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Repertoire tips: did you know?

Tip Published Tuesday 15 December 2020
Did you know?

PRR aims to deliver world-class repertoire data for APRA AMCOS members. To do so we need to maintain accurate details for your works and agreement registrations.

What are a couple of things you can do to keep the data correct? We'll be adding to this bank of tips regularly and will include in Publisher Update and the Facebook Group.

Please check your writer roles

The role a writer played in the composition of a work is a useful piece of information in a work registration. Please ensure that your writer roles are accurate. Whether Composer, Author, Composer/Author or an Arranger or Translator (among others), a correctly recorded writer role can help APRA AMCOS to:

  • Determine whether the work was composed jointly or collectively. The former scenario is where the contribution of multiple writers is indivisible, and the latter is where the contribution of multiple writers is distinct e.g. one writer wrote music and another writer wrote the lyrics. This distinction affects the copyright duration in the work and how we manage the shares - and resulting royalty distributions - once the copyright term has passed since the death of the writer(s);
  • Determine default share splits if registration information for a work is incomplete;
  • Resolve discrepancies between other sources of registration information including writer registrations

The writer role field is called "Writer Designation Code" in SWR and OWR records in CWR files, and "Category" in manual CMS registrations

Please ensure work titles are spelled correctly!

Work title, writer and performer information is extremely useful in registration and usage matching, especially where work identifiers - such as the APRA identifier or ISWC or related ISRCs - are missing.

Accurate spelling of both the original and any alternative/AKA work titles greatly improves the results of auto-matching registrations and usage to works.

Registrations matched to incorrect works need to be manually fixed by PRR staff, so correct work title spelling improves our efficiency in work ownership and, of course, royalty distributions to members.

TIP: Registering a work released in multiple languages

When registering a work, please provide us with all titles for all language versions. The work title(s) should ideally match the format of the title on streaming services to ensure the best chance of the usage auto-matching to the correct work.

Please note that any main or alternative work titles with non-Roman characters – or those with accents and/or diacriticals – must be transliterated into their Roman characters in order to be stored in CMS.

New work registrations

If the work is not already registered, please list all alternative titles in work tab 6 AKA if submitting a manual work registration in CMS or in the ALT record if submitting via a Common Work Registration (CWR) file.

Existing works

If the work is already registered – and your publishing company has a registration linked to the work – please add all language titles as alternative titles on the work record. Alternatively, please supply the details to your friendly Publisher Representative so they can update on your behalf.

If the new version of the work credits a share to the translator – and thus has different ownership shares than the original language version – please register this as a new work.

TIP: Alternative Titles

Many works are known by more than one title, so it is super useful for us to have all titles listed. There is no limit to the number of alternative titles for a work.

Our system refers to both main and alternative work titles when matching usage and registrations to works in the system. Searching for a work will also retrieve results from both main and alternative titles. Note that variations in spelling are usually captured by the smoothing process used by our matching programs.

How do you list Alternative titles?

  • In work tab 6 AKA if submitting a manual work registration in CMS
  • Or, in the ALT record if submitting via a Common Work Registration (CWR) file

TIP: Bracketed text in work titles

Did you know that bracketed text is disregarded by the system when processing work registrations? Yes, so it's generally best to avoid including brackets in work titles to ensure that registrations correctly match to existing works or create new work records as intended.

For example, if there are two versions of a work HELLO with differing ownership, then these should be registered as HELLO and HELLO VERSION 2 to ensure two work records are created. HELLO and HELLO (VERSION 2) will be treated by the system as the same work and will likely both match to the same work.

However, bracketed text can and should be used when registering works written for film/TV.

When registering theme music or background registrations/rolled up cues - and the Intended Purpose is set to FIL/TEL/MUL/VID - the work title in the NWR transaction should match exactly to the production title in the ORN record. So brackets are useful in ensuring that the work and production titles exactly match and the registration can be accepted

For example, THE BACHELOR (THEME) and/or THE BACHELOR (BACKGROUND) for music used in THE BACHELOR TV program.

TIP: Ensure the 'via party' details are correct

When registering sub-publishing agreements and the accompanying work registrations, please ensure that the foreign or non-society sub-publisher – colloquially known at APRA AMCOS as a 'via party' – is the same in both the agreement and registration.

While the publisher share of royalties is always paid to the collection publisher, it's ideal for the full chain-of-title from writer to original publisher to sub-publisher(s) to final collection publisher on the work registration to match the chain-of-title indicated by the relevant agreements.

This assists PRR staff to complete the work ownership details and efficiently handle any subsequent catalogue transfers.

TIP: Please provide ISWCs in registrations for foreign works

The ISWC (International Standard Work Codes) is a unique, permanent and internationally recognised reference number for the identification of musical works.

When submitting a registration for a foreign work, please include the ISWC - if available - in the registration headers. The ISWC is referenced by PRR staff when completing the work ownership information. The ISWC is useful in ensuring that the registration has matched to the correct work in the system and can help the team to identify and resolve any duplicated work records.

If the ISWC is not supplied in the registration, the existing foreign ISWC will be matched to the work upon upload to the APRA AMCOS CIS-Net node (following completion of the ownership information).

ISWCs for local works are generated once the works are uploaded to CIS-Net.

TIP: Registrations for remixes

We get a lot of questions about remixes, so it's always worth revisiting the rights around them.

It's not necessary to re-register approved remixes if the original version is already registered and the remix ownership shares are the same as for the original work. Save time by simply indicating the remix title as an alternative title for the original work. This helps to ensure that the royalty distributions for all versions of a work are credited to one work record.

If the ownership shares are the same:

  • And you register works via CWR, you can easily indicate the remix title in the ALT record for the work
  • If you register works manually in CMS, please indicate the remix title in the AKA tab of the work

If the ownership shares are different:

  • And you register works via CWR, please include the original work title in the VER record when registering the remix
  • If you register works manually in CMS, please include the original work title in the AKA tab when registering the remix

Tip: Checking UDS to see if we're holding royalties for you

We encourage you to review your Unidentified Dispute Suspense (UDS) information in CMS about any held royalties.

UDS details:

  • works for which we require a registration (unclaimed)
  • works subject to conflicting registrations - shares that are presently in dispute or being held in suspense.

To access UDS in CMS:

File > Application > Publisher Registrations > UDS > Work or Cue Sheet enquiry

Then, use the filters to retrieve the relevant works for your catalogues. If you don't have CMS access, please contact your friendly Publisher Representative to request an extract.

To remove works from UDS, please register your interest in the work(s) or contact your Rep for further advice.

Held royalties will be released in the subsequent APRA and/or AMCOS distribution once the registration(s) have been processed and the relevant shares released from dispute or suspense, if applicable.

The held dollar amounts may be calculated based on projected values and are therefore subject to change upon distribution, so please don’t rely on these figures for forecasting budgeting purposes.

Read the UDS guide for publishers

TIP: Advising us of retained works

When terminating an agreement where some or all of the works are retained beyond the termination date, please be sure to advise us of the works that have been retained and the retention dates for each work (if this differs from work to work).

You can either enter the works directly into the agreement or supply a list of the retained works direct to your friendly Publisher Rep. Supplying all retention details at the time of the termination will speed up the process for us to authorise the agreement and complete the catalogue transfer for any works no longer covered.

TIP: Supplying IP Name Numbers

IP Name Numbers uniquely identify each name for society member right holders, and are issued for both a right holder's legal name (patronym) and other name types such as a stage name (pseudonym) or business name (other reference).

It is mandatory to supply IP Name Numbers for controlled writers when registering works in bulk via CWR, and also for controlled local APRA AMCOS writers. Wherever possible, please also include IP name numbers for any controlled foreign writers and non-controlled writers in either CWR or manual work registrations. This reduces the manual research required to identify all the right holders and increases our system's ability to automatically complete work ownership details.

TIP: Please register all your agreements, and we mean ALL

We can never have too much agreement information! Supporting agreement data is crucial for us when processing registrations for the works covered by those agreements.

Agreement data helps us:

  • in resolving local writer disputes more efficiently
  • to accurately process incoming foreign distributions -- so we can query you or your writers about possible underpayments

Remember, agreements ideally need to be registered before or at the same time as the accompanying works, and should indicate your interest in the works across all right types: performing, mechanical, print, sync, and cover.

TIP: US designation

When registering local writer agreements in CMS, please be sure to indicate the relevant US collecting society or the applicable US sub-publisher in the USA Representation field. The US designation data is valuable for us when processing foreign distributions from the various US societies, and for querying US societies on your behalf about royalty collections.

TIP: Performer information is gold for us, so please provide Performer Names

This information nugget is used by the system for a few reasons:

  • Auto-matches from usage files
  • Greatly assists Repertoire staff to manually match work registrations with any existing unregistered works
  • Especially helpful for works with a common or generic title, and/or where the writers have a common name such as Smith

For specific works agreements, we need the relevant works too
When registering a specific works agreement, please include the list of relevant works subject to the agreement. This is essential information for us in order to authorise the agreement and update the work ownership details.

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