GENERAL

This is where you configure your Curve account. Here you customise your statement design, describe different items & costs to be reported, set various parameters that will define how your client works & more.

OVERVIEW

Company Name – the default name of your company to be used to brand your statements & user email invites.
Address – the address of your company to appear on your statements.

Date Format – Do you prefer the DD/MM/YYYY or the MM/DD/YYYY date format? Dates will appear in this format on the Statements, Self-Bill Invoices & the Transactions tab of your Contracts.

Notification – There are certain cases in which Curve would like to notify you; i.e. when you have (un)successfully imported catalogue or when you export catalogue or a report. You can choose to either receive these notifications via email, via the notification icon on the top right of your Curve platform, or both.

User configuration – update your Curve password here.

CONFIGURATION

Home Currency – Select the main currency your company operates in. All sales files & reports will be displayed in this currency for you. As a default, all Contracts will be accounted to in this currency unless stated otherwise.
Multi Currency x – It is possible to account to your artists in a currency different to your home currency. You can select up to three alternative currencies.

Curve is a flexible royalty system, allowing you to define how your business works. Record Label or Distributor clients have five areas for configuration – Distribution Channels, Configurations, Price Categories, Sources and Cost Types. Publisher clients have three areas – Channels, Configurations and Sources.

We provide default values for each of these when we create your account, but these can be adjusted however you require. You should consider how your contract terms work & how you want to present data in your finished statements, which should then determine what values need to be set here.

Accounting Period Types – As a default we will give you four different Accounting Period Types; Monthly, Quarterly, Half-Yearly & Yearly. You can create additional types, which may be useful if you want to create a Period & Statements for a separate set of Contracts.
Distribution Channels – This describes the over-arching consumption model: Digital, Physical and Licensing possibly for a Label; or Mechanical, Performance and Sync for a Publisher.
Configurations – These are the formats such as CD, LP, Download, Stream etc for record labels; or Radio, Television, Online, Sync, etc for publishers. Consider how much detail you want to provide when reporting revenues, such as including Ad Funded Streaming & Subscription Streaming versus rolling all streaming revenues up to Stream. The values set here will also be used in the analytics.
Price Categories – These are traditionally used within royalty style deals, to define the price point that something was sold at. But these can be used in other ways too, such as categorising returns.
Sources – Using Sources you can set different rates in your contract terms depending on where the income is generated. ie Different rates for digital D2C versus from a retailer, or for publishers different rates for specific PROs.
Cost Types – When dealing with costs, defining a range of types can help you to understand your business better, & categorise your costs for a clear understanding where your money is being spent. These Cost Types will also be used in your contract terms.
Catalogue Groups – Use Catalogue Groups to apply specific royalty rates to groups of releases &/or tracks. After creating a catalogue group here, you can add Tracks & Releases to the group in the Overview of an item in Catalogue area. When setting up your Contracts you can apply custom royalty rates for revenue linked to a catalogue group.
Payee Categories – You can tag Payees with the categories you create here.
Contract Categories – You can tag Contracts with the categories you create here.

STATEMENT DESIGN

Email for Statements – This address will be included at the foot of your statements.
Statement Custom Text – This text also appears at the foot of the statements. It could be any information you wish to provide – advice on how to invoice you; when to expect payment; or a simple “Thank you for your business”.
Statement Of Account Custom Text – As with the Statement Custom Text, this will appear on the Statement Of Account PDF. The difference between both? The Statement is a breakdown of the earnings and costs made during the royalty period. The Statement Of Account is a financial ledger with an opening & closing balance & a record of any intervening balance transactions such as advances, reserves, payments etc.
Self Bill Tax Text – The tax term used on invoices for your self-billing contracts. You can overwrite this for individual payees in the Payee area. As a suggestion, use the standard tax term for the country where you are based (eg VAT in the UK, GST in India, …).
Self Billing Custom Text – This appears at the bottom of your self-billing invoices.
VAT No – If your company is tax registered, fill in your tax number here. This will be displayed on Self-Billing & Distribution Fees invoices.
Statement Design – You have six different designs to choose from, two main designs & three variants of each. Plus one bonus “Distribution” design.

• The two main designs, Standard or Combined, both provide CSV files detailing all Sales & Costs contributing to your statements. The Standard design produces two separate PDFs for the Royalty Statement & Statement of Account. Whereas the Combined option delivers one PDF containing this information.
• The three variants available define the level of detail included for the Income & Costs for the period;
  • The Simple statement PDF presents Income by Channel (Physical, Digital, Merchandise etc), then Configurations (LP, Premium Streams, T-Shirts etc) & Costs by type.
  • The Catalogue Summary PDF includes the same information as the Simple layout but also includes some key statistics such as Top Tracks, Top Territories & Top Sources.
  • The Extended PDF again contains the Simple level information but also details every sales line on the PDF. Compared with the other versions, these PDFs will take longer to generate and so will extend the amount of time taken to produce your statements. NB Complete sales & costs data is included in the CSVs files for all six variants, so we’d advise against using this version. But it’s there if you want to.
• A Distribution design is a variation of the Standard Simple design which displays the commission taken & taxes as a Transaction on the Statement Of Account. If your business has a combination of artist and distribution deals, we recommend you choose a Standard or Combined statement design in your Settings, and a Distribution design to be applied to your distribution Contracts only using a Company. When set up with a Distribution client on Curve (as opposed to a Record Label or Publisher client), these Transactions are displaying on default and will automatically appear on any Standard or Combined statement design too.

Include Totals Rows on CSV – Checkmarking this box will add a trailing totals row to the Sales CSV files.
Suppress 0 Value Royalties on CSV – This will remove sales lines with zero value from the Sales CSV.
Suppress Statement of Account Creation – In case you choose for a Combined statement design, where a Statement Of Account is included in the PDF statement, you may wish to suppress the creation of a separate Statement of Account. Please do not suppress the statement of account when working with a Standard statement design or the Distribution statement design.

Logo – Upload your logo here. This will be reproduced on your statements. Square logos work well within the space, but rectangle logos can also be used. Use JPG or PNG format. The logo files will automatically be cropped to fit within a 500×500 pixels space.

INTEGRATION

FTP Details – Here you can enter FTP details to connect your Curve account with a 3rd party delivery platform. We accept catalogue metadata from various suppliers, so it may be an option to automatically populate your ongoing releases as part of your supply chain. Contact your Curve account manager to explore this option.

CWR Setup – Publishers have the option to set up their CWR configurations here. Your Sending Party ID & Sending IPI No are necessary for CWR deliveries. These are provided to you by your society.

COMMUNICATION

CC Communications – The email address entered here will be cc’d on every outgoing invite or statement email.
Support Email – This address will be added as the support contact on every outgoing invite or statement email.
Invite Email Custom Text – Customize your email invites to artists to use the platform. It will appear as shown below. The text highlighted in red will reflect your Company Name on the overview tab & your communication configuration.

Statement Email Custom Text – Customize the emails sent with outgoing statements. This text will appear as shown below. You may include information such as where to send an invoice, when your artists will be paid, or anything else you wish to communicate when sending out statements.

DUPLICATE IDENTIFIERS

Catalogue Codes & ISRCs should always be unique. They can not be assigned to more than one Release or Track in your catalogue on Curve. However, it may be that in the past that Cat Codes or ISRCs have been assigned more than once in your catalogue & that you are receive reporting for different uses of these identifiers. The Duplicate Identifiers tool in your Settings allows you to tell Curve to which Release or Track a sale should be rerouted to in such case.

Cat No / ISRC – Here you specify the Catalogue Number or ISRC that in the past has been assigned twice to a different Release or Track in your catalogue.
Title Includes – Here you specify which words should be included in the Release Title or Track Title before Curve will reroute the sale to a different Release or Track in your catalogue. This does not need to be the exact same title, but ideally contains a keyword that you know does not occur in the title of the other Release or Track with the same Catalogue Number or ISRC.
Map To – Here you specify, if the Title condition is met, which Release or Track this sale should be rerouted to.

Imagine we accidentally assigned the same ISRC to our Tracks “Smells Like Teen Spirit” and “Come As You Are”. We realised our error, we changed the ISRC code of “Smells Like Teen Spirit” and redelivered our Tracks to DSPs with the correct ISRC code. Yet we notice we are still receiving revenue for the ISRC GB7QY1700000 that is actually due to SLTS. If so we can create a condition in our Settings that automatically diverts revenue from “Come As You Are” to “Smells Like Teen Spirit”, under the condition that the word “Teen” was contained in the Track Title specified by the statement.

TERRITORY GROUPS

If you work with specific terms for different groups of territories you can create groups of territories here to make defining Sales Terms in your contracts easier. So that you don’t have to set a term for each individual territory but just have one that applies to your group. You can create as many groups, or add as many territories to groups, as you require.

If you often have an alternate royalty rate for the United States & Canada for example, you can add these as a territory group & use them such as in the term shown below.

CONTRACT TERMS GROUPS

Curve’s default contract terms can easily differentiate the royalty rate dependent on the Distribution Channel or Configuration of the sale. If you often work with different terms for specific groups of Channels or Configurations you can build clusters of Channels or Configurations here to make setting your Sales Terms easier. For example, you could cluster your Configurations for Premium Streams, Ad-Supported Streams, Premium Video Streams & Ad-Supported Video Streams under one Term Group named “Streaming”. When you have an artist contract that needs a specific royalty rate for streaming revenue, using the “Streaming” cluster you need just one term rather than four. Your artists will still see the level of detail & differentiation between the different types of streaming on their statement. You can create as many groups, or add as many Channels/Configurations to groups, as you require.

DELIVERY PARTNERS

Only available for Publishers. Here you can set up a direct integration between Curve’s Delivery feature (for catalogue deliveries in a format such as CWR for example) and your societies. You can either set up an FTP integration, which would send your catalogue files directly onto the society’s FTP folder and instantly create your works on their database. Your society can provide you with the FTP details, which includes the Host Address, Port Number, your Username, your Password and your Root Directory. Or you can set up an email integration, where Curve would directly send your catalogue files to the society via email. Which integration type to go for should be discussed with your society.

MCPS CONFIG

Only available in the Masters client, not Publishing. Set up your AP1 mechanical royalty calculation to MCPS here. For more information please visit our Documentation topic on AP1 licenses. Record Labels that don’t have an AP1 deal with MCPS can ignore this page.

IMPORTS

This tool is used to upload metadata from other royalty accounting platforms to help on-board new Curve users. How easy it is to transfer metadata from one system to another depends on what system you are migrating from & it is a process Curve will manage on your behalf. Contact your Curve client manager to explore this option.

Publishers can also use this tool to import catalogue in CWR format from 3rd party publishers they administrate or sub-publish. For more information please visit our CWR Import topic.