About SoundDeal

Built from inside the music business.

SoundDeal was created because too many talented artists, songwriters, and producers sign deals they don't fully understand — and pay for it for years afterward. We exist to close that gap.

Founder

Tushar Apte

Founder & CEO

Tushar is a multi-platinum songwriter and producer signed to Warner Chappell Music. His credits include cuts with BTS, Blackpink, Demi Lovato, and Benson Boone, and his work has appeared on global #1 albums and chart-topping singles across pop, K-pop, and dance.

Over fifteen years in the industry, Tushar has signed every kind of music contract there is — recording, publishing, producer, sync, and management — across the US, UK, Korea, and Australia. He's also seen friends and collaborators sign deals that quietly cost them hundreds of thousands of dollars they couldn't recover.

Tushar previously co-founded Producer.ai, an AI music tool acquired by Google DeepMind. He runs Paperplanes, Inc. and the Songs About Sound publishing catalog, and divides his time between Los Angeles and Sydney.

Advisors

Real industry depth, on every analysis.

Our analysis is shaped by people who actually negotiate music deals for a living — entertainment counsel and active management partners with decades of experience inside the rooms where these contracts are written.

Legal Advisor

Ed Bugge

Hertz Lichtenstein Young & Polk LLP

Ed is a partner at Hertz Lichtenstein Young & Polk, a leading entertainment law firm representing artists, songwriters, producers, and managers across the music industry. His practice covers recording, publishing, producer, and sync agreements — the same contract universe SoundDeal analyzes every day.

Ed advises SoundDeal on commercial partnerships, deal structures, legal accuracy, marketing claims, and the boundary between contract intelligence and legal advice — making sure the platform serves artists without ever overstepping into practice of law.

Industry Advisor

Milk & Honey

Music Management

Milk & Honey is one of the world's leading boutique artist, songwriter, and producer management companies in the modern music business, with a roster spanning pop, hip-hop, country, dance, and Latin. Their team negotiates the kinds of deals SoundDeal exists to demystify — at scale, every week.

Milk & Honey advises SoundDeal on what working managers and high level music clients actually need from contract intelligence, helping us prioritize features that compound across rosters rather than serving one-off use cases.

SoundDeal is not a law firm and does not provide legal advice. Our advisors guide product direction; they do not provide legal services to platform users.

Why we built this

The contract layer of music has been broken for decades.

Most artists — even successful ones — sign their first major deal without truly understanding what they're agreeing to. Entertainment lawyers cost $500–$1,500 an hour. Most emerging artists can't afford one. And the deals themselves are written in language designed to obscure rather than clarify.

SoundDeal is built on a dataset of over 8,000 real-world music agreements, analyzed by AI specifically trained on music industry deal terms — reversion clauses, controlled composition, cross-collateralization, audit rights, key man provisions. Things ChatGPT will get wrong. Things our platform is built to get right.

Know your deal before you sign.

Upload any music contract — recording, publishing, producer, sync, distribution — and get instant red-flag analysis, deal scoring, and industry benchmarks.

Analyze Your Contract See Pricing