Attaching Contracts to Works

The Rights tab on your Works page is where catalogue items are connected to one or more contracts to account for income. The Participation Rate specifies in which share of the income a Contract will participate. Adding a Contract with a participation rate of 100 would mean 100% of the income of this Work will be allocated to this particular Contract. It is then down to the royalty rates on this Contract to calculate how much of this income will eventually be paid as a royalty to the songwriter.

Please do take a moment to check out our Linked Contracts feature, which will automatically assign the songwriter's Contracts to the Work based on the IP Chain of your Work. 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.

In the below example, all revenue will be allocated as an input to the Artist A contract.

In the below example, revenue would be split evenly & allocated as an input to the Artist A & Artist B contracts. Imagine this Work has a total net amount of $1000; $500 will be allocated to Artist A & the other $500 will be allocated to Artist B. It is then down to the terms of these contracts to calculate how much will eventually end up on these artists their Closing Balance.

Specific Participation Rates

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.

Imagine a scenario where you have two Writers, one being a member of BMI, another being a member of ASCAP. You may want to set up that all income coming from BMI is funnelled to the first composer's Contract, and all income from ASCAP is funnelled to the second composer's Contract, rather than revenue from both sources being split between both composers. You can use Specific Participation Rates to assign a custom participation in income from a particular Channel, Source or Territory.

Or imagine a scenario where you have two writers, but only control one of them in the United Kingdom. All income coming from the United Kingdom would therefore be due to the one writer. You can use Specific Participation Rates to alter the participation rates of your two writers in this specific Territory.

Please note that just like the hierarchy of sales terms within Contracts, the Specific Participation Rates will also always apply the rate that is most specific.

For instance, if an income line ingested into Curve contains a Channel of Performance and a Source of ASCAP, the 50% rate as shown below will be applied to the sale instead of 75% since the Distribution Channel of Performance is more specific than the Source of ASCAP. In this case, you would need to include the channel of Performance on the ASCAP specific rates with additional specific participation rates for a Distribution Channel of Mechanical if the source is not exclusive to one channel.