SoundExchange has agreed to sell its Canadian reproduction rights services to another collecting society, subject to regulatory approval and other closing conditions. For independent publishers and songwriters, the practical task is to check which agreement authorises their catalogue’s administration, which songs it covers and who can inspect the registrations behind payments.
Separate the service business from the catalogue agreement
The Canadian transaction would bring reproduction rights services together. That is a change in the organisation providing services. Catalogue owners should examine their own agreements separately to establish the authority they have given an administrator and the provisions governing that relationship.
Start with the signed mandate. Identify the contracting parties, the rights covered and the catalogue attached to it. Then read any provisions addressing a change in the service provider. The acquisition announcement alone does not tell an individual songwriter whether their agreement requires any action, so the contract should determine that decision.
This distinction matters when communicating with writers. A notice about an acquisition answers who plans to own the service business. A catalogue agreement answers what the writer or publisher has authorised. Keep those documents together, but give each its own purpose: the announcement provides the reason for the review; the agreement provides the instructions.
For a small publisher, this can be a manageable exercise. Assign someone to retrieve the executed agreement and its catalogue schedules, then record the clauses that govern the relationship. The useful result is a documented decision about whether to seek clarification, update records or continue under the existing mandate.
Put future songs on a separate clock
A catalogue schedule and a commitment covering songs yet to be written deserve separate checks. Brazil caps assignments of future songs at five years. For agreements governed by that rule, five years is a concrete boundary to examine, rather than a reason to treat every later composition as automatically covered.
Record the relevant contract dates alongside the future-song provision. When adding a new work, check the provision before placing it within the assigned catalogue. This turns a legal boundary into an operational decision: does this agreement cover the new song, or does its administration require a separate instruction?
A service-provider change is a useful occasion to make that distinction visible. A publisher may keep an existing catalogue list while also maintaining a process for adding works. Review both. The list shows what the business currently treats as covered; the agreement establishes the basis for including those works.
The same discipline applies to uses. Brazil excludes uses invented after a publishing agreement is signed. Where that rule applies, a new use needs its own contract check. Do not resolve the question by pointing only to an administrator’s existing relationship with the writer. Identify the use, inspect the agreement and document the authority before proceeding.
Check the records that make a work payable
Contract authority and registration accuracy are different tasks. An incomplete registration can leave royalties waiting while a collecting society continues paying other writers. A publisher can therefore have an administration relationship to review and a registration problem to resolve at the same time.
Give each task a separate status. Mark whether the mandate has been checked, then mark whether the work’s registration has been checked. Combining them into a single “catalogue complete” label makes it harder to identify the next action. A missing agreement needs a document search; an incomplete registration needs a correction process.
Writers also need access to the checking process. Publishers and administrators need a catalogue checking process that writers can inspect. During a service review, establish who answers registration queries and how the writer can see the result. A general assurance that the catalogue is administered does not provide the same practical information as a work-level check.
Keep unresolved registrations on the working list until someone verifies the correction. This makes the review useful beyond the acquisition itself: the publisher leaves with a clearer account of which documents establish authority and which records still need attention.
Make the review produce an instruction
The output should be short enough to use when the next song arrives or the next rights query lands. For each agreement, retain a checklist:
- The signed mandate and the catalogue schedule it covers.
- The provisions relevant to a change in the service provider.
- The dates and limits attached to future-song commitments.
- The authority needed for a proposed new use.
- The registration issues awaiting correction and the person responsible.
- The process through which writers can inspect catalogue checks.
Use that record to make a specific decision for each work: continue under the documented mandate, obtain a further instruction or resolve the registration. For a Brazilian future-song assignment, put the five-year boundary into that workflow. For any catalogue under review, keep the agreement and registration checks visible to the people whose income depends on them.
