Using Default Releases to Complete Your Royalty Data

In a sales file with complete data, you will not just know which Track was streamed, but also as part of which Release it was streamed. This is useful information, as it allows you to review whether a Track was streamed as part of the single, album or a compilation. Subsequently, this enables you to review the total revenue per Release, including the track streams and downloads.

When DSPs report release data, both the mapped Track and Release will be stored on your database. This data will flow through to your statements. Your payees will see in their All Sales CSV statement not just what track was streamed/downloaded, but also as part of which release this stream/download happened. In the below example of a sales file, you can see how we received complete metadata and Curve mapped each Track sale to both a Track and a Release.

Whilst many DSPs report release level data on track transactions, a small number either don’t (YouTube, Soundcloud), or report it differently to when reporting release transactions (Google populates the release UPCs for track transactions in a different column to when reporting releases), or report their own data (Apple doesn’t report UPCs on track transactions, but they do report their Apple IDs).

If this Release information is missing from the original sales data, release level data will be omitted from your statement CSVs unless we take some steps. The Default Release tool allows you to associate a track with a release so that when this data is missing from statements the system can make an assumption which release the track transaction relates to & surface that to your artists. A Default Release can be set for each individual Track.

Benefits of Default Releases for Your Data

In the below example of a Sales CSV, Release data for these two Track sales was missing in the sales file; but when we set NEVER001LP as the default release for these two Tracks, Curve will fill in these blanks, guaranteeing your data is complete for you and your artists. The blanks will be completed either at the moment of sales ingestion, or (for your artists only) at the moment a Statement is processed.

Essentially, your data and the Sales CSV statements become more complicate. We find that especially labels who receive royalty statements from their distributors often demand this complete level of detail.

How to Find Out Which Tracks Have Sales Without Release Info

You can create a report to find out which Tracks have sales for which no Release info was provided, and for which you may thus want to add a Default Release. To get started, go to your directory and select Data > Reports. By creating a Sales Input report with the fields Cat No, ISRC and Net Amount; you get a breakdown of all ISRCs and their matched Releases. If an ISRC has a blank Cat No column, that would mean no Release info is specified for these sales.