Glossary

Music publishing and recording rights terms you will find in everyday Backstage work.

ACK: Acknowledgement file sent back by the society after it receives a CWR. It reports which works were accepted, rejected or are still pending registration.
Advance: Amount paid to a rightsholder ahead of time and recorded as a debit on their account. It is recouped from later distributions as new amounts are credited to them.
Annual income statement: Annual document summarizing the income paid to a rightsholder, used for income tax filing.
Automatic settlement: Per-rightsholder option that, when enabled, makes the system settle the amounts payable to that rightsholder during processing.
Collecting society: Collective management organization that administers the rights of songwriters and artists, such as ECAD, UBC and Abramus.
Controlled work: A work in which at least one share is administered by the publisher under a contract.
Current account: The balance of each rightsholder, made up of the credits and debits recorded in their name. It shows what is payable or receivable.
CWR: Common Works Registration, the international file standard for registering musical works. It is used to send the catalog to societies and partners and to receive works from partners.
Distribution: Batch of amounts to be passed on to rightsholders, received from a paying source and organized by payment period and by origin, publishing or neighboring rights. It gathers the files with the amount lines received.
ECAD: Escritório Central de Arrecadação e Distribuição, the Brazilian entity that collects and distributes public performance royalties for music.
Effective control: The share of a work that the publisher actually administers. It is determined by an active contract with the rightsholder, not by the information in the source file.
Equalization: Split adjustment in which one rightsholder passes a percentage of what a work pays them on to another rightsholder of the same work. It is applied to amounts already imported, up to the agreed total.
Financial position: Report listing the open items of a rightsholder. It is sent, for example, to those who end the period with a negative balance.
Homonym: A different person whose name is similar to that of another rightsholder. Once marked as a homonym, the pair is no longer suggested as a possible duplicate record.
IPI/CAE: International code that identifies a music rightsholder. It is used to match the same rightsholder across different systems, societies and partners.
ISRC: International Standard Recording Code, the international code that identifies each sound recording.
ISWC: International Standard Musical Work Code, the international code that identifies each musical work, regardless of how many recordings it has.
Merge: Building the correct list of participants of a work from two duplicate work records, done before consolidating them.
Musical work: A musical composition, with lyrics and melody or melody only. It is identified by its ISWC and ECAD code.
Operational deduction: Difference between the recorded amount of a receipt and the total of the imported files, recorded as a loss. It settles receipts whose distributions consume more than the amount received.
Paying client: The client that actually paid the amounts of a distribution. It determines which receipts that distribution can draw its balance from.
Payment closing: Final step of the payment cycle, in which each rightsholder paid in the period receives the payment email with receipt, royalty statement and proof of payment.
Payment period: The reference month in which amounts are processed and paid to rightsholders. Every distribution is linked to a payment period.
Processing: Routine that calculates the allocation of each distribution according to the splits, applies costs and commissions, and posts the entries to the current accounts of the rightsholders for a period.
Product: Commercial release that groups sound recordings, such as an album, an EP or a single.
Proof of payment: File issued by the bank that proves a payment made to a rightsholder. Once reconciled, it is sent along with the payment email for the period.
Reconciliation: Linking each proof of payment to the corresponding rightsholder. It can be done automatically, based on the file name, or manually.
Record association: Consolidation of duplicate rightsholder or work records: the duplicate is associated with the correct record, which takes over all of its references. Suspected pairs can be found by an automatic duplicate check.
Rightsholder: A person or company holding rights in a work or a sound recording, such as a songwriter, performer, musician, producer or publisher.
Royalty line: Each individual amount line within a distribution, such as the use of a work in a given medium or platform.
Royalty statement: Report detailing the amounts due to a rightsholder for a given period.
Sound recording: A recording of a song, such as an album track or a single. It is identified by its ISRC code.
Split: Percentage division of a work among its rightsholders. It always adds up to 100%, including the shares not controlled by the publisher.
SWR: File format with work data used to exchange information with partners such as BMAT.
Unidentified line: A distribution line that has not been matched to any work, sound recording or product in the catalog. It requires manual review before payment.
Withheld line: A line that has already been identified but not yet paid, for example because the rightsholder has no bank details or a review is pending.