Guides

Why was my CWR file rejected?

The frustrating thing about CWR rejections is that the data is usually fine. What bounces files is the bookkeeping the format wraps around your data — and you often learn about it weeks after delivery, when the society's acknowledgement file arrives.

The usual suspects

1. Control totals that don't add up

Every group trailer (GRT) declares how many transactions and records the group contains; the file trailer (TRL) declares totals for the whole transmission. Add or remove one record without updating the counts and the entire file can be rejected. This is the single most common failure in hand-edited files.

2. Sequence numbers out of order

Each transaction numbers itself sequentially from 0 within its group, and every detail record numbers itself within its transaction. A record inserted late, or deleted without renumbering, breaks the chain — the spec treats sequence errors as grounds to reject the entire file.

3. Blank mandatory fields

Work title, distribution category, version type, writer last name on controlled writers — each record type has fields the spec marks mandatory. Blank ones reject the record or the transaction.

4. Share arithmetic

Ownership shares across a work's writers and publishers are expected to total 100% per right (within a 0.06% tolerance) — and a publisher's performing-rights ownership may not exceed 50%; the other half belongs to the writers. Files where splits were edited by hand routinely land at 99.98% or 100.02%.

5. Society-specific rules

Beyond the core spec, societies add their own edits — ASCAP requires the first territory record to be an inclusion, GEMA has rules about share agreements, UK societies require the first-recording-refusal flag. A file that's clean for one society can bounce at another.

Find it before they do

All of the structural rules above are checkable before delivery. The free CWR validator runs them in seconds and points at the exact line — control totals, sequences, mandatory fields, share ranges — separating hard spec violations from warnings a society would tolerate. Check the file that's about to go out, not the one that already bounced.

Check a CWR file free — errors and warnings tied to the exact line, nothing stored: cwrcheck.com.