Common Works Registration · 2.1 / 2.2
Is your CWR ready
to deliver?
Drop in a .V21 or .V22 file and get a verdict in seconds — every parsing error, spec violation, and share anomaly, pointed at the exact line. Free, no signup, nothing stored.
Drag and drop a CWR file
.V21 · .V22 · up to 20 files, 10 MB each — about 12,000 songs per file
Files are validated in memory and never stored — unless you ask for a share link, nothing you upload is collected, kept, or passed on.
Your works already live somewhere — an admin system, a database, a spreadsheet export. Getting them out as compliant CWR is the painful part. Send us the data as JSON and download a delivery-ready CWR 2.1 or 2.2 file — every prefix, sequence number, and control total handled. If the free check passes, your download is guaranteed to validate.
- Export your worksOne JSON file from whatever holds your catalog — see the shape or wire up the API.
- Check it — freeWe build your file and prove it validates. No signup, nothing stored.
- DownloadFree while we’re in open beta — regenerate as often as you like.
Administrators: tag each catalog with a
client label to keep client catalogs separate. Volume
or SLA questions:
alex@kanetechgroup.com.
Kane Technology Group · Est. New York · Twelve years of registration at scale
The tools above are for people who deliver their own files. If you’d rather hand the whole thing off — setup, delivery, acknowledgement chasing, corrections, every society — that’s what we do for a living. CWR Check is built by Kane Tech Group, which has been delivering registrations at scale for twelve years: catalogs from a few hundred works to millions, to societies worldwide. Tell us about yours and we’ll take it from there.
Coming from Music Maestro or Curve? We know both roads well: we’ve exported catalog data straight out of each and delivered society-ready CWR built from it — works, splits, agreements, territories and all. Whether you’re staying put or migrating, your registrations don’t have to wait. CWR from Music Maestro → · CWR from Curve →
Parsing
Every record is read against the official CISAC field tables (CWR19-1070R1) — including the trimmed lines and version quirks real-world files actually have.
Spec violations
Structure, control totals, sequence numbers, mandatory fields, share ranges — the exact rejections a society would send back, caught before you deliver.
Anomalies
Shares that don’t add up, unknown record types, filenames off convention — the things societies tolerate but a careful registrant fixes. Flagged as warnings, kept apart from hard errors.
The full picture
A line-by-line report of every work, every chain of title, every share — open it, download it, or share it with a link. Your file stays yours.
What is a CWR file?
CWR (Common Works Registration) is the CISAC standard format
publishers use to register musical works with collecting societies
such as ASCAP, BMI, SESAC, GEMA, PRS, and the MLC. A CWR file is a
fixed-width text file — usually with a .V21 or
.V22 extension — carrying works, writers,
publishers, ownership shares, and collection territories in a
strictly defined record layout.
Why was my CWR file rejected by a society?
Nine times out of ten it isn’t your data — it’s the bookkeeping. CWR is a fixed-width format, and societies bounce files over details no human would spot:
- a record sequence number that skips by one
- a GRT or TRL control total that’s off because a record was added late
- one blank mandatory field on one work
- shares totalling 99.98% instead of 100%
- a publisher claiming more than the 50% performing-rights maximum
Any one of these can reject a transaction — or the whole file — and you often find out weeks after delivery, at the cost of a full registration cycle. CWR Check runs those same checks in seconds and points at the exact line, so the file that goes out is the file that gets accepted. Deeper dive: why CWR files get rejected.
Which CWR versions are supported?
CWR 2.1 and CWR 2.2 — the versions societies accept in production today — including registrations (NWR/REV), agreements (AGR), acknowledgements (ACK), and the non-Roman alphabet record types. Record layouts follow the CISAC functional specification CWR19-1070R1. (CWR 3.x exists on paper; production acceptance worldwide is still 2.1/2.2.)
Who takes what: ASCAP, BMI, and SOCAN receive CWR through MusicMark; PRS, GEMA, and STIM share the ICE works database; most European societies (SACEM, SIAE, SGAE, BUMA/STEMRA, SUISA and more) and agencies like The MLC and CMRRA take CWR directly; and across Asia and Latin America — JASRAC, NexTone, KOMCA, KOSCAP, SACM, UBC/Abramus — your local sub-publisher usually registers from your CWR. The full routing map, society by society: which societies accept CWR.
Is there a size limit?
Files up to 10 MB — about 12,000 song registrations — validate right here in seconds. If your catalog is bigger than that, please don’t try to squeeze a million rows through a browser: that’s pipeline territory, and building those is exactly what we do. Tell us about your catalog and we’ll spec it together.
Is my catalog stored anywhere?
Not unless you ask. Files are validated in memory and discarded when the response is sent; reports are built in your browser and exist only there. The one exception is explicit: if you click “Create share link”, that report — which includes your file’s contents — is stored at an unguessable URL and deleted after 30 days. Page views are counted by GoatCounter — no cookies, no personal data, and it never sees your file.
Can I create a CWR file without CWR software?
Yes — if your works are in any structured form. Export them from whatever system holds them — an admin platform, a database, a spreadsheet — into our JSON shape and the documented API (or the upload above) turns them into a delivery-ready CWR file: every prefix, sequence number, and control total handled, output guaranteed to pass the validator. The whole flow is free while we’re in open beta.
What is the difference between CWR 2.1 and 2.2?
CWR 2.2 adds fields to existing records — recording titles, display artists, ISRC validity on REC records; software package details on the transmission header; V-ISAN and EIDR identifiers on work origin — and introduces the explicit publisher-chain reference on PWR records. Most societies accept both; some still prefer 2.1.