Reporting Mechanicals to Publishers & Societies ✪

A mechanical is a royalty due to the songwriters & publishers of a composition every time a recording utilising the composition is reproduced. So every time a sound recording is duplicated as a physical product or download or reproduced as a stream, the royalty due to the composition elements of the recording is typically referred to as the Mechanical. In many cases, mechanical royalty accounting is handled by mechanical collection societies, but in some cases it may be the label who is liable for the mechanical royalty accounting.

Reporting mechanicals is available to Curve Pro clients only as part of the Mechanicals add-on ✪

There are two sides to mechanicals in Curve:

In this article, we will discuss how to report Mechanical royalties to Publishers and Mechanical Collection Societies.

Create Mechanical Contracts

The first step is to create a mechanical contract for each Publisher or Society you need to report to. One mechanical contract per Publisher or Society suffices. You will be able to assign multiple Tracks and Licenses to this same mechanical contract. To get started, go to the Mechanicals page under the Contracts directory.

When you create a new Mechanical Contract, you need to complete an overview page similar to a regular Contract page. One field will be new:  License No – Here you can set a default License No for the mechanical contract. It is possible to map multiple track specific License Numbers for the same Mechanical Contract on the Track level. Please also note the Currency – This specifies the currency in which the mechanical statements are created. If you use the Stat Rate to calculate US Download Mechanicals, you need to set the currency as USD. If you calculate the Mechanical based on a percentage of PPD, a percentage of Net Receipts or a custom Unit Rate, use your base currency. To account mechanicals to the same publisher but in different currencies (for example US Download Mechanicals in USD & Physical Mechanicals in your base currency) separate Contracts are needed for each currency.

The terms on a mechanical contract work like those on a standard contract. The top row specifies the conditions under which to report a mechanical royalty. The second row sets the calculation to run when the above conditions are met & these options are:

Basis – What type of value is to be reported? Select either the Stat Rate, the Minimum Stat Rate, a custom Unit Rate, a percentage of the PPD or a percentage of Net Receipts. When Stat Rate is selected, you will also need to choose between the US or CA Stat Rate.

  • Stat Rate - The mechanical amount is based on the Statutory Rate, a unit rate established by the US CRB or the CMRRA, which differs based on the length of the Track. More information about the Stat Rate on Curve can be found here.
  • Min Stat Rate - A Min Stat Rate automatically applies the set Minimum Stat Rate, disregarding the length of the Track. More information about the Stat Rate on Curve can be found here.
  • Unit Rate - This option allows you to set a custom mechanical amount that will be applied per unit.
  • PPD - The mechanical amount will be set to a percentage of the Main Dealer Price. When selecting this option, please make sure your Releases have a Main Dealer Price. This option should be used for Release sales only, since Tracks can not have a Main Dealer Price.
  • Net Receipts - The mechanical amount will be set to a percentage of the Net Receipts.

Rate % – What rate to account for? If set at 100, it will account for 100% of the Basis selected. If set at 75, it will basically apply a 25% discount.

Reserve % –Do you need to hold a reserve against this mechanical royalty? If so, make sure to set a Reserve release schedule as you would with a normal artist contract.

The below example specifies a US Stat Rate to be reported for every Download in the United States. NB. for this contract the currency would need to be USD.

The next example specifies 8.5% of the PPD to be accounted to the Publisher/Collection Society for every physical copy sold. NB. for this contract, the currency would need to match the home currency, since your PPD would be set in your home currency.

Once you have created a Mechanical Contract it needs linking to catalogue items. This is done via the Mechanicals tab on relevant Tracks &/or Releases in your Catalogue area.

Add Mechanical Contracts to Tracks & Releases

The second step is to define with each Track and Release if a mechanical royalty needs to be accounted for, and to which Mechanical Contract this royalty should be accounted to.

Enable "Report Mechanicals" on Tracks where you want to report/deduct a mechanical royalty

When looking to account a mechanical royalty for a set of Tracks, make sure they have the Report Mechanicals feature enabled. You can do so via the Mechanicals tab of each respective Track, or in bulk via the Track Separated template. Tracks that do not have this option enabled will automatically be excluded from mechanical statements.

If You Make Use of Stat Rates: Select the Mechanical Basis on your Track

If you're using the Statutory Rate or Min Stat Rate to calculate your Mechanicals, you will also need to specify on which basis the mechanicals for a Track need to be calculated. These can be calculated based on Sale Date, or based on a Custom rate. You can update the Mechanical setting on your Tracks' Mechanicals tab:

Add Mechanical Contracts to your Tracks

Similarly to how you specify to which Artist Contract a royalty needs to be calculated to, for each Track you will need to tell Curve to which Mechanical Contract a mechanical royalty should be accounted to. This happens via the Mechanical tab of your Track also.

Composer – This is not mandatory to complete, but for you own reference you may wish to specify the Composer of the Work. If so you can create Composers via the Composer page under the Catalogue directory.

Publisher – Again, not a mandatory field, but you may wish to specify the Publisher of the Work. If so you can create Publishers via the Publisher page under the Catalogue directory.

Contract –  Select the mechanical contract to report to for this track.

License No. – Enter a License Number for your reference.

Rate % – A Rate % enables you to assign a discounted % of the Stat or Custom Rate to the Mechanical Contract. If the Rate % is 90%, only 90% of the Stat or Custom Rate will be used as a calculation input. Please note, whilst mechanical reporting and deduction processes generally function entirely separate from one another, this Rate % will also automatically be applied to any Mechanical Deductions for this Track. Essentially, if a discounted rate is reported to the publisher, also a discounted rate would be deducted from the artist. If multiple Mechanical Contracts with different Rate % are linked against the Track, we'll use the average Rate % to be applied in the Mechanical Deductions.

Share % – The share of the composition used that the contract represents. This is essentially the publisher's share in the composition, and may range from 0 to 100.

You can assign a default Contract to each Publisher, and assign a default Publisher to each Composer. So essentially Curve would automatically populate the Publisher and Contract field when you select the Composer.

Tracks can be updated in bulk using a Track template import.

Add Mechanical Contracts to your Releases

Contracts can be added manually as per the workflow with tracks. Alternatively the button “Load Mechanicals From Tracks” connects all Mechanical Contracts attached to Tracks that are linked to this Release on its Overview tab. So for this button to work, all applicable Tracks must be added to a Release & all applicable Mechanical Contracts connected to those Tracks.

Mechanicals can be loaded from Tracks in bulk for multiple or all Releases in your catalogue using the Bulk Update tool on the Release page. Just select “Inherit Mechanicals”, and Curve will inherit the mechanicals for all Releases the Release page is filtered on. Beware, any Track Cap Overrides set for specific Tracks will be overwritten when using the Bulk Update function.

Apply discounts where required as per the Controlled Composition Clause in your artist agreement

If the Controlled Composition Clause in your artist agreement specifies that a discount should be applied, then this can be achieved through the means of a Track Cap. More information on this setup can be found here.

Run a Mechanical Period

Once your Mechanical setup is complete, you can run a Period which will create a statement for your Mechanical Contracts. The process is entirely the same to creating a regular Artist Period, with the one exception that as a Period Type you will need to select Mechanical rather than Standard.

As part of the Period, you can also download an Unreported CSV, which will flag any sales that Curve things should have a mechanical royalty, but for which none is created. It works differently from the Unreported CSV which you can find in a Standard Period in a few ways.

  • Only sales that are queried in at least one Mechanical Contract can be included in the Mechanical Unreported CSV. For example, if you have no Mechanical Contracts that calculate mechanical royalties for Streaming revenue, then Streaming revenue will automatically be excluded from the Mechanical Unreported CSV.
  • Tracks/Releases for which "Report Mechanicals" is disabled, their sales will automatically be excluded from the Mechanical Unreported CSV.

Coming up in Mechanicals

Please keep your eyes peeled for further updates coming to our mechanical reporting functionality; such as

  • Customising the Stat Rate based on the Release Date
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