How to protect your TuneCore royalties while you are alive
There is no way to name a beneficiary or successor on a TuneCore account. While the account holder is alive, TuneCore allows transferring the account.
TuneCore's terms provide a path for TuneCore royalties after a death, and what the account holder sets up in advance decides how smoothly that path runs. There is no way to name a beneficiary or successor on a TuneCore account. While the account holder is alive, TuneCore allows transferring the account.
How to protect your TuneCore royalties
Naming who acts after a death
- Designation
TuneCore has no beneficiary designation, so who should inherit the catalogue and the royalties is set out in the holder's estate documents, not in the TuneCore account.1
What TuneCore, Inc.'s terms say about sharing and transfers2
- Transferring the account or registration
Full ownership of an account moves when the account owner changes the account email address and password, which hands the new owner every album and all past accounting data; the new email cannot already be tied to another TuneCore account.2
TuneCore will not move a release between accounts. Redistributing it from another account costs that account the distribution fees and a new UPC, reuses the ISRCs only if the audio and track titles are exactly the same, and loses the old version's ratings, reviews and sales history.2
Sources4
- 1.Terms and Conditions, last revised and effective as of July 31, 2026
- 2.Can I move a release from one TuneCore account to another?
- 3.Release Renewals
- 4.Renewing Your TuneCore Unlimited Plan
Should you save your passwords for your family?
Some people store account passwords so a family member can sign in later. The practice has three practical limits:
- Two-factor authentication often blocks it. Most accounts require a second factor — a code sent to a phone, an authenticator app, a passkey, or a physical key. A saved password alone frequently does not grant access, and the recovery codes that would are easy to lose or let go stale.
- It usually conflicts with the platform's terms. Most operators prohibit account sharing and signing in as another person, including after a death. Stored credentials are not the operator's recognized access path, and using them can violate the terms of service.
- Operators provide other paths. Where an operator offers a designation tool — Apple's Legacy Contact, Google's Inactive Account Manager, a beneficiary designation — that mechanism grants access the operator recognizes. A password manager's own emergency-access or legacy feature passes credentials through a controlled process. Digital assets named in a will or trust give a fiduciary authority under each state's Revised Uniform Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act (RUFADAA).
Sources
Data sourced from TuneCore, Inc. primary sources (10 pages reviewed). How we research.
TuneCore customer support
TuneCore Artist Support
Hours
Website
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