Complete your Sale & Transaction Dates

Make sure your Template picks up the Sale Date (the day the sale/stream/performance occurred) & Transaction Date (when you received payment). When these dates are not specified in the statement, you can manually complete these in the Set Fields on the pre-ingestion page. Sale & Transaction dates are not necessary for royalty calculation unless you have escalations based on the sale date. However, it is best practice to always complete these as this data is useful for analytics, for you & your artists. Especially for Distributors, this may be important data to provide, as many of your Label clients may find this useful.

Use the Target Period

Always enter a Target Period for your sales files & in a consistent manner. This will be useful when selecting sales files to be used in a Period.

Avoid Manual Changes to your Sales Lines; Use the Mapping Manager & your Template Instead

Use the Mapping Manager or calculations on your Template to fix incomplete lines before manually fixing lines individually. By manually changing sales lines at the bottom of your sales file page or the Incomplete page you are not creating solutions within the system to prevent future invalid lines. So you will always have to make these fixes manually. But the Mapping Manager & Template Calculations teach the system how to behave in specific circumstances, so Curve performs the fixes on your behalf. When the Mapping Manager doesn’t provide enough data to create a mapping match, you can use calculations (such as concatenating values, skipping rows or referring to alternate columns where values are absent) to help this process.

So the greatest benefit of using the Mapping Manager & Template to resolve Incomplete lines is creating permanent solutions.

Don’t Overwrite Data with your Standard Fields

Use the Template to capture values from the statement data & don’t overwrite these with values in your Standard Fields when not necessary. A common user error is to map a column in a statement to the Territory field, but then also set the territory in the Standard Fields to “World”. This will overwrite the territory detail values present in the statement with the value “World”. A Standard Field should only be completed when there is no relevant data supplied in the statement, or when the value is the same for every single sales line.

Always Complete your Gross Amount

Always store a Gross Amount. Even when the Gross Amount is not given in your statement, it is best to create a calculation that copies the Net Amount value to the Gross Amount field. It looks better aesthetically on the csv statements you create for your artists, is better for analytical purposes & also makes sure a calculation input is present for any contract terms you may have that are based on Gross Receipts.

Keep your Sources Consistent

Make sure to capture Sources in a consistent matter. If you enter iTunes one time then Itunes another, this will make it more difficult to analyse the data. This is even more important when your contracts have royalty rates specified for a Source, as these terms will only be applied when the Source is an exact match.

Set Default Releases

When DSPs report Track sales & streams to you, mostly they do not just provide the ISRC,  but also provide the Barcode of the Release as part of which the Track was download or streamed. In some cases however, the DSPs do not provide this data, and you can use the Default Release field on the Track to complete your data in these instances. The Default Release tool allows you to associate a track with a release so that when this data is missing from statements the system can make an assumption which release the track transaction relates to & surface that to your clients. We found this is mostly important for Distributors using Curve, as many of their label clients often require this data.

Watch out for Updated Channels & Configurations

Have you ever changed the Channels & Configurations in your settings? If so, make sure you also update any mapping values in your templates that were linked to Channels or Configurations now deleted or renamed. If you don’t sales may be mapped to configurations that no longer exist in your settings.

Always pick up the Track Artist/Track Title/Release Artist/Release Title or Work Title/Party 1/Party 2/Party 3

Record labels, if the Mapping Manager asks you to map Tracks or Releases but it is solely displaying the ISRC or Barcode & not displaying artist or title information, this is because your Template is not picking up the Track Title, Release Title, Track Artist or Release Artist. Make sure these four fields are always populated to assist you in mapping sales lines to the correct Track or Release in your catalogue. If necessary, use a Copy Field to copy data from the Track Artist field to the Release Artist field.

Publishers, if the Unmapped page provides you with the alternative Identifier & Work Title but not the composers or publishers, this is because your Party 1/Party 2/Party 3 fields are not populated. Make sure these fields are always populated to assist you in mapping sales lines to the correct Work in your catalogue. If necessary, use a Copy Field to copy data from the Composers field to the Party 1 field.