How to Add Works, Composers & Publishers
Publishing catalogue in Curve is separated into five components: Releases, Tracks, Works, Composers and Publishers. Each are individual forms of assets that will be interlinked with each other. We will go into detail for each of these in this chapter.
How to Add Works, Composers & Publishers
Publishing catalogue within Curve is separated into five distinct parts. First, you will need to create your (1) Composers and (2) Publishers. These then become available to build your IP Chains in your (3) Works. Optionally, you have the ability to create (4) Tracks and (5) Releases, and to map these to your Works, so that useful information such as Performer names and ISRC codes is included in your CWR deliveries to the societies.
You can create Catalogue either (1) via the interface on Curve, (2) via CWR Import, or (3) via the Excel templates.
Add Catalogue via the Interface
Create Your Composers
First, you will need to create your Composers. These are all the songwriters that have a share in one of the Works in your repertoire. Both songwriters that you control and do not control will need to be created.
If you wish to use Curve purely for royalty accounting purposes and not for CWR deliveries, adding the IP Chain (and its Composers) to the Works is optional and you may skip straight to step 13 in this article.
The CWR Deliveries feature is available to Curve Pro clients only as part of the Deliveries add-on ✪.
To get started, go to your Catalogue page and select the Composer page. You can create a new Composer by hitting the +Create button on the top right of your screen.
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- Name your Composer – The Name field is for your reference. The First Name, Middle Name and Surname fields will be used to populate your CWR deliveries.
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- Provide a CAE Number – If your Composer is a member of a collection society, please provide the CAE/IPI Number. If your Composer is not a member of a society, you can leave this field blank.
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- Specify whether you control this Composer, and in which territories – Do you have a publishing agreement with this Composer? If so, as a default, you can mark this Composer as controlled. Per work, you will still have the flexibility to mark this Composer as controlled or uncontrolled.
- If you only control the copyright of this Composer in certain territories, you can specify this on the Territories tab of your Composer. By default we will set this to Worldwide. Please note that you also have the flexibility to exclude certain territories in Work level.
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- Provide the Societies and Identifiers – Via the Societies area, you can mark which society this Composer is a member of. The Identifier field should match the CAE/IPI number of your Composer with this society. If your Composer is not a member of a society, you can leave these fields blank. If your Composer is a member of multiple societies, you can provide additional memberships and CAE numbers via the Identifiers area. More info
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- Provide the Publisher Agreement Number (For ICE deliveries only) – If you control this Composer and you are intending to deliver this Composer’s catalogue to ICE, then ICE will require you to provide a Publisher Agreement Number in your CWR deliveries. More info
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- Link a Contract – When matching this Composer to a Contract, Curve will automatically funnel all income from this Composer to this linked Contract. More info
Create Your Publishers
The Publishing page is where you manage your own publishing entities, third party Publishers that have a share on a Work that you partially control, and potentially also any Publishers that you would administrate or sub-publish.
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- Name the Publisher – We store two types of names on a Publisher: the internal name you will see across Curve (stored under Name) and the name that will be displayed in your work deliveries (CWR Name). The Name needs to be unique for each publisher, the CWR Name does not need to be unique.
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- Provide the main CAE Number – The main CAE/IPI number of this publishing entity.
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- Specify whether you control this Publisher – Do you represent this Publisher through ownership or an administration or sub-publishing agreement? If so, as a default, you can mark this Publisher as controlled. Per work, you will still have the flexibility to mark this Publisher as controlled or uncontrolled.
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- Provide the main society memberships – Provide the main performance, mechanical and sync societies this Publisher is a member of, along with the publisher’s CAE/IPI number with each respective society. More info
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- Provide any additional society memberships – If this publisher is a direct member of multiple societies, you can assign each membership via the Identifiers area. In a CWR delivery, if the publisher is a direct member of the receiving society, Curve will automatically select the fitting publisher’s name and CAE number. More info
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- Link a Contract (if you need to account royalties to this publisher) – If you need to account royalties to this Publisher through an administration or sub-publishing deal, you can link a Contract, so that any revenue of this Publisher is automatically funnelled to this Contract. If you do not account royalties to this publisher, you can skip this step. More info
Create Your Works
Works is where you store the core of your publishing data. The Work contains specific metadata such as the title or the territories you own a work in. You will link your Work to the relevant Composers & Publishers and set their respective share in the Work. Furthermore, with each Work you will specify which Contracts any royalties should be shared with. Optionally, you have the ability to link your Works to Tracks so that the ISRC codes are included in your CWR deliveries.
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- Name the Work Title – You can provide alternate titles if there are any. More info
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- Provide the Main Identifier – This is a unique code that you assign to your Work. If you are delivering CWR files to societies, it is extremely important that these Main Identifiers are unique and remain consistent, as societies use these as a reference to understand whether you are registering a new Work or revising an existing Work. So if you have previously delivered your Works to a society via a different platform, make sure to reuse the same Main Identifiers on your Works when moving them to Curve. If you wish, you can let Curve automatically assign a unique identifier to each new Work. Additionally, you can provide an ISWC and Tunecode.
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- Map associated Tracks or Performers (for CWR only) – When mapping Tracks to your Works, Curve will include useful information such as ISRC codes, Artist names and Catalogue Numbers in the CWR deliveries to your societies. If you do not know the ISRC code of the sound recording, you can add Artists individually via the Performer area. More info
- Alternatively, you can link Tracks to your Works by downloading your Catalogue's metadata from Spotify without having to create it from scratch. More info
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- Specify in which Territories you represent this Work (for CWR only) – Checkmark all the territories where you own the copyright to the Work by checking the box next to them. If you control the work throughout the world, you can check the box next to "World" at the top. You can use Territory Groups to swiftly and repeatedly select a group of territories. More info
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- Specify all the Publishers & Composers and their shares in the IP Chain (for CWR only) – The IP Chain is how you describe the composers, songwriters, publishers and sub-publishers ownership of the Work. Your IP Chain will automatically be validated by Curve, and you will be notified of any potential irregularities the moment you save your Work. More info
- The IP Chain has multiple layers;
Territory – Specify the territories for which you are about to define the rights and ownership shares in the subsequent links.
Publisher – In this layer you add the Publishers and their shares. You can select these from the list of Publishers you would have configured on the system before. You can add multiple layers of Publishers to specify sub-publishing or administration agreements. Publishers that you represent must be marked as controlled.
Composer – In the final layer you can add the Composers and their shares. Similarly to Publishers you will select these from the list of Composers that you would have configured on the system before. Composers that you represent must be marked as controlled.
Generally you will have one IP Chain for the territory World, this will select all the territories that were checked in the Territories tab of the Work. Additionally you can add specific territories in a new IP Chain, which will function as an exemption to the World IP Chain.
The Owned and Collected rights percentages must add up to 100. The % totals of the Owned and Collected rights are tracked at the top right of the IP Chain. These appear green once each total equals 100%. The Owned Mechanical and Performance splits specify the ownership of the copyright. The Collected Mechanical and Performance splits specify which share you as a publisher will collect, and which share will be collected directly by the Composer.
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- Add Contracts with the appropriate Participation Rate – At this stage, you specify which Contracts any revenue of this Contract should be funnelled to. To make things easier for you, if you have set up a Linked Contract for your controlled Composers, the system will automatically add the relevant Contracts to the work and calculate its respective Participation Rates.
When linking the contracts manually, you need to consider the Contract's participation in
the income that you collect. As a rule of thumb, the Participation Rate should be calculated according to the following formula:
Participation Rate of Composer = (Writer Share of Composer / Sum of Writer Share of all Controlled Composers) * 100
As an example, a Work that you control for the full 100% with two Composers with a writer share of 50% each, each Composer’s participation in the Work’s revenue is 50 (= 50 / 100 * 100). When we represent just that one of two Writers and his/her 50% share in the Work, the participation of that Composer in the Work’s revenue is 100 (= 50 / 50 * 100), since all revenue we receive is from that one Composer’s share.
Additionally, you can provide Specific Participation Rates, that split the income differently across the attached Contracts under specific conditions, such as revenue coming from a particular Channel, Source or Territory.
More info
Add Catalogue via a CWR Import
Via Curve, you are able to export your catalogue in a CWR format. But it is also possible to import catalogue in CWR format onto Curve. This is a useful feature when onboarding your repertoire to Curve, but also if you sub-publish catalogue that is delivered to you in this format. In this process, Curve will create all the Composers, Publishers, Works and Tracks included in the CWR file. You will still be required to match Contracts to these Works.
More info
CWR files can be imported to Curve via Settings > Imports.
Add Catalogue via the Excel Templates
You can upload your Composers, Publishers and Works in bulk using their respective Templates. Each Template can be uploaded via the Import button on their respective page. Once you receive a notification confirming the Template import is complete, refresh your page and the Catalogue will appear.
Once your catalogue is complete, you are ready to go to the next step in our Getting Started Guide:
uploading your income files.