Guides
Check how your writers are registered
You register a work once, in CWR, with each writer's name and IPI name number. The society or agency that receives it then holds that registration beside every other one it has for the same writer, from other publishers, administrators and years. Over time those records drift apart.
How registrations drift
- Spellings. One writer registered as “Smith, John”, “John A Smith” and “J. Smith” can end up as several separate records.
- A second IPI number. A writer can hold more than one IPI name number, for a legal name and a pen name for example, and a registration may carry either.
- No IPI at all. In a September 2026 sample of writer lines in public registration data, 30% carried no IPI name number (13,396 of 44,352), which leaves only the name to match on.
A work filed on a record the writer does not know about may not pay the writer it belongs to.
How common it is
About 1 in 3 songwriters in rights registrations have works filed under another spelling or IPI number.
This counts writers, not works: across all works the share is much smaller. It says nothing about any particular writer until you look.
Check your writers
Paste IPI name numbers, one per line or separated by commas, up to 50. Songlinks, a songwriter lookup from Kane Technology Group, which also makes CWR Check, looks each one up in public registration data and shows the registrations it groups with that writer. Songlinks is in English.
If a work is filed in the wrong place
Songlinks only shows what the registration data holds. Corrections are made with the society or agency that holds the registration, usually through your publisher or administrator. When you next deliver CWR, check each writer's name and IPI name number against the registration you want the work on. The validator checks that every IPI name number's check digits add up.
Check a CWR file free — errors and warnings tied to the exact line, nothing stored: cwrcheck.com.