1. Notification and reporting requirements. Service providers routinely require rightsholders to supply them with information on the status of their intellectual property to ensure that they are managing it in a legal and effective manner. Rightsholders are obliged to inform providers about changes in the availability and use of any of their intellectual property, including changes in copyright status (e.g., when copyright reverts to someone else, or when a copyrighted works passes into the public domain). Changes in the status of permissible or restricted uses, venues of use, or fees for use of particular works (when these criteria are set or determined by the rightsholder) must be reported to the service provider as soon as they occur.

The specific types of notification, and the way it must be conveyed (e.g., in writing), are usually outlined in the rightsholder/service provider agreement. Minimally, rightsholders are required to supply providers with information on all the works they wish to have included in the repertoire, and on new works that come into existence during the term of their agreement. They also must inform providers of all works that have encumbrances of any sort (e.g., images that need model releases, works for which copyright is contested or is jointly held, works that cannot be considered for certain uses, etc.). If works in a provider’s repertoire are available through other channels (via nonexclusive licensing agreements with other agencies, or by direct licensing), the provider may request notification on these other agreements. This notification helps prevent the provider from mistakenly judging these other uses as infringements, and from using these particular works in undesirable circumstances (such as licensing content to a client with the understanding that it is "unique," only to find that the client’s competitor has licensed the same content from a different source). The provider will also want to monitor the value, use, and availability of the works in other sources to ensure that its own management of these works is competitive.

2. Participation requirements. Rightsholders may be required to participate in various activities at the service provider’s behest. These requests do require the rightsholder’s time and sometimes funds. For example, participation in discussion and negotiations may be required for special circumstances that fall outside of the provider’s purview, such as a nontraditional user request. Rightsholders are frequently asked to assess the appearance of their intellectual properties in the provider’s online database and search tools to determine whether they are adequately represented or portrayed. Some providers ask rightsholders to participate in surveys and focus groups designed to assess their operations and services.

Rightsholders who join consortia are subject to the greatest participation requirements of all. Consortium members are committed to a process as much as a product, and this commitment requires their presence and participation at all meetings of the consortium, in all online discussions, and in special projects that the consortium may assign to them.

3. Content preparation. Providers that distribute intellectual property in addition to managing rights generally expect more content preparation from rightsholders. These rightsholders are responsible for helping select the intellectual properties that are to be included in the repertoire, and delivering them to the service provider in a format that meets the provider’s specifications. If the present format of the intellectual property departs greatly from these specifications, rightsholders may face an extensive amount of work to bring their content into line. More research and documentation may be needed, and new annotations (such as captioning, indexing, keywords attached to each work, affixation of copyright notices) may be required. Rightsholders may also be required to physically reformat the content (e.g., transparencies to scanned images, catalog entry to database record) so that it can be used in the provider’s online management and distribution systems.

Content preparation is costly in both time and money. Some service providers will help rightsholders offset costs by offering advances against royalties, or by assuming some of the preparation (such as reformatting content) for a fee lower than the market rate. However, much of the work involved in content preparation, especially in its documentation, can be undertaken only by the rightsholder. As creator and/or caretaker of the work, he or she has the credibility that authenticates the content and makes it valuable both to the service provider and to users.

4. Obligations. Rightsholders are obliged to comply with certain criteria that providers set as a condition of acceptance for administering their works. For example, service providers often require rightsholders to secure model and property releases for their works, provide copies of these releases to the provider, and maintain the originals in their own files for the term of the agreement. Similarly, clearances for any works that have underlying or "layered" rights associated with them (e.g., a photograph of a contemporary artwork) may be an obligation that a provider places on the rightsholder before a work will be accepted into a repertoire.

Once an agreement has been signed, terms of the agreement will impose additional obligations on the rightsholder. Some of the more common ones are annual contributions of content into the service provider’s repertoire, and a guaranteed initial content contribution shortly after the agreement has been signed. Remuneration for certain startup or duplication costs (e.g., scanning, duplicate transparencies, inclusion of works in the provider’s catalog) within a fixed time frame also may be required.