, and a platform can change them; the commission figures are two sources’ figures, attributed to them, and this page adds no range of its own. The limited power of attorney and the alternative to the paid-first clause are our recommendations, stated as such. Nothing here is legal advice about an agreement in front of you: the clauses are described as a law firm’s guide and a lawyer’s article describe them, and a lawyer is the person who reads yours.

Keeping the register

The register a manager needs to read is the same one you needed before they arrived — every release, every code, every party with an IPI beside the name, every split and the agreement behind it. CatalogTracker keeps it on your phone, where the company’s servers never see it, and exports it as a file: a JSON snapshot that restores completely, or a flat CSV for a spreadsheet. That is the handover — a copy the manager receives while you keep the original — and it is the only kind the app supports. It has no shared account, no user roles and no way to give anyone access to it, which on this page is a feature. In development for iPhone.