How to Add Tracks & Releases
In this article, we will discuss how you can add your Catalogue to Curve, and how you can link your Tracks and Releases to your Contracts.
Please watch our introduction videos to Catalogue below. We provide notes further down below in the article.
Creating Tracks
Creating Releases
How to Add Tracks & Releases
Master catalogue within Curve is separated into two distinct parts: Releases & Tracks. It is important to understand that these are separate within the Curve system, not bundled onto one level as you may have encountered with other royalty systems. Releases (such as digital albums, EPs, LP singles, …) can contain tracks, but both interact with your sales & contracts independently.
You can create Tracks & Releases either (1) via the interface on Curve; (2) via DDEX delivery; (3) via your Sales Files; (4) VIA the Track & Release Templates; or (5) via the Spotify API
Add Tracks & Releases via the Interface
You access Tracks & Releases via the sidebar. Select the Catalogue sub-menu, & then the
Tracks or
Releases page respectively. Hit +Create in the top right to create a new Track or Release.
Tracks
Each of your sound recordings will be created as one Track on Curve. One track can be mapped to as many Releases as needed.
- 1
- Provide the headline metadata of your Track – Complete the Title, Artist, ISRC (the unique ID number of your Track) & Label field. Other fields are optional but may be helpful to complete. More info
- 2
- Add Contracts to your Track – Once your sales & costs are ingested & matched to the Catalogue, the system will need to know how to distribute the revenues & costs to the Contracts; this is configured on the Rights tab of your Track. A Participation Rate of 100 means 100% of the total revenue/cost of this Track will go to this Contract. A participation rate of 15 means just 15% of all revenue/costs of this Track will go to this Contract. This is not the final percentage that the Payee will receive, but rather how much of the reported revenue should the royalty percentage be based upon. More info
Releases
Each album, EP or single will need to be created as a Release. You will generally need to create one release per format; meaning the Digital, CD & LP version of the same album will each need their own Release in your Curve catalogue. This to be able to accommodate for differences in tracklists in the different formats.
- 3
- Provide the headline metadata of your Release – Complete the Title, Artist, Label, Cat No & Barcode. The Cat No & Barcode are the key identifiers of your release & are used to match your sales to your catalogue. They must be unique in relation to your Distribution Channel; meaning you can use the same barcode on a digital & physical release, but you can not use the same barcode on two digital releases. Other fields are optional but may be helpful to complete. For more information please visit this chapter in our documentation. More info
- 4
- Provide the Channel & Format – Here you specify if this is the Digital or Physical version of your Release. In the Format, you specify more specifically if it’s the CD, LP or 12″, for example. For Digital releases, you may leave the format blank or default it to Download. The Channels and Formats you can choose from are based on the lists provided in your Settings, which you may have customised as per our instructions on Settings. More info
- 5
- Attach Tracks to your Release – Specify which Tracks are part of this Release.
- 6
- Add Contracts to your Release – Similarly to how you attached Contracts to your Tracks, via the Rights tab of your Release, you will specify how the revenue & costs of this Release will be assigned to Contracts & for which share. A participation rate of 100 means 100% of all the revenue/cost of this Release will go to this Contract. A participation rate of 50 means just half of all the revenue/costs of this Release will go to this Contract. This is not the final percentage that the Payee will receive, but rather how much of the reported revenue should the royalty percentage be based upon. More info
In this step, Curve does have a trick up its sleeve. We know the Tracks on this Release, & we know the royalty beneficiaries of those Tracks. So automatically, Curve can work out who is due a royalty for this Release. Using the
Pro Rata From Tracks button will automatically flush your Contracts from your Tracks to your Release.
More info
Our Pro Rata Contracts feature in the Bulk Update tool can flush Contracts from your Tracks to your Releases in one go for your entire catalogue.
Add Tracks & Releases via DDEX Delivery
Similar to how you deliver your catalogue to DSPs such as Spotify, you can deliver your catalogue to Curve. A DDEX delivery will automatically create all of your Tracks and Releases in your Curve catalogue and populate the headline metadata. You will, however, still need to attach your Contracts to the Tracks & Releases as per the steps described above.
This functionality is only available to labels & distributors that work with a delivery platform (eg AudioSalad, Fuga, CI, …).
If you are interested in delivering your catalogue to Curve via DDEX, we will need to set up an integration between your delivery platform and your Curve client. For more information on how to set up an integration like this, please reach out to your Client Manager.
Add Tracks & Releases via your Sales Files
Your sales files hold a lot of metadata such as your tracks and their ISRCs and your releases and their Barcodes. When importing a sales file that holds ISRCs and Cat Nos that are not found in your existing Tracks & Releases, you have the option to create all these new Tracks & Releases in bulk via the Mapping Manager. In order to use the Bulk Create feature, you will need to upload a sales file. More info on how to import sales files can be found
here.
Add Tracks & Releases via the Excel Templates
You can upload your Tracks using the Track Separated or Track Combined template. The difference between these two template formats is that the Separated format will specify the participating Contracts on a separate Contracts tab, whereas the Combined format will specify participating Contracts on the Overview tab.
Similarly, you can upload your Releases using the Release Separated or Release Combined template. The Separated format will specify the attached Tracks and participating Contracts on a separate Tracks and Contracts tab, whereas the Combined format will specify Tracks and Contracts on the Overview tab. The additional benefit of the Release Combined template is that it can be used to create both Releases and Tracks within one import.
Which template format works best for you will depend on the current structure of your catalogue data. Once your catalogue template is complete, you can import your Tracks or Releases via the Import button on the Tracks or Releases page respectively.
Add Tracks & Releases via the Spotify API
You can easily download your catalogue from Spotify and all the metadata that is stored there, such as Title, ISRC, Artist etc, without having to create it from scratch.
The Spotify API will create your Tracks and Releases in your Curve account.
You'd simply need to go to your Releases or Tracks page, click on Import top right and then select Import from Spotify. You can then search by the applicable Keyword, Label and/or Artist, select and confirm. Next thing, a notification will be received informing you that your import from Spotify has completed.
You will, however, still need to attach your Contracts to the Tracks & Releases as per the steps described above.
More info on how to create catalogue through the Spotify Search can be found
here.
Additional features
The below features are not mandatory to use, but may be helpful to clients with specific requirements.
Assign Catalogue Groups to your catalogue - This may help you categorise your tracks & releases, but also allows you to apply a different set of royalty rates to different groups of catalogue.
More info
Complete your Release information - Accurately store how much each Release has earned using Default Releases.
More info
Condition which Contracts are paid for a Track based on the Release information - If a Track has a different beneficiary based on as part of which Release this Track was sold, you can use the Release Specific Sales tool.
More info
Once your catalogue is complete, you are ready to start
uploading your sales data.