Mapping Contracts to Tracks & Releases

The Rights tab on your Track or Release page is where catalogue items are connected to one or more contracts to account for Sales/Returns & Costs. The Participation Rate specifies in which share of the revenue or costs a Contract will participate. Adding a Contract with a participation rate of 100 would mean 100% of the sales revenue (or costs) of this track will be allocated to this particular Contract. It is then down to the royalty rates on this Contract to calculate how much of this sales revenue will eventually be paid as a royalty to the artist.

One trick Curve has up its sleeves that may save you a heap of time is the Pro Rata From Tracks feature. This feature leads Curve to pro rate all the revenue of a Release across all the Tracks on that Release. Essentially removing the requirement of you to manually map Contracts to your Releases.

A Couple of Examples

Let's say $1,000 is going into a Track, which on its Rights tab has the following Sales/Returns setup.

Example 1

This setup means

• all revenue (100% of it) is allocated to Artist A's contract.
• $1,000 goes into the Artist A contract. But please note that the rates in the Contract will still be applied to this amount.

Example 2

This setup means

• 50% of the revenue will go into the Artist A contract, and the other half in the Artist B contract
• $500 goes into the Artist A contract, and $500 goes into the Artist B contract. As always, the rates on the Contracts will still be applied to these amounts.

Example 3

This setup means

• 100% of the revenue goes into the Artist A contract, but also 100% of the revenue goes into the Artist B contract, and 20% goes into the Artist C contract.
• $1,000 goes into the Artist A contract, $1,000 goes into the Artist B contract, and $200 goes into the Artist C contract.

You'll notice that the sum of the participation rates are allowed to add up to more than 100. This means that in this example, for $1,000 in revenue, $2,200 will be used as a total calculation input. This makes sense as long as the royalty rates on the Contract consider that they will be calculated on that participation in the revenue, and the combination of these rates results in the correct royalty being payable to the artist.

Participation Rate vs Royalty Rate

It’s critical to understand how Participation Rate and Royalty Rate interact. You have two valid setup approaches depending on your contractual definitions.

Option 1: Full Participation with Reduced Royalty %

• Setup:
  • Artist A: 100% Participation, 25% Royalty Rate

  • Artist B: 100% Participation, 25% Royalty Rate

    Calculation:

  • $1000 x 100% x 25% = $250 each

Option 2: Split Participation with Full Royalty %

• Setup:
  • Artist A: 50% Participation, 50% Royalty Rate

  • Artist B: 50% Participation, 50% Royalty Rate

    Calculation:

  • $1000 x 50% x 50% = $250 each

Both are correct.

What matters is consistency with your Contract's intent:

• If the Royalty Rate already reflects the share of revenue, use 100% Participation.
• If the Participation Rate is intended to split the share, make sure that the royalty rates on the Contract consider that these will be calculated on just that share of the revenue.