Questions to resolve before booking
Use these prompts to prepare an agreement for appropriate local legal review; they are not a ready-to-sign contract.
- Who is hiring whom, and who has authority to approve the work?
- What files, services, revision rounds and deadlines are included?
- When are payments due, and what happens if either party cancels or changes scope?
- Who retains or receives which rights, when do those rights change, and can either party use the work in a portfolio?
A written agreement helps both parties understand the work before money and music change hands. It cannot prevent every dispute, but it gives you a shared record of scope, payment and rights. This is general preparation guidance, not a contract template or legal advice; obtain advice appropriate to your jurisdiction.
The clauses that matter
- Scope: exactly what you're delivering — how many songs, mix or master or both, stems or just the printed file.
- Price and payment terms: the total, the deposit, and when the balance is due.
- Revisions: how many rounds are included, and what additional rounds cost.
- Timeline: your turnaround, and what's expected from the client (files, references, feedback) to hit it.
- Rights and credit: who owns what on delivery, and how you'd like to be credited.
- Kill fee: what happens if the project is cancelled after you've started.
Tie payment to delivery
The cleanest contracts make the money and the music line up: a deposit to start, and the final file released on final payment. You don't need aggressive terms when the deliverable itself is the leverage — the client previews the work and unlocks the master when the invoice clears.
Most "difficult client" stories are really "undefined scope" stories. Write it down and most of them never happen.
Levels Flow lets you send a branded quote that captures scope and price, convert it to an invoice, and gate the final master behind payment — so the agreement and the delivery live in the same place.