Planning ahead for your TuneCore royalties
Lifetime transfer options and steps to take now for TuneCore, Inc. royalties
TuneCore Artist Support
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TuneCore Artist Support (deceased account holder / account details)
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Verified Jul 2026
TuneCore, Inc. has a transfer process for TuneCore royalties after the account holder dies. Lifetime planning complements this by giving the account holder direct control over royalties while alive.
How to protect your TuneCore royalties
Here are 5 steps to protect and manage your TuneCore royalties while the account is active:
1
Record the TuneCore account email where your executor will find it. With account access, your heir can take over the account and keep your catalog earning; without it, they must work through TuneCore Artist Support.
2
Note who should inherit the catalog and the royalties. TuneCore has no beneficiary designation, so the instruction lives in your estate documents and your written account notes, not in the TuneCore account itself.
3
List your releases with their UPCs and ISRCs, and note which artist names and project names are tied to the account, so your executor can identify the catalog when dealing with TuneCore.
4
Make sure the Payoneer withdrawal setup is documented or easy to re-establish, so accrued royalties can actually be paid out after your death. Withdrawals route through Payoneer to PayPal, a bank account, or a prepaid Mastercard.
5
Remember that royalties pay out on a quarterly cadence (about 45 days after each calendar quarter). Tell your executor not to close the account before a pending payout has been collected.
Family sharing
TuneCore has no family pooling or shared-ownership feature. Full ownership of an account moves only by changing the account email and password, which hands the new owner the entire catalog and all past accounting data. The new email cannot already be tied to another TuneCore account. TuneCore Splits can route a percentage of a release's royalties to collaborators' own accounts, but Splits is a per-release royalty allocation, not an ownership transfer of the account.
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).
Frequently asked questions
Record your account email where your executor will find it, since account access is the most direct way for an heir to take over the catalog. List your releases with their UPCs and ISRCs and the artist names tied to the account. Note who should inherit the catalog in your estate documents, because TuneCore has no beneficiary designation. Make sure the Payoneer withdrawal setup is documented so accrued royalties can be paid out, and remember payouts run on a quarterly cadence.
An inventory listing the TuneCore account lets a fiduciary identify it and act on it through the operator's official channels.
There is no beneficiary designation option for TuneCore. This account type does not support naming a recipient the way bank or investment accounts do.
Sources
Data sourced from TuneCore, Inc. primary sources (7 pages reviewed). How we research.
TuneCore Artist Support
WebsiteVisit website→
HoursContact from the email address on the account; TuneCore may send a one-time code to authenticate.
TuneCore Artist Support (deceased account holder / account details)
WebsiteSubmit claim online →
Verified Jul 2026
