ACME IDEA CORP

What to do when a collaborator dies or becomes unreachable

77 · · 18 min read · Español

A collaborator’s death or disappearance changes who you deal with, not who owns what. Their share of the song and of the master stays theirs — passing to their estate if they have died, waiting for them if they are missing — and your own share keeps paying you through your own registrations. What changes is who can sign for theirs: an estate’s representative holding a court’s paper, or, while they are missing, nobody at all.

  • When a co-writer dies, their share of the copyright passes to their estate by will or by the law of intestate succession. Your own share and your own registrations do not change.
  • The estate’s personal representative signs for the share: an executor named in a will, or an administrator a court appoints, each proved by a court document such as letters testamentary or an Ontario certificate of appointment.
  • BMI freezes a deceased writer’s account and ASCAP pays nothing until it appoints a successor, so a dead writer’s royalties wait for the heirs to apply. Royalties nobody claims can be sent to a state as unclaimed property.
  • A release delivered through the dead person’s distributor account depends on that account. DistroKid removes music when a subscription is not renewed; of DistroKid, TuneCore and CD Baby, only CD Baby publishes a procedure for a successor.
  • A missing co-writer’s share never becomes yours. In the United States you can license the song non-exclusively and hold their share; in Canada the Copyright Board can license a missing owner’s share to a user who searched.

What happens to a collaborator’s share when they die?

A collaborator’s share passes to their estate by will or by intestate succession, and your own share of the song does not change.

The US Copyright Act says it in one sentence. Section 201(d)(1): ownership of a copyright “may be bequeathed by will or pass as personal property by the applicable laws of intestate succession.” The sentence covers any copyright, so a bandmate’s share of a master passes the same way as a co-writer’s share of the song. SOCAN puts the Canadian version from the society’s side: “While authorship of your copyright will never change, the beneficiary of your royalties can.” The writer is still the writer. The cheque goes somewhere else.

Nothing about your half moved. The law split the song between its writers when it was written, whether or not anybody signed anything, and what that default split is does not change because one of the people inside it has died. Your registrations at your society, The MLC and SoundExchange keep paying you on your share. There is nothing to file for your own money.

What did change is the other side of every conversation about the song. For as long as the estate is open, the person you deal with is whoever acts for it. After that, it is whoever inherited the share, and that may be one person or six.

Who signs for a collaborator who has died?

The estate’s personal representative signs: the executor a will names or an administrator a court appoints, and, once the estate is settled, the heir.

That person is proved by a court’s paper, not by a family’s word. New York’s court system describes the pair: “If there is a will, the person named in the will as the executor will be appointed to handle the estate proceeding by letters testamentary … If there is no will, a person who qualifies under the laws of intestacy may be appointed to serve as the administrator by letters of administration.” Ontario’s government is blunter: “In Ontario, an estate trustee is the only person with the legal authority to manage or distribute an estate,” and the certificate of appointment is what gives the trustee that authority. The names of the documents differ by state and province.

Which things need that signature depends on the border, and the rules are the same ones that apply to any co-owner who will not sign. In the United States, an exclusive licence needs every co-owner, a transfer needs a signed writing, and a registered share does not come down without written authorization; all three are on the page about a collaborator who won’t sign, with their sources. In Canada, licensing a jointly owned song at all generally needs every co-owner, so the estate’s representative is in every licence you grant.

Our rule, for the moment somebody offers to sign: ask who the representative is, and ask to see the paper. A relative who means well and holds no letters cannot sign for the share, however close they were, and a licence signed without the paper is a licence signed by nobody. If the share is worth real money, or the family disagrees about who inherited it, that is a job for a lawyer in the estate’s jurisdiction, and it is a short job compared with undoing a licence the wrong person signed.

How does a writer’s share keep getting paid after they die?

Each society pays a dead writer’s heirs only after they apply: ASCAP appoints a successor, BMI signs an heir’s agreement, SOCAN pays the will’s beneficiaries.

Until somebody applies, the money waits. ASCAP “relies upon survivors of deceased members to advise ASCAP of the date of death,” and its application to succeed a deceased writer is notarised, costs $75, asks for the death certificate, the will and the letters testamentary, and says: “No royalties will be distributed and no confidential membership information will be released until a successor is officially appointed.” It also warns the process “may take several months.” ASCAP accepts no beneficiary forms, so nothing a writer filed in life skips the queue.

BMI goes further. Its estates page: “When BMI learns that an affiliate has died, the affiliate’s account is frozen to protect the proceeds of the catalog. No money will be paid out thereafter until we enter into an agreement with the affiliate’s estate representative or the affiliate’s heirs.” The application costs $250 per account and needs the death certificate, any will and any trust documents, and BMI says the agreement “can take up to nine months.” In Canada, SOCAN asks for a notarised copy of the death certificate and the letters probate or certificate of estate trustee, and where nothing was probated it provides a letter of declaration, direction and indemnity for the beneficiaries to sign.

The recording side has its own door. SoundExchange pays performer money to, among a short list, “Legitimate heirs, trusts, and estates of deceased featured performers,” and runs a registration page for heirs and estate representatives where a staff member takes over. The MLC publishes nothing about a member who has died, so this page says nothing about what it does.

Then the clock, which is the reason any of this is your business. BMI sends unclaimed money to the state of the payee’s last known address on a cycle it describes as “usually 3-5 years,” and once it is sent, “Royalties, once escheated, cannot be reclaimed by BMI.” The same page carries the sentence worth passing on to the family: “We will not escheat any money earned by a decedent’s works if we have been contacted by at least one heir.” ASCAP remits unclaimed royalties under state unclaimed-property law and cannot retrieve them afterwards. Where that money ends up, and how anybody gets it back, is the black-box page.

You cannot apply for them, and you should not try. What you can do is the thing the family is least likely to know: which societies the writer belonged to, which songs are registered where, and the numbers each society uses to find them. You may well know the catalogue better than anyone in the family does. A list of titles with each writer’s IPI number beside them turns an heir’s first phone call to a society from a search into a match.

What happens to a release on a dead collaborator’s distributor account?

A release delivered through a dead collaborator’s account depends on that account. Of DistroKid, TuneCore and CD Baby, only CD Baby publishes a procedure for a successor.

A release lives where it was delivered from, and the account that delivered it is the party to the distributor’s licence, the wallet it pays into and the only one that can change it. When that account belonged to the person who died, three companies give three answers.

DistroKid: “If you don’t renew your subscription to DistroKid, your music will be removed from services.” The exception is a release carrying the Leave a Legacy extra, which stays up after “a lapsed membership payment” and after a cancelled subscription; it is bought per release, $29 for a single and $49 for an album, once. DistroKid’s help centre says nothing about a member who has died, and “it is not possible to move releases between DistroKid accounts.” What it can move is money: Splits can send “100% (or any percent) of earnings” from a track to another account.

TuneCore publishes nothing about a member who has died either. Its only route between accounts is the owner’s: “The account owner can change the email address/password associated with the TuneCore account,” which hands over every album in it. CD Baby is the exception, and its page is short: “If the account holder has passed away, we can help the appropriate successor take over the management of content.” It asks for verification of the death — a certificate, an official notice, or a link to an obituary — and a statement from the authorised successor. And Spotify for Artists publishes nothing about an artist who has died; the closest route it does publish is the one for a lost login: “If you were the only admin on your team, contact us.”

So find out, this week, whose account each shared release is on, and when that account renews. A renewal date nobody knows about is the only deadline on this page that is set by a billing system.

The opposite case is quieter and goes wrong more often. The account is yours, and their share of the money is in Splits. DistroKid holds an unaccepted share “aside for them,” and if you cancel the invitation, the earnings set aside “will come back to you.” TuneCore pays an unaccepted split to the person who created it and makes paying it on “the Splits Creator’s responsibility.” Either way the money lands in your bank. It is still theirs, owed to their estate or held for their return, and a button that hands it to you does not change whose it is.

What can you do when a collaborator cannot be found?

In the United States, license the song non-exclusively and hold the missing writer’s share. In Canada, a licence generally needs them, and the Copyright Board can license their share to the user.

The US half is the ordinary co-owner rule. Any co-owner can release the song and grant non-exclusive licences without the others, owing them an accounting of their share of the profits — the rule, its cases and its limits are on the page about a refusal, and they are identical when the other writer is simply gone. What is different is that there is nobody to pay. So hold it: their share on its own line in your books, every payment in and out dated, nothing spent.

Silence does not end the duty to account, and a writer who reappears can ask for one. Odysseus came home after twenty years to a hall full of strangers eating his cattle. Yours should come home to a spreadsheet.

The Canadian half is a block with a door in it. Licensing a jointly owned song generally needs every co-owner, so a missing one stops the licence. Section 77 of the Copyright Act lets the Copyright Board issue a licence to use a published work when “the applicant has made reasonable efforts to locate the owner of the copyright and that the owner cannot be located,” and the Board’s guidance covers exactly the song with several owners: “If one of them is locatable, you must obtain permission to use the work from them. You can then apply for a licence with the Copyright Board to cover the remaining unlocatable owner(s).” The licence is non-exclusive, valid only in Canada, and costs nothing to apply for, though the Board may set royalties for the use. Read as written, the applicant is the user — the film, the ad, the label — holding your permission. The guidance does not say whether a co-owner may apply on their own behalf, and this page does not guess.

One sentence in that guidance draws the line between this page and the one about a refusal: “A licence cannot be issued if the owner has been located but cannot be reached, does not respond to permission requests, or refuses to grant permission.” Missing means nobody can find them. Found and silent is a refusal with the volume turned down, and it is handled as one.

How hard do you have to look?

You have to look hard enough to convince a stranger, and the Copyright Board’s guidance is the most specific published standard for what that means.

The Board issues a licence “only if the applicant has done their best, in the circumstances, to locate the copyright owner,” and it says where to start: “a general web search. This may include: search engines such as Google, online databases such as Wikipedia, and people search sites such as Facebook and LinkedIn.” A federal tribunal’s first instruction for finding a missing rights holder is to check LinkedIn.

Then it gets more specific, and the rest of the list is the part that matters for a song. Contact the collecting society that manages works like this one, because societies “sometimes have information about the copyright holders.” Search publishers, libraries and archives. Check the Board’s own past licences, in case somebody already looked for the same person. And where the author has died, the instruction changes: “you must try to find out who inherited the copyright or who administers the estate,” with a copy of the obituary in the application if there is one.

Add what only a collaborator would know. The publisher listed beside their name on their society’s public repertory, which often has an address when the writer does not. Their last manager, label, lawyer and booking agent. The last postal address, the last phone number, the last email that did not bounce. A letter, on paper, to the last address — slow, and exactly the kind of attempt a stranger reading your file will look for.

Write every attempt down as you make it: the date, the channel, what you sent, what came back. The page about a refusal says to document what you tried. This is what the document is, and it is the same file whether the reader is the Board, a court, a buyer’s lawyer or the writer, five years from now, asking what you did with their share.

Can a missing collaborator’s share ever become yours?

No. Only a signed writing transfers copyright, and a court’s declaration of death sends the share to the missing writer’s estate, not to the remaining co-writers.

Absence is not a way a copyright moves. In the United States a transfer of ownership needs a writing signed by the owner; Canada’s section 13(4) says no assignment “is valid unless it is in writing signed by the owner of the right … or by the owner’s duly authorized agent.” Silence signs nothing, in either country, however long it lasts.

The long silence has its own law, and it does not point at you. Ontario’s Declarations of Death Act, 2002 lets an interested person ask the Superior Court of Justice to declare a person dead when, among its conditions, “the individual has been absent for at least seven years” and nobody, “after making reasonable inquiries,” has heard from them. US states have their own versions; Arizona, for one, presumes a person dead after a continuous absence of five years that is not explained “after diligent search or inquiry.” Either way, what the order produces is an estate. The share goes into it, and the first two sections of this page start over.

BMI answers the closest version of the question on its estates page, about a family rather than a band. Asked whether the other heirs can divide the share of an heir nobody can find: “No,” the share escheats to the State of Delaware, and “It is not available to be shared among the other heirs.” The writers who stayed are in the same position as the heirs who stayed.

So do not re-register their share to yourself, however tidy it would make the paperwork. A filing that contradicts the registered split is a conflicting claim, and a conflicting claim stops the money on the whole song, including yours. If a split ever does change, it changes with everyone’s signature, in a set order — and the signature for a missing writer is the one you do not have.

What do you do this week?

List every song and recording you share with the collaborator, find who acts for them, give that person the list, and change nothing registered.

  1. Make the list. Every song and every recording with their name on it: the shares, the societies, the registration numbers, each writer’s IPI, and where any signed paper is. If some of it was never written down, what still counts as evidence is the same whether the person is gone or just cannot remember.
  2. Find the representative. Ask the family who the executor or administrator is, and ask to see the letters or the certificate before anybody signs anything. If they are missing rather than dead, start the search file instead.
  3. Give them the list. Which societies, which songs, which numbers. Mention BMI’s sentence about one heir making contact.
  4. Check the accounts. Whose distributor account each release is on, when it renews, and whether any share of the money is sitting in Splits under your name.
  5. Leave the registrations alone. License on the rule your country gives you, hold their share on its own line, and file nothing that changes the split.

And at the next session, with the people who are still in the room: a signed split sheet with every writer’s IPI on it. It will not make this easier on the day. It makes the list in step one already exist.

FAQ

Can a collaborator’s family stop you releasing the song?

In the United States, no. The estate holds a co-owner’s share, and any co-owner can grant a non-exclusive licence without the others, owing them their share of the profits. In Canada, licensing a jointly owned song generally needs every co-owner’s consent, and the estate now holds that consent.

Does the copyright end when one of the writers dies?

No. A song written jointly is protected until 70 years after the death of the last surviving writer in the United States, and until the end of the 70th calendar year after that death in Canada. The share of the writer who died runs for the same term as everyone else’s.

Who can terminate a grant the dead writer signed?

In the United States, the writer’s widow or widower, children and grandchildren own the termination interest, and the executor owns it only when none of them is living. In Canada, an assignment the writer made other than by will stops conveying anything 25 years after their death, and the rights revert to their estate.

Sources

Every page cited here was read on 5 October 2026. BMI’s pages refuse automated reads and were read in a browser; its estates page gives “up to six months” for the heir’s agreement in one paragraph and “up to nine months” in its FAQ, and this page quotes the longer. The three distributors’ help centres were read through their own article services, which return the same text with its last-updated date; DistroKid’s and TuneCore’s say nothing about a member who has died. The MLC publishes nothing about a member who has died. Estate law is state and provincial law, and the documents and the timelines differ by jurisdiction; New York, Ontario and Arizona are examples, not the rule everywhere. None of this is legal advice: where an estate holds a share worth money, or the family disagrees about who inherited it, a lawyer in the estate’s jurisdiction reads the paper with you.

Keeping the register

Step one asks for a list that is far easier to keep than to rebuild. CatalogTracker keeps it before that day: every collaborator as a party with their legal name, IPI and PRO beside it; master and publishing splits per track, totalling 100%; the signed agreement uploaded against the recordings it covers, with a content hash; and a history of every change, with who made it. It notifies nobody, contacts no estate and holds no royalties. It holds the list. In development for iPhone.