Nahuel D'Elias · Product engineer
( vers1ons)

(W01.2)vers1ons · 2025Shipped

Licensing

A remix license artists can sell, buyers can trust, and vers1ons can enforce.

Shows

  • Product
  • Design
  • Frontend
  • Backend
Role
Product lead, building with the engineering team
Stack
Next.js · tRPC · Postgres · Stripe · Inngest · Redis · Object storage
Status
In production

The decision

We were selling a license that exists in law but had never been sold like this: artists set their own terms on vers1ons and sell them to anyone who wants to remix the song, instead of going through a label.

Chose
Make the license a record the whole platform runs on, tracked at the rights level across the full remix chain, so every remix knows where it came from and what it's allowed to do.
Rejected
A contract PDF attached to each sale between two people and tracked by hand, which breaks as soon as someone remixes the remix.
Cost
Time to get it right. Every feature reads from the same rights records, and because we sell to major labels, indie labels and established artists, the agreement had to hold up with their legal teams, so every legal change meant a code change.

Problem

A license is only worth something if everyone can trust it, and ours couldn't yet be trusted.

What a licensor set on a listing didn’t always match what the system allowed, so a remix could reach a store the license didn’t cover. Once a remix was remixed again, it got hard to tell who the original rights holders were and who should be paid. And setting up a listing, with its contributors, splits and terms, was easy to get wrong.

That mattered for three reasons. A release that breaks its license is a legal problem for vers1ons. Original artists only list their songs if they know they’ll be credited and paid down the chain. And the license is what we sell: if it isn’t true, there’s nothing to sell.

Three parts

The last step of a split sheet: download the PDF, or have signatures collected.
A split sheet, from the song title to the PDF · muted0:48
How it worksA free tool that brings artists inPeople searching for a split sheet find a free one with no account. They can leave with a PDF, or bring it into vers1ons, where collecting everyone's signature is paid, and the signed splits become a license.
searchA searchhow do I make a split sheet?
satelliteSheets appsheets.vers1ons.comno accountsplits to 100%
satelliteDonedownload itor bring it in
Free PDFa regular split sheet
moneyPay to signStripeanother source of revenue
rightsSignaturesa link for each partybound to the exact text
vers1onsA licensethe signed splitsbecome the listing's
  1. ready · press run, or hover any part of the system

What I did

A satellite app that gets the paperwork done before a license exists.

Most co-written songs have no split sheet, and without one there’s no clean license to sell. So I built sheets.vers1ons.com on my own, from nothing: anyone can create a split sheet, or bring in one they already have, with no account. When it’s ready, it collects signatures and the authority of everyone who owns a share, and then hands the song to vers1ons to become a license agreement.

The flow, step by step

10 steps, one screen at a time.

  1. sheets.vers1ons.com: "Split it clean."
    01StartNo account, no sign-up. Start a split sheet straight away.
  2. What's the title of your song?
    02The songOne question per screen, starting with the title.
  3. Who's on this song: a contributor's names and email.
    03Who's on itEach person's artist name, legal name and email: the name that signs is the legal one.
  4. What did they contribute: composition and recording roles.
    04What they didRoles on the composition and the recording, the same two sides as a listing.
  5. Two contributors with their roles.
    05EveryoneEveryone on the song, ready to split.
  6. Who owns what: both rings empty.
    06Who owns whatTwo rings, one per side, both empty to start.
  7. Both rings full, the splits at 100%.
    07BalancedYou can't go on until both sides balance to 100%.
  8. Review the split sheet.
    08ReviewThe whole sheet on one screen before it's made.
  9. Done: download the PDF, collect signatures, or continue to list a license.
    09DoneA free PDF, or pay to have every party sign it. Or take it to vers1ons and turn it into a license.
  10. The split sheet PDF for "Midnight Signal", with a line for each signature.
    10The PDFThe branded split sheet, with a line for each person to sign.

    What changed, and why

    The same part of the product in an early build and today.

    1. The wizard

      The first build was one long form. Now it's a guided wizard, one question per screen, that works the same on a phone.

      The first split sheet builder: one long form.
      Before · Jun 2026One long form.
      The guided wizard today: who's on this song.
      Now · Oct 2026One question per screen.

    Outcome

    Live in production as the first vers1ons satellite app.

    Anyone can make a split sheet at sheets.vers1ons.com for free. Paying gets it signed by everyone who owns a share, and a signed sheet comes into vers1ons ready to become a license. It’s how artists who’ve never heard of us find the marketplace.

    Reliability

    Every signature binds to the exact text that was signed.

    Sending a split sheet for signatures freezes a version of it, with a hash of the agreement and the document, and the server checks against that version when each person signs. Signing links are stored only as hashes. License terms are frozen at purchase, and a revoked grant stops a queued release from going live. Store scope was verified end to end across a three-deep remix chain.

    Showcase content. Artwork belongs to its respective owners. Artist names, prices and royalty figures are fictional, and no affiliation is implied. The "Bobby" drop with Ravyn Lenae is a concept mock. Recordings come from an isolated local copy of the product running seeded data.