PRS for Music will use Soundtrack play data from roughly 7,000 UK venues to inform royalty distributions beginning in December 2026. That gives catalogue owners a reason to check whether a record of use can be connected to the rights they control. A successful store delivery, by itself, answers a different question.
Separate delivery from use
A distributor can confirm that it delivered a release. It cannot turn that confirmation into a record of every place the music was played. Believe operates as a global independent distribution and services provider, but the useful distinction applies regardless of provider: a delivery record shows where a catalogue owner sent music, while a play record shows where someone used it.
That distinction becomes practical when Soundtrack play data from about 7,000 UK premises enters PRS for Music’s royalty distribution process. The new input is venue activity, not another store acceptance report. A label reviewing its catalogue should therefore keep two questions open at once: can it show that a release was delivered, and can it recognise that release when a separate usage record arrives?
The second question needs a catalogue record that people can actually search. Keep the release title, track title, credited names and the label’s own rights contact together in one place. Where a catalogue has alternate spellings or versions, record the relationship rather than relying on someone to remember it later. Those are working instructions for an internal audit, not a claim about which fields PRS or Soundtrack will use to process a play.
Make the usage trail reviewable
The December 2026 start date provides a clear point for checking records. Before then, a catalogue owner can choose a sample of tracks and attempt to follow each one from the delivery file to the rights file. If a colleague cannot tell which entry represents the recording, who handles a query, or which title variant belongs to it, the label has found a problem it can fix without waiting for a royalty statement.
A useful audit is small enough to finish and specific enough to repeat:
- Take a sample from the catalogue and locate each release’s delivery confirmation.
- Find the corresponding internal rights record and name the person who can answer a usage query.
- Check whether title and credit variations point back to the same catalogue entry.
- Keep a copy of any licence record associated with a use of the track.
- Log unresolved matches with an owner and a date for follow-up.
This process does not require the label to predict a payment. It produces something more immediately useful: a list of entries that can be checked when usage data affects a distribution. Count the unresolved entries in the sample and use that count to decide whether the rest of the catalogue needs the same review.
Keep licences alongside rights records
Usage records also need context. Soundstripe’s 21-page guide helps content creators and marketing agencies assess royalty-free music providers. For a catalogue owner, the operational question sits on the other side of that choice: when someone licenses a track, can the owner locate the agreement that explains the use?
Keep the licence record with the catalogue entry, including the track it concerns and the party responsible for the agreement. Then a usage query can be handled with the delivery record, rights record and licence record in view. The term “royalty-free” alone does not identify a particular agreement or settle how a particular use should be treated. The agreement is the document to retrieve.
This matters when different teams hold different pieces of the file. A distributor may hold delivery information, a licensing team may hold an agreement, and the catalogue owner may hold the most current account of its rights. Give one person responsibility for bringing those records together when a query appears. Otherwise, each team can answer its own narrow question while the catalogue owner still cannot explain the use.
Set an audit threshold
Start with a defined sample, rather than an open-ended instruction to clean up metadata. For example, a label can select ten tracks that it expects to encounter in venue or licensed-use queries, then ask whether it can locate all three records for each track: delivery, rights and licence where applicable. Ten is an audit size to choose, not a claim about how many tracks a venue plays or how PRS calculates royalties.
If every sampled entry is clear, preserve the method for the next batch. If several entries require manual detective work, assign the missing records before expanding the sample. PRS’s planned use of Soundtrack venue data makes the decision concrete: catalogue owners should be able to connect a record of play to an identifiable catalogue entry and a person who can resolve it. A store delivery receipt remains useful, but the audit is complete only when someone can follow the record beyond delivery.
