AI clauses to look for in a producer agreement.

Producer agreements drawn up since AI tools arrived in studios often deal with them in a single line that is easy to miss. These are the clauses to find before you sign.

Rights to train

Look for wording that lets the producer, or anyone they license to, use the recordings, stems or your vocal to train a machine learning model. It is sometimes hidden inside a broad grant of rights “in any media now known or hereafter devised”. Ask for a clear exclusion: no training, fine tuning or prompting of any AI system with your performance without your separate written consent.

Voice and likeness

A model trained on your vocal can produce new performances that sound like you. The agreement should say that nobody may create a synthetic copy of your voice or likeness from the session, and that any later use needs a separate agreement with its own fee and your approval of each use.

Stems and session files

Stems are the raw material for training and for soundalikes. Agree who keeps them, where they are stored, and that they are not shared with third parties beyond the mixing and mastering engineers working on the record.

Disclosure of AI tools

Producers use AI tools for stem separation, mastering and sound design, and most of that is harmless. Ask for a clause requiring the producer to tell you which tools were used to create any part of the master. It matters for distribution platforms that ask about AI content, and for knowing exactly what you own.

Who owns the output

Where a tool generated part of the track, the law on who owns that material is still being argued about. The agreement can settle it between you: the master, including anything generated in making it, belongs to the artist, and the producer’s payment is the fee and points the agreement already sets out.