Guides
IPI name numbers: what they are and how to find yours
Every songwriter and publisher who joins a collecting society is given an IPI number. It is how societies tell one “John Smith” from another, and it is the field in a CWR registration that decides whose registration a work lands on.
Name number and base number
IPI stands for Interested Parties Information, the CISAC system that societies worldwide share. It gives each party two kinds of number.
The IPI base number identifies the person or company: a letter and ten characters, written like I‑000123456‑7. One party has one base number for life.
The IPI name number identifies one name of that party: 11 digits, such as 00045620792. A writer who works under a legal name and a pen name has a name number for each, and both point to the same base number. CWR registrations carry the name number.
Where to find yours
Your society assigns your IPI numbers when you join, as a writer or as a publisher. Look in your society's member portal, on your statements or membership documents, or ask the society. Publishers have their own IPI numbers, separate from their writers'.
The name number used to be called a CAE number and had 9 digits. Those numbers carried over: a 9-digit CAE number is the same identifier with two leading zeros.
How to tell a number is valid
An IPI name number is 11 digits. The last two are check digits, calculated from the first nine, so most typos produce a number that fails its own check. That is what the CWR Check validator tests on every writer and publisher in a file.
Leading zeros matter: 45620792 and 00045620792 are the same number, and many systems drop the zeros. All zeros is the conventional placeholder for “unknown”, not a real number.
IPI numbers in a CWR file
The writer records (SWR and OWR) and publisher records (SPU and OPU) each carry an IPI name number and an IPI base number. The name number is the one societies match on. The mistakes that cost registrations are mundane:
- a controlled writer filed with no IPI name number at all;
- a mistyped number, which points at somebody else or at nobody;
- the publisher's number put in a writer's field;
- one writer filed under different numbers, or under different spellings, across files.
The SWR record reference lists the writer fields and their positions.
When one writer has several numbers
A writer's works should sit on one registration per name they use. When some works are filed under a spelling or IPI other than the writer's main one, those works live on a separate registration. Royalties follow the registration a work is filed under, so they may not be paid where the writer expects.
The writer check by Songlinks looks up every writer's IPI name number when you check a CWR file, and tells you which writers have works registered under another spelling or IPI, and how many. Only the IPI numbers are sent. To look up one number, use Songlinks' IPI name number lookup (in English).
If you would rather not sort this out yourself, Kane Tech Group, the team behind CWR Check, corrects registrations like these as a managed service. Talk to us →
Questions
Is an IPI number the same as a CAE number?
The IPI name number replaced the 9-digit CAE number. Old CAE numbers carried over as IPI name numbers with two leading zeros, so a CAE number and the 11-digit name number are the same identifier.
Can a songwriter have more than one IPI name number?
Yes. Each name a writer uses, such as a legal name and a pen name, has its own IPI name number, and all of them belong to one IPI base number. Registrations should use the name number for the name the work is credited to.
Do I need an IPI number to register a work in CWR?
The CWR specification does not require one for every writer, but societies match writers by it. A controlled writer with no IPI name number is harder to match to the right person, which is why CWR Check asks about it.
Two free checks for your CWR file. Is the file correct? Every record, share and control total against the spec, each problem on its exact line. Do its writers match their registrations? Every writer cross-checked against public registration data, including works registered under another spelling or IPI. Nothing stored: check a file at cwrcheck.com.