Guides
The CWR glossary
The vocabulary of music registration, in plain words.
CWR
Common Works Registration — the CISAC standard file format publishers use to register musical works with societies. Versions 2.1 and 2.2 are in production use.
Society / PRO / CMO
The organizations that license music use and pay rightsholders: performing rights organizations (ASCAP, PRS…), mechanical agencies (The MLC, CMRRA), and combined collective management organizations (GEMA, SACEM).
Performance rights (PR)
The right to perform a song publicly — radio, streaming, live, TV. Writers always keep at least 50% of performance ownership; the publisher's share is capped at 50%.
Mechanical rights (MR)
The right to reproduce a song — downloads, physical media, and the reproduction component of streaming.
Synchronisation (SR)
The right to pair a song with moving images — film, TV, ads, games. Licensed directly by publishers, not through societies.
Ownership share vs collection share
Ownership is who owns the song; collection is who picks up the money in a territory. A publisher may own 50% but collect 100% of the publisher-side money in a territory under a sub-publishing deal.
Chain of title
The linked path from each writer through the publishers who represent them — in CWR, writers (SWR), publishers (SPU), and the PWR records that connect them.
Interested party (IP)
Anyone with a stake in a work: writers and publishers. The 'IP number' in CWR is your own identifier for them; the IPI is the global one.
IPI
The international identifier for writers and publishers, maintained by SUISA for CISAC. A writer without an IPI is hard to pay.
ISWC
The International Standard Musical Work Code — the global identifier for the composition itself (T-XXX.XXX.XXX-C).
ISRC
The identifier for a specific recording of a work. One ISWC (song) can have many ISRCs (recordings).
TIS
CISAC's territory numbering: every country and region has a code. 2136 means 'the world'.
Sub-publisher
A local publisher appointed to represent your catalog in a territory — registering with the local society, collecting, and remitting, for a share.
Transaction
One registration inside a CWR file: a work header (NWR/REV) plus its detail lines. Files carry thousands.
Control totals
The counts a CWR file declares about itself (GRT and TRL records). If they don't match the contents, societies reject the file.
ACK
The acknowledgement file a society sends back: what was accepted, what was rejected, and why — per transaction.
Registration
Telling a society a work exists and who owns it, so usage can be matched and money paid. Not the same as copyright, which exists automatically.
Black box / unmatched royalties
Money collected for usage that couldn't be matched to a rightsholder — often because registrations were missing, late, or wrong.
Check a CWR file free — errors and warnings tied to the exact line, nothing stored: cwrcheck.com.