This process differs between Master and Publisher users, so will be handled in this guide separately. If you are a publisher and only interested in how to set up your publishing catalogue, you can head straight to our next chapter: Adding Catalogue – Publishers. Record labels & distributors, please read on.

Please watch our introduction to Catalogue below. We provide notes further down below in the article.

Catalogue Summary

Master catalogue within Curve is separated into two distinct parts: Releases & Tracks. It is important to understand that these are separate within the Curve system, not bundled onto one level as you may have encountered with other royalty systems. Releases (such as digital albums, EPs, LP singles, …) can contain tracks, but both interact with your sales & contracts independently.

You can create Tracks & Releases either (1) via the interface on Curve, (2) via DDEX delivery, or (3) via the Track & Release templates.

Add Tracks & Releases via the Interface

You access Tracks & Releases via the sidebar. Select the Catalogue sub-menu, & then the Tracks or Releases page respectively. Once the page has loaded, hit +Create in the top right to create a new Track or Release.

Tracks

Each of your sound recordings will be created as one Track on Curve. One track can be mapped to as many Releases as needed.

1. Provide the headline metadata of your Track – Complete the Title, Artist, ISRC (the unique ID number of your Track) & Label field. Other fields are optional but may be helpful to complete. For more information please visit this chapter in our documentation.

2. Add Contracts to your Track – Once your sales & costs are ingested & matched to the Catalogue, the system will need to know how to distribute the revenues & costs to the Contracts; this is configured on the Rights tab of your Track. A Participation Rate of 100 means 100% of the total revenue/cost of this Track will go to this Contract. A participation rate of 15 means just 15% of all revenue/costs of this Track will go to this Contract. This is not the final percentage that the Payee will receive, but rather how much of the reported revenue should the royalty percentage be based upon.

For more information on how to add Contracts to your Tracks, and how to work out your participation rates, please visit this chapter in our documentation.

Releases

Each album, EP or single will need to be created as a Release. You will generally need to create one release per format; meaning the Digital, CD & LP version of the same album will each need their own Release in your Curve catalogue. This to be able to accommodate for differences in tracklists in the different formats.

1. Provide the headline metadata of your Release – Complete the Title, Artist, Label, Cat No & Barcode. The Cat No & Barcode are the key identifiers of your release & are used to match your sales to your catalogue. They must be unique in relation to your Distribution Channel; meaning you can use the same barcode on a digital & physical release, but you can not use the same barcode on two digital releases. Other fields are optional but may be helpful to complete. For more information please visit this chapter in our documentation.

2. Provide the Channel & Format – Here you specify if this is the Digital or Physical version of your Release. In the Format, you specify more specifically if it’s the CD, LP or 12″, for example. For Digital releases, you may leave the format blank or default it to Download. The Channels and Formats you can choose from are based on the lists provided in your Settings, which you may have customised as per our instructions on Settings.

3. Attach Tracks to your Release – Specify which Tracks are part of this Release.

4. Add Contracts to your Release – Similarly to how you attached Contracts to your Tracks, via the Rights tab of your Release, you will specify how the revenue & costs of this Release will be assigned to Contracts & for which share. A participation rate of 100 means 100% of all the revenue/cost of this Release will go to this Contract. A participation rate of 50 means just half of all the revenue/costs of this Release will go to this Contract. This is not the final percentage that the Payee will receive, but rather how much of the reported revenue should the royalty percentage be based upon.

In this step, Curve does have a trick up its sleeve. We know the Tracks on this Release, & we know the royalty beneficiaries of those Tracks. So automatically, Curve can work out who is due a royalty for this Release. Using the Pro Rata From Tracks button will automatically flush your Contracts from your Tracks to your Release.

Our Pro Rata Contracts feature in the Bulk Update tool can flush Contracts from your Tracks to your Releases in one go for your entire catalogue.