October 7, 2021

IPI (Interested party information) is a unique identifying number assigned by the CISAC database to each Interested Party in collective rights management. It is used worldwide by more than 120 countries and three million rights-holders.

This 9-digit number is used to identify a songwriter or publisher. IPI numbers are also referred to as CAE (Composer, Author and Publisher) numbers. The IPI database replaced the CAE database as the industry standard in 2001, but the two are often used interchangeably.

Previously, millions of creators didn’t get efficiently and fairly paid for their works due to poor and inconsistent metadata. Royalty collections from digital services have grown 164% over the last couple of years, topping €1 billion in 2017. Services such as Spotify and Apple Music today offer more than 40 million music tracks. Underlying the effective identification, collection and distribution of digital royalties, are the ISWC codes.

How to improve accuracy and coverage of documentation data?

Our Music industry solution uses out of the box integration with the WID, CIS-Net, ISWC and advanced IPI integration to ensure accurate information is provided from authoritative sources.  This is coupled with configurable validation rules and other controls to help improve overall data quality and the level of automation of data ingestion and reconciliation from trusted sources.

Our Spanish Point’s solution has a track record in helping music organisations improve their data quality through a modern, data analysis-driven approach.  A recent example of this has been in the work carried out for CISAC on ISWC data quality improvements.  Our experience and expertise at the technical and domain knowledge level will enable us to assist other CMO’s in this area.   

The International Confederation of Societies of Authors and Composers (CISAC) has enlisted Dublin-based software company Spanish Point Technologies to upgrade the global information system of the ISWC (International Standard Musical Works Codes), this unique code identifies musical works and links them to their creators.

CISAC Director General Gadi Oron said:

“Investing in improved ISWC systems will immensely help music creators and publishers, authors societies and digital services navigate their way better in the rapidly growing digital music market. The ISWC is the leading music industry identifier and it plays an important role in facilitating the identification of musical works. Our project with Spanish Point aims to increase the speed, accuracy and efficiency of the system in a way that is complimentary with our members’ systems, and which keeps pace with the explosive growth of music streaming.”

Gadi Oran

While it revolutionised the way in which data was exchanged between CMOs, the upsurge of music streaming services has led to increasing demand for improved accuracy and efficiency. In the digital environment, societies handle trillions of music usages every year, making the availability of reliable data crucial to the proper collection and distribution of royalties to songwriters and composers.

How to improve the accuracy of distributions?

The accuracy of distributions is directly impacted by the quality of the underlying data and the maintenance of members, works and agreement information.

To improve the quality of information and the accuracy of its distributions, our Music industry solution has strong out of the box integration features, including WID, CIS-Net, ISWC and advanced IPI integration. Real-time, two-way integration will ensure distributions are carried out using the most up to date information available from authoritative sources.

What’s next?

At the end of March of this year, Spanish Point was delighted to host a 2-day bootcamp for CISAC society members.

The bootcamp focused on an overview of the ISWC database and on using the new REST-based API. How to make ISWC submissions, retrieve information and delete/merge metadata were detailed. With the new centralised allocation system, assignment of ISWCs will be faster, more efficient and consistent.

Join our upcoming Webinar: Interested Parties Information (IPI) and how to manage it – November 10th