The Onboarding Cheat Sheet for Publishers

New to Curve? Before you can start using Curve to create your royalty statements, you will need to onboard your metadata to your Curve client. A detailed description of how to onboard your metadata is found in our Getting Started Guide. Whereas this cheat sheet gives a quick overview of all the steps you will be walking through when onboarding your metadata to Curve.

1

Configure Your Settings

The Settings allow you to configure the building blocks of your metadata setup & statement design. The below video will give you a quick introduction to how to configure your Settings.

Further Reading

Checklist Prior to Moving on to Step 2

2

Import Your Payees

For each person or organisation that you wish to send statements to, you will need to create a Payee. The use of a Payee is that (1) you can link multiple Contracts so that all the statements from these different Contracts are collected in the same portal, and (2) you can link multiple Users to this Payee so that multiple people such as managers can all have access to the same portal with their own Curve account.

The only mandatory field when creating a Payee is the name. All the other fields are for your own references. If you are intending to create self-bill invoices on behalf of your clients, you may need to specify tax information.

You can create Payees either via the interface on Curve, or in bulk via the Payee template.

Further Reading

Checklist Prior to Moving on to Step 3

  • Every beneficiary I wish to send statements to has a Payee with a clear name.
  • If I will be creating self-bill invoices on behalf of my clients, I have specified tax info where necessary.
3

Import Your Contracts

In the Contract you will specify which rate you will pay as a royalty to your songwriters. You will also specify how often you want to create a statement for this Contract, if there currently is an outstanding balance for the Contract, which Payee you want to account the royalties to, & if you want to create self-bill invoices on behalf of the songwriter.
You can create Contracts either via the interface on Curve, or in bulk via the Contract template.

Further Reading

Checklist Prior to Moving on to Step 4

4

Create Your Catalogue

Your Works page will hold all the headline metadata of your catalogue. Prior to creating your Works, you will need to create Composers & Publishers, as you’ll need these as the building blocks of your IP Chains.
You can create Works either (1) via the interface on Curve, (2) via the Work template, or (3) via CWR delivery (this will automatically create the Composers and Publishers also). For the royalty accounting process, it suffices to create a Work title and attach the Contracts. Though if you wish to use Curve for catalogue management and CWR deliveries; you will also need to create Composers, Publishers, complete the Work headline metadata, set the IP Chains & Territories in which you represent the publishing copyrights.
In your catalogue you will specify which Contracts the income of a particular Work needs to be shared with. You can attach Contracts to Works via the interface or via the Work template. A useful tool to help you attach Contracts to Works is the Linked Contracts tool. When each Composer has a Linked Contract, Curve will automatically determine which Contracts the income should funnel to based on the writers & publishers shares in the IP Chain.

Further Reading

Checklist Prior to Moving on to Step 5 (for Royalty Accounting)

  • All Works have the composers’ Contracts attached & the Composers’ total Participation Rate per Work adds up to 100

Checlist Prior to Moving on to Step 5 (for CWR & Catalogue Management)

  • All Composers & Publishers representing a share in a Work in your catalogue are created on Curve
  • When a member of a Collection Society, all Composers have their CAE/IPI Number specified
  • All Composers have a Linked Contract
  • The Collected/Owned Mechanical/Performance share of all IP Chains adds up to 100
  • Only the shares of the Composers & Publishers you represent are marked as Controlled in the IP Chain
  • All Works are mapped to a Track that holds the ISRC codes.
5

Upload Your Income

Uploading your income to Curve is as simple as dropping your income statements into our bulk import tool.

If our Bulk Upload tool does not recognise your income file, it may be you need to create your own Template or adjust an existing Template from our Library. For more information on how to create Templates, please visit the How To Create Templates in our Getting Started Guide.

Further Reading

Checklist Prior to Moving on to Step 6

  • I have tagged all sales files with a consistent Target Period
  • All the sales have a correct combination of Channels & Configurations
  • All sales lines have a Sale & Transaction Date
  • I have dealt with Incomplete lines via adjustments & Calculations in the Template. Manually editing sales lines should be a solution of last resort
  • All sales files are brought down to zero invalid lines where possible
6

Create Your Period

Now that Curve holds all of your metadata, and all of your income data, you can start creating statements. A Period allows you to select which Contracts to create a statement for, and which income files to include in the royalty calculation.
When creating your first Period, you may consider doing a parallel run with your previous royalty accounting setup. In this parallel run, you can create statements for the latest accounting period on both Curve and your current setup. Comparing the results of these parallel runs often proves to be an effective way to flag any discrepancies that crept in during the onboarding process.
Once you are satisfied with your final Period, a Curve Client Manager will perform a Healthcheck. Here we will go through your setup, dig for any common mistakes & give feedback on how to make your royalty data as accurate & complete as possible for you & your clients. This will allow you to make final changes prior to sending out your first statements via the Curve platform.

Further Reading

7

Deliver Your Statements

Curve allows you to deliver the statements to your beneficiaries via the platform. When creating a User, you can grand people access to their own artist portal, where they can view their statements & access their data.

Further Reading

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