When an artist's manager offers a brand free use of an unreleased song, it can feel like the campaign wrote itself. The music is right, the artist is enthusiastic, and the price is difficult to dispute.

It's also the beginning of a process that tends to be more complicated than it appears, because acting on the artist's word alone can create serious problems down the line.

The artist's enthusiasm is real. Their authority may not be.

When an artist is signed to a label, that label typically owns or controls the recording rights to material created during the term of that contract, including unreleased recordings. The artist may have written the song, recorded it, and genuinely believes they have the right to offer it to a brand. Even their manager may think this is the case. In many cases, they don't. At least not on their own.

Synchronization rights for a signed artist's recordings require label and publisher approval. That's true whether the song has been commercially released or not. An artist telling a brand "you can use my song" is not a license. It's an expression of intent from someone who may not have the authority to grant what they're offering.

This is not a criticism of the artist or their team. Many artists, particularly earlier in their careers, are not yet fully versed in the rights structure of their own recording contracts when it comes to branded sync use. The artist's management team, whose focus is often on building momentum and excitement around an upcoming release, may not yet have deep familiarity with sync rights either. The offer comes from a genuine desire to support a brand they believe in, and it is made in good faith on all sides. But good faith doesn't substitute for a properly executed license.

What label approval actually involves

Once a brand identifies that label approval is required, the process moves to the label and publisher reps who clear music for sync use.

For an unreleased song, the label(s) and publisher(s) need to "ingest" the song, which involves careful review of the final recording and composition before any license can be issued. Specifically, they need to confirm that the recording and composition are clean from a rights perspective. That means verifying things like:

For released catalog, much of this work has already been done as part of the release process. For unreleased material, it may not have been.

A song can be fully mixed and mastered while still having unresolved rights questions the rights holders need to work through before issuing a sync license.

Why "free" is rarely the full picture

When an artist offers a brand use of their song at no cost, that offer reflects their own motivation. They may genuinely want the exposure, believe in the brand, or simply want to do something good for a relationship they value. That motivation is real. But it doesn't extend to every party whose approval is required.

Major labels operate as businesses with real overhead. Issuing a sync license involves internal legal review, licensing paperwork, and formal registration of the use, costs the label incurs regardless of what fee is ultimately charged. More fundamentally, a label signs artists because their creative output is an asset the label intends to leverage. The label's interest in that catalog is financial, and they do not share the same motivations the artist may have when making the offer.

That said, the artist is not without influence. As an approval party on the shares of the song they control, an artist can advocate for a lower fee, and may genuinely have the clout to move their label in that direction. They may also be able to work behind the scenes to encourage fellow songwriters and co-writers to approve use of their publishing shares at minimal cost. Where the artist has relationships and standing, that support can matter.

Where it tends not to reach is third-party samples. If the recording contains samples from artists or labels that the signing artist has no relationship with, those rights holders have no reason to extend the same goodwill. They will assess the request on its own terms, and the outcome will reflect their own interests. A song that is otherwise clearable at low cost can become significantly more expensive once the sample landscape is fully understood.

The sample problem

Uncleared samples are one of the most common complications that emerge during a business affairs review of an unreleased track. A producer may have built the beat around a sample that was never formally cleared. In the context of an album release, this might be caught and addressed during the label's standard pre-release review. But if a sync request arrives before that process has run its course, the sample issue becomes the brand's problem too.

If a brand runs a campaign using a recording that contains an uncleared sample that is later identified by its own original rights holders, the brand can be exposed to claims that have nothing to do with their relationship with the artist or the label. The rights holder of the sampled work is a separate party, and their claim exists independently of whatever license the brand obtained for the song it thought it was using.

This is one of the reasons why a label's business affairs review of an unreleased recording is not a formality. It's a necessary step that protects everyone involved, including the brand.

The publishing side is a separate conversation

Label approval covers the recording. The publishing rights to the underlying composition are a separate matter, controlled by the songwriter's publisher. For signed artists, the recording label and the publishing entity are often different companies, even if they share a parent corporation.

If the song was co-written, each co-writer's share of the publishing may be controlled by a different publisher. All approval parties need to sign off on the sync use. A co-writer who is enthusiastic about the campaign has no more authority to grant the publishing license on behalf of their co-writers than the artist has to grant the recording license on behalf of the label.

In practice, this means a brand pursuing an unreleased song from a signed artist is typically managing at least two parallel approval processes: one with the label's business affairs department for the recording, and one or more with the relevant publishers for the composition.

Timeline implications

Unreleased material takes longer to clear than released catalog. The label's internal review process for an unreleased recording adds time that doesn't exist when a song has already been through the label's release pipeline. If songwriter or sample issues surface during that review, resolution takes additional time on top of that.

A brand that receives an offer from an artist's manager and assumes the clearance will be straightforward because the artist is supportive may find that the campaign timeline doesn't accommodate what the label process actually requires. The offer from the manager is the beginning of the clearance process, not a shortcut through the process.

When free use genuinely works

It's worth being clear that best case scenarios do exist. There are situations where an offer of free music for a campaign is exactly what it appears to be, and where it proves sound.

The conditions that make this possible are specific: a single songwriter who wrote the song entirely on their own, with no samples, and no recording or publishing contract with a third party. In that situation, the artist owns everything outright. They can grant a sync license on their own authority, set their own fee, and, critically, offer to indemnify the brand if any claims arise from the use. That indemnification is what gives the offer real legal weight: it means the artist is standing behind their representation that the rights are clean and that they have the authority to grant them.

This scenario is rare in the context of branded use. The music that tends to attract brand interest is music that has found an audience, and music that has found an audience has usually passed through a label deal, a publishing agreement, a co-write, or some combination of all three. The fully independent artist who controls every element of a song that is also genuinely right for a campaign exists, but is not the most common starting point for these conversations.

When it does apply, it's a genuinely straightforward situation. The work is in confirming that it applies, which means asking the right questions before assuming it does.

What to do when the opportunity arises

When a brand is offered access to an unreleased song by an artist or their manager, the right first step is to identify who actually controls the rights. That means determining which label the artist is signed to, which business affairs department handles sync requests, and which publisher or publishers control the composition. This is not always straightforward, and getting it wrong at the outset delays everything that follows.

From there, the clearance process involves outreach, negotiation, and documentation across multiple parties simultaneously, each with their own timelines, approval chains, and requirements. Labels respond more efficiently to requests that are well-organized, clearly scoped, and arrive through channels they recognize. That recognition matters. A clearance partner with established label and publisher relationships doesn't just know who to call. They know how to frame a request, what information to lead with, and how to navigate the internal dynamics that determine whether a request moves quickly or stalls.

The artist's enthusiasm for the campaign is genuinely valuable. It signals that the label is likely to encounter a cooperative artist when the sync request arrives, which can smooth the internal approval process. But enthusiasm is not a license, and goodwill from the artist doesn't transfer to every party whose signature is required. Treating a promising conversation with a manager as a cleared deal is where campaigns run into serious trouble.

The earlier an experienced licensing partner is involved, the more options are available and the less likely the campaign is to be caught off guard by what the process actually requires.