How to Legally Release a Cover or Remix: Licensing, Splits and Clearances Explained

Almost every producer eventually falls in love with a song they didn't write. You flip it, you rework it, you post a clip, and suddenly it's the best thing you've ever made. Then comes the part nobody explains clearly: how do you actually put it out without the takedown, the copyright strike, or the legal letter? Learning how to legally release a cover song or an official remix is less about creativity and more about paperwork, and the two paths are not the same. I'm Maxim Schunk, a German DJ from Ratingen near Düsseldorf, and my biggest record is a Progressive House rework of ABBA's "Lay All Your Love On Me" that has passed 115 million streams. I've cleared music through major labels including Spinnin', Universal and Embassy One, and this is the guide I wish existed when I started.

Cover vs. Remix: Why the Legal Path Is Completely Different

The single most expensive mistake in this whole area is treating a cover and a remix as the same thing. Legally, they live in different worlds.

• A cover is a brand-new recording of an existing composition (the melody and lyrics). You play and record everything yourself. You do not touch the original artist's audio.
• A remix reuses the original master recording — the actual stems, vocals or audio the label owns. You are building on top of someone else's recording.

This distinction decides everything that follows, because in most territories there is a legal shortcut for covers that simply does not exist for remixes. Get this wrong and you can spend weeks chasing a license you never needed — or release something that was never cleared at all.

The Mechanical License: How to Legally Release a Cover Song

In the United States and many other markets, once a song has been commercially released, you have a right to record and distribute your own version of it. This is the compulsory mechanical license (in the US, Section 115 of the Copyright Act). You do not have to beg the original songwriter for permission — you just have to license it properly and pay the statutory royalty.

In practice, independent artists rarely file with the collecting society directly. The realistic routes are:

• A cover-license service such as Easy Song, which sources the license and handles the paperwork for a fee.
• Your distributor. Several distributors (DistroKid, CD Baby and others) offer a paid cover-license add-on at the point of upload, which is by far the simplest option for a single track.
• Direct filing with the mechanical rights body — the Mechanical Licensing Collective (The MLC) for streaming in the US — if you want to manage it yourself.

The key mental model: when you release a straight cover, you keep your master recording, but you do not own the song. The original songwriters keep 100% of the composition, and the mechanical royalty flows to them. That is the fair trade for the legal shortcut. If you want to see how a cover can genuinely take off once it's cleared and released properly, my Progressive House rework of ABBA's "Lay All Your Love On Me" — now past 115 million streams — is exactly what's possible on the other side of the licensing.

When a "Cover" Becomes a "Derivative Work"

Here is the trap that catches EDM producers specifically. The compulsory mechanical license lets you record the song — but it does not let you fundamentally change its character. You cannot rewrite the melody, alter the lyrics, or turn it into something the original writers would consider a new work. Do that, and you've made a derivative work, which falls outside the compulsory license entirely.

This matters enormously in dance music, because "reworking" a ballad into Progressive House is often exactly the kind of transformation that crosses that line. When I turned ABBA's "Lay All Your Love On Me" into a club record, that was not a quiet, safe cover I could clear with a checkbox at upload. A rework of an iconic composition by writers of that stature has to be directly approved by the publisher. That means a real conversation, a real license, and often a real label backing the request. If your version significantly changes the original — new arrangement, altered topline, restructured song — assume you need direct publisher clearance rather than the compulsory route. The technical side of that transformation is its own craft, which I break down in how to remix a song into Progressive House.

Clearing an Official Remix: Master Plus Publishing

Remixes have no shortcut at all. Because you are using the original master recording, there is no compulsory license to fall back on. To release an official remix legally you need permission from two separate rights holders:

• The master owner — usually the record label that released the original. They control the actual audio and stems.
• The publisher — who controls the underlying composition.

This is why the overwhelming majority of legitimate remixes you hear on streaming are commissioned: the label reaches out to the remixer, provides the stems, and the paperwork is handled as part of that deal. If you produce an unsolicited remix using leaked or ripped stems and upload it yourself, you have cleared nothing — and no distributor terms of service will protect you. The honest path for an uncommissioned remix is to send it to the label or the artist's team as a pitch and let them decide whether to make it official, exactly the way an unofficial rework can open a door, as happened around my breakthrough with "My Name" alongside Raven & Kreyn and BISHØP.

Publishing Splits and Royalties: Who Actually Gets Paid

Once you understand the licensing, the money follows a logic that surprises a lot of first-timers. Two income streams sit inside every release, and they are owned separately:

• The composition (publishing) — the song itself. On a straight cover, this stays 100% with the original songwriters and their publisher.
• The master (the recording) — the specific audio. On a cover, this is yours (or your label's), because you recorded it.

So on a cover you earn from your master while the mechanical and songwriter royalties on the composition go to the original writers. On an official remix, the label typically owns the master of the remix too, and your compensation is negotiated — sometimes a flat remix fee, sometimes a share of the master royalties, and only occasionally a slice of publishing if you added original composition. For a rework that the publisher treats as a genuine adaptation, splits can be negotiated, but never assume it: put every percentage in writing before release, because splits registered late are the single most common cause of frozen royalties in this business. If you write original topline, lyrics or a new melodic hook into a version, that is the one part you can legitimately claim publishing on — and it should be documented from day one.

Distributor Requirements and Label Sign-Off

The final gate is practical. Distributors and DSPs increasingly check this, and a release that isn't cleared can be pulled after it's live — the worst possible moment. Before you hit upload:

• For a cover: secure the mechanical license first (via your distributor's add-on or a service like Easy Song), and title it honestly — metadata should credit the original songwriters as writers, with you as the performing artist.
• For a rework of a major composition: get written publisher approval. This is where a label partner earns its keep, because a label already has the relationships to reach an ABBA-level publisher that an unknown producer never will.
• For an official remix: only release once the label has formally signed off and delivered the release to the stores themselves, or has authorised you to. Verbal enthusiasm from an A&R is not a license.

None of this is legal advice — rules differ by country and I'm a DJ, not a lawyer — but this is the map I've navigated repeatedly across releases on Spinnin', Universal, SOAVE, BeatDealer and Embassy One. You can follow my catalogue on Spotify or reach out via Instagram if you want to see how the cleared versions actually landed.

Releasing other people's songs legally isn't glamorous, but it's the difference between a track that builds your career and one that gets pulled overnight. Knowing how to legally release a cover song versus an official remix — mechanical versus master clearance, what you own versus what you license, and who signs off before you upload — is exactly the kind of quiet groundwork that let a Progressive House rework of an ABBA classic reach an audience of millions instead of a copyright strike. Do the paperwork first. The music travels much further when it's clean.