What are Rights?

An Album (also known as a Share and Copyright) refers to the structured organization of all legal and contractual information that governs the ownership, control, and exploitation of musical works.

It enables publishers, administrators, and their partners to:

• Maintain accurate and reliable data.
• Streamline catalog transfers between stakeholders and with Collective Management Organizations (CMO/PRO/MRO).
• Establish a solid foundation for catalog administration and reporting.

By structuring rights data in this way, Reprtoir is fully CWR compliant, ensuring smooth and accurate data exchanges with CMOs, PROs, MROs, and industry partners.

Chain of Rights Explained

Understanding Rights Data

This section introduces the core concepts of rights data and the standard workflows that define who declares what, to whom, and when. Before entering data in Reprtoir, it is essential to understand how rights information is structured in the music publishing industry. Rights data is not only about who owns what, but also about who is allowed to collect where and under which mandate.

❗️

Disclaimer

The information on this page is provided for guidance and illustration only. It describes common industry practices and best practices for entering rights data in Reprtoir in a way that is CWR compliant.

In practice, requirements may vary depending on your contracts, your partners, and the rules of each CMO/PRO/MRO. Always communicate with your partners (Publishers, Sub-Publishers, Administrators) before exchanging data, and confirm expectations with the relevant society. Running tests before sending official deliveries is strongly recommended.

Ownership vs. Collection

• Ownership defines the legal reality: who owns what share of a work, based on contracts between authors, composers, and publishers.
• Collection defines the practical administration: who is authorized to collect royalties for those shares, and in which territories.

Rights: Best Practices

• Always claim ownership of the controlled shares of the work.
• Optionally declare ownership of uncontrolled shares (for transparency only or because is required by the CWR recipient).
• Optionally declare collection of controlled shares worldwide.
• Optionally declare collection of controlled shares by territory.
• Never declare collection for uncontrolled shares (unsupported by CWR standard).

These optional declarations depend on the level of detail you wish to send to the recipient (CMO/PRO/MRO or partner).

Workflows: Who Declares What

In practice, rights data always moves through predictable workflows. The payload you send depends on the type of declaration:

Controlled vs. Uncontrolled Shares

• Controlled Shares are the rights that a company manages through contracts or mandates.
• Uncontrolled Shares belong to contributors outside that company’s control, but they still need to be declared for a complete and transparent chain of rights.

Best practice: Controlled shares must always be declared. Uncontrolled shares may also be declared for ownership only (not collection), so the chain of rights is transparent without creating duplicate collection claims.

Worldwide vs. Territorial Rules

• Worldwide Rules apply when rights are administered globally (e.g., by an Original Publisher or an Administrator with a worldwide mandate).
• Territorial Rules apply when rights are limited to specific countries or regions (e.g., Sub-Publishing or Administration in France, Germany, Benelux, etc.).

In Reprtoir:

• The Worldwide box always reflects ownership rights.
• Territorial boxes are added to declare specific collection rules for Sub-Publishers or Administrators.

⚠ Do not confuse Rights Management and Royalty Splits

Rights Management and Royalties are complementary but cover two different dimensions:

• Rights represent the chain of rights: the legal and contractual reality of who owns what, and under which conditions. This chain may include contributors that your company does not control.
• Royalties represent the royalty splits: the financial allocation of revenues, defining who must be paid, for which revenues, and according to which rules. Only contributors that your company is contractually responsible for appear here.

In short: Rights = chain of rights (legal view) and Royalties = royalty splits (financial view).