Who owns my content if I hire an agency?

Three different things get mixed up in this question. The account is one: it belongs to whoever controls the email and recovery details, which is exactly why handing over a password matters so much. The published content is a second: whoever controls the account can delete or keep it. The source files are the third, and that is where people actually get held hostage — the Premiere or CapCut project, the layered thumbnail file, the raw 4K footage, the brand fonts, and the shared Canva folder that everything was designed in.

The version of this dispute we see most often in the twin cities is mundane. A designer leaves and the Canva team account leaves with them, so the only copy of your logo is a JPEG someone exported for a Facebook cover, at the wrong size, with a white box behind it. Or the videographer who shot your showroom promo is happy to hand over the finished MP4 but wants another PKR 20,000 for the raw clips, which he still has and you paid for. Neither is illegal if nobody agreed anything different at the start. That is the whole point.

You can settle it in one paragraph without a lawyer. Write that on ending, within seven days, you receive a Drive folder containing all raw footage, all exported files, all project and layered design files, and the thumbnails, and that access to every account and ad account is handed back with no exit fee. Add one line about music: a track licensed under an agency's own subscription usually does not transfer to you, so ask what the videos are scored with and insist on tracks that stay cleared on your channel after they leave.

How we run it removes the argument entirely. There is a shared Drive folder from day one, you can watch the files appear as they are made rather than requesting them at the end, and nothing is stored only on our machines. Everything we produce is yours to keep whether we work together for one month or three years, and there is no charge for handing it over — it is already in your folder.