PPL works hard to ensure we are able to collect your revenue on a global scale. CMOs often have different requirements or rules that can affect payments. To be able to collect effectively on your behalf, it is important you provide us with the most up to date, accurate and in-depth information possible. The quality of the data supplied to PPL can really make a difference to your payments.
Ensure your PPL account information is up-to-date and accurate, particularly your email, other contact details and bank details.
We often need to contact you about important tasks and deadlines, such as those that relate to the deadline for Registering Repertoire, claims deadlines, the Sales Declaration exercise and the Disputes exercises.
Make sure your country of birth, other citizenships, residency and tax residency are correct and that you have provided proof for all of these.
Make sure your tax residency is up to date and also make sure the label names we hold are correct and only those you own/control.
The more information that you can supply about your repertoire and your contributions, the easier it will be for PPL to collect for you internationally.
Ensure you have made claims on all of your recorded performances. If you are continuing to play on new tracks, make sure you check the PPL Repertoire Database regularly as new tracks are added, to ensure you are listed as a contributor on the recordings you’ve performed on.
You will only need to claim on a recording once, however, if you have played more than one role on the recording, you should definitely make these additional claims, because although it is not a requirement some CMOs do pay out on multiple roles.
If you are a self-releasing artist, please include your performer contributions when you register your recordings and do make sure you include the performer contribution categories, roles or instruments, as well as the country of performance.
While not all fields are mandatory for registering recordings at PPL, we do recommend that you populate as many fields as you are able to for all recordings registered in the PPL Repertoire Database through myPPL.
This allows us to ensure that all recordings can be registered accurately at other CMOs. This, in turn, minimises the risk of delays to payment, which can occur where further information may be required by other CMOs in order to make payments for recordings with missing data.
Enriching your data also supports all CMOs, including PPL, to match and identify unique recordings.
CMOs in certain countries (France, Hungary, Japan, Poland, Portugal and Switzerland) distribute revenue on the basis of sales data. Sales data refers to the physical and/or digital sales of your products and repertoire in the country.
Learn more about declaring your international sales data
For international collections from Germany, you should provide PPL with Label Code information.
Recording rightsholder members can hold rights for their recordings in a number of countries. In order for PPL to collect royalties for these recordings internationally, we need to know which countries these rights are held for and the start and end dates for ownership of the rights.
PPL then declares these recordings to international CMOs. It is vital that the information held about your recordings is accurate and up to date. If PPL declares a recording to a CMO for a member who does not actually control the rights, this may cause a track level dispute. Disputes take time to resolve, may delay payments and may also affect future claims.
Correct territory information ensures that recordings for which a member controls the rights in specific countries can be declared to the CMO(s) in that country and any revenue due for such recordings may be collected.
This information should be given when new recordings are registered in the PPL Repertoire Database. If there are changes to the rightsholder or start or end dates of the rights held, this needs to be updated as soon as possible. You can check and update the territory information for recordings already registered in the PPL repertoire database by logging into myPPL.
For many CMOs, the composer of a recording is a key piece of recording data. This is especially true when it comes to classical music, where various orchestras and artists have recorded the same piece, or where the same title could be used for multiple compositions by different composers.
Many CMOs have repertoire databases that are either partially or wholly based on releases (products). By releases, we mean the physical (vinyl, CD, etc.) or digital releases on which individual recordings are released. For some CMOs, airplay usage is then reported with the album or release the recording came from. This could be the originally released album, a compilation album or a product specifically released in any given country. If recordings cannot be matched to a release, revenue may not be allocated.
Many CMOs use track duration details to identify duplicate recordings and different versions of the same recordings in their repertoire databases.
In some instances, it is easy to identify different versions of the same track from the track title. For example, one may be a ‘radio edit’ and another an ‘album version’. Where this is not obvious from the title of the recording, we can use variations in the track duration to identify that recordings with the same title by the same performer, or performers are not necessarily duplicates, but different versions of the same recording. This, in turn, avoids the creation of disputes. Disputes take time to resolve, may delay payments and may also affect future claims.
If you’re unsure of exactly how to register your repertoire or update your territory information, you can download the Register Repertoire Guide from the ‘Register Recording’ section of myPPL.
You can also contact our Member Services team, who will be happy to help, by phoning 020 8068 1054 or emailing memberservices@ppluk.com.
