Estate, Legacy & Catalog Succession
Your lawyer protects an artist's catalog and income for the people who come after them, before and after they pass.
What This Covers
If your music makes money while you're alive, it can keep paying long after you're gone — but only if you set it up so the income actually reaches the people you love. Your catalog is property: masters, publishing, copyrights, performance royalties, beat-lease income, even the unreleased files on your drive. Under current U.S. law those rights can pay out for your lifetime plus 70 years. The catch is that none of it transfers automatically. With no plan, a catalog can get stuck in probate, fought over by relatives, or quietly collected by a label while your family never learns the money exists.
Your lawyer draws up the will or trust that names who inherits and controls your rights, so income can flow privately instead of crawling through court. They formally appoint the executor or administrator, transfer copyright registrations, and review any licensing offer or catalog-sale deal before anyone signs. They handle your post-mortem publicity rights — your name, image, and voice — which vary by state and have to be passed on purpose, and they push back on unauthorized uses and AI voice clones.
Why It Matters to You
Royalties don't collect themselves. If no one is registered as the correct payee with your PRO, distributor, SoundExchange, and publisher, the money can sit unclaimed in "black box" accounts nobody knows to check. Prince died without a will and his estate spent years and millions sorting it in court; Aretha Franklin's family fought over handwritten wills for years.
Clear planning now — a catalog inventory, current split sheets, named beneficiaries, and rights passed deliberately — is how you keep heirs and labels from fighting later, and how you make sure a catalog sale is priced fairly instead of grabbed for a lowball flat fee. You built something that outlives you. This is how it reaches the right hands.
The Services We Offer
The Estate, Legacy & Catalog Succession services Done Deal Digital offers, performed by a licensed attorney you engage directly.
Catalog Estate Planning
Your lawyer sets up who inherits and controls your music rights and royalties so your catalog passes cleanly to your heirs.
Deceased-Artist Rights Administration
Your lawyer helps an estate or family manage, license, and collect on a late artist's catalog correctly.
Heir Royalty & Rights Disputes
Your lawyer resolves fights among heirs or with labels over who controls and collects from a catalog.
Post-Mortem Publicity & Likeness Rights
Your lawyer protects and licenses a deceased artist's name and image, which in many states remain valuable and controllable after death.
Catalog Sale & Valuation Counsel
Your lawyer advises and papers the sale of a music catalog so the family or artist gets a fair, well-structured deal.
Prefer to learn it yourself first? Get the Estate, Legacy & Catalog Succession guide — $39 →
Start With a Free, No-Pressure Intro
Tell us what you're dealing with - a contract, a copyright, a name dispute, a bad deal - and we'll connect you with the right music lawyer. You'll engage and pay the attorney directly under their own agreement. Done Deal Digital is not a law firm and never collects or shares in any legal fee.
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DONE DEAL DIGITAL IS NOT A LAW FIRM and does not provide legal advice or legal services. Nothing on this page is legal advice.
The legal services described here are provided solely by an independent attorney licensed in California, whom Done Deal Digital connects clients with. Done Deal Digital does not employ, supervise, or control that attorney and is not responsible for the legal services provided.
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