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Songwriter's Guide
by Gary Schuster
Catalog Listings
While it may seem straightforward enough, and probably should be, keeping
track of your catalog of songs will probably be one of the trickier parts of
your business life. Successful and busy writers will accumulate several hundred
songs, and it should be no surprise that some will be lost, forgotten, misplaced
or otherwise fall through the cracks. Your publisher may sell one or more of
your songs to another publisher, or the whole company may sell out or merge with
another. After a while, you may just lose track of where all your songs are.
Fortunately, there are certain places you can go to get listings of your
catalog. But each listing has its own strengths and weaknesses.
Keeping track of your
catalog of
songs
may be trickier than you think.
U.S. Copyright Office
The U.S. Copyright Office will search its records and send you a written
report on all the information it has on file pertaining to your request. You may
request information on a particular title, or a number of titles, or a
particular writer (use the writer's full legal name as well as short forms of
the name and any nicknames). The report is in the form of an alphabetical
listing of titles including the name of the authors, the copyright claimants,
and the dates and numbers of copyright registration. It will also show
information on copyright renewals and terminations, and the parties who did
them, and the dates and numbers.
The Copyright Office search is probably considered the most authoritative
listing available if disputes arise as to who wrote or owns a song or when it
was written. But there are certain limitations. The Copyright Office is not
interested in the percentage shares among authors or publishers, and its records
have no information on that. It shows the original copyright claimant, not the
current owner. And only certain people are entitled to request a copyright
search. You must be the author, or the author's heir or attorney, or have some
other legitimate business relationship.
The Copyright Office currently charges $10 an hour for the search, and will
send you a written cost estimate before beginning. In addition, there are
private companies that will conduct the search, generally at a higher price, but
in much less time. The best known of these is probably Thomson & Thomson.
The Copyright Office also has online services that can be used for searching
at no charge (other than your usual internet connection charges).
The WWW address is http://www.loc.gov/copyright Available 24 hours a day.
The gopher address is marvel.loc.gov port 70 Available 24 hours a day.
The telnet address is locis.loc.gov Available 24 hours a day Monday through
Friday; Saturday until 5 p.m.; Sunday, after 11 a.m. Some files are not
available after 9:30 on weekdays. On Sundays, all files may not be available
from 5 p.m. - 8 p.m. (All times are eastern time.)
ASCAP "Carriage Card" and "DCAT"
ASCAP maintains two kinds of listings of its members works. One is a manually
typed chronological lasting of works as they are indexed by the member, called a
"carriage card". This list shows the title, authors, original publisher, and
year of indexing. The card does not indicate the royalty shares claimed by the
parties. Whenever ASCAP sends a copy of the carriage card to a member they
always send a letter stating that the list is maintained is a convenience to the
member and is not guaranteed as fully complete or accurate. And this is true,
since the list is based only on what the writers or publishers tell ASCAP.
The "DCAT" is a computerized listing of "performed works" only. A performed
work is one that has been performed on radio, TV or some other media monitored
by ASCAP. It is a work for which ASCAP has actually paid royalties for public
performance. The carriage card, on the other hand, shows all indexed works,
whether or not they have been publicly performed. The strong point of the DCAT
is that it shows the current publisher of the song.
There is another form of DCAT which is even more detailed, showing the
royalty percentages for the writers and publishers. To protect the privacy of
its members, ASCAP will send out this form only upon special request and only to
the writers and publishers of the works in question.
DCAT's are maintained for both writers and publishers. Carriage cards are
maintained for writers only.
The carriage cards lists, from left to right, the song title, the composer,
the author (lyricist), the year it was indexed, and the original publisher.
Sometimes the placement of the names of the composers and authors in the column
can indicate certain things. If the typist typed over the line between the
composer and author columns, it probably means that the person named wrote both
words and music. But it might not. It is best not to rely too much in the
carriage cards for information on authors or royalty shares. Instead, consult a
detailed DCAT or call ASCAP.
(Sample Carriage Card)
The DCAT begins with the name of the writer or publisher whose list is
reproduced, along with their M-Code, or member code number.
Along the left margin are listed in alphabetical order the song titles of the
performed works of the member. Next comes the TCODE, or title code number for
each composition. Next comes a column listing "Associated Parties", who are the
co-writers and publishers of the work. If one of the writers or publishers is
not an ASCAP member, the listing may show "Non-Member". The detailed DCAT
follows this column with a listing of the royalty percentages due to each listed
party.
(Sample DCAT)
BMI Catalog Printout
BMI maintains a single type of computerized catalog listing, for both writers
and publishers, which includes both performed and unperformed works.
(Sample Printout)
The printout is at once both easy and difficult to understand because while
all the headings are well-labeled, there are many code numbers and account
numbers cluttering up the page. For most of the problems confronting writers
these codes are not relevant and we will not go into them here.
The first line is for the title. To the left of the title is a code number
that is not important for our purposes. On the extreme right is another code
number that we will ignore. Following that is a date indicating, not the date on
which the song was registered, but the last time any data in the record was
changed.
Below "Title" is "AKA". This stands for "also known as" and is used for
alternative titles that a work may have. BMI, like ASCAP, puts down all possible
titles that a work may have, including titles in foreign languages, so that the
work will be fully credited when it is performed.
The next line contains a great deal of information. Reading from left to
right, it indicates:
-following the word SONG there may appear a code number, which we will
ignore.
-"CRED" stands for "credit" and here indicates that the work received
standard royalty credit of 1.00. Some works, such as a symphonic, concert or
musical theater works, receive extra credit as a way of subsidizing their
writers and publishers. Such a work might shows credit of 3.00. Other works
receive less credit, such as arrangements of public domain works, which usually
received 0.20.
-"CLASS' - this indicates that the song receives no multiple credit. A song
would receive multiple credit if it were a symphonic, concert or musical theater
work, as described above. If this were a concert work this space would indicate
C (for "concert").
-"RTS" stands for "rights" and here indicates that the writers are American
writers. If BMI was licensing the work in the United States for foreign writers
it would say "FOR LICENSE".
-"LOG" - this indicates that BMI is logging radio and TV stations in the
United States and Canada. Only rarely will this line indicate some other
territories.
-"CLEAR" - this indicates when the song was first cleared at BMI, showing the
number assigned to the clearance and the date of clearance.
The next line shows the first songwriter, first by name, then by code number,
and then by royalty account number. The "POINTER" is not relevant to us here.
Next comes the writer's percentage share of songwriter royalties for the work.
Finally comes the words "PAY WR DIR", meaning that BMI pays the writer directly,
or "NO PAY DOM", meaning that BMI does not pay the writer, usually because the
writer is a member of ASCAP, SESAC or a foreign society.
For music publishers, the information given corresponds to that given for
writers. The only difference is at the end where it says US/CAN/WD/ORI. This
stands for World Original and indicates that the publisher is the original
publisher of the work and has world rights, rather than being only the American
sub-publisher of a work originally published by a foreign publisher.
Also, it often happens that one publisher has U.S. rights while another has
rights for Canada. In such a case, on the line for the American publisher it
would say "US SUB" meaning that this publisher is the American sub-publisher of
a work originally published by a foreign publisher. Similarly, for the Canadian
publisher the line would read "CAN SUB".
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