For a Philippine songwriter, a royalty claim has more than one deadline. Under the Filipino Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers’ (FILSCAP) distribution rules amended July 31, 2025, a local writer’s share held pending membership can be reallocated after one year. An unidentified work has three years to be identified. A member seeking an adjustment has two years from the relevant distribution to submit a written claim. These clocks start at different events, so treating them as a single deadline can cost a catalogue money.
First identify which account holds the share
FILSCAP means the Filipino Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers. It administers songwriter and publisher rights, which are separate from the master recording income paid through a distributor. A track’s delivery to a digital service provider (DSP) therefore does not, by itself, establish who should receive its composition royalty.
The society’s rules distinguish a temporary holding share on a local work from an unidentified work. In the first case, a local writer, successor, copyright owner or publisher is known, but the relevant party has not become a FILSCAP member. In the second, the work lacks details of the interested parties. The rules assign different special accounts to those problems.
For temporary holding shares, FILSCAP holds the performance royalty until the relevant party joins. If that has not happened within one year of allocation, the amount goes back into distributable revenue and is shared pro rata among member shares in the next general distribution. That is the shortest clock here, and it runs from allocation, not the song’s release date.
Three years to identify a work, two to correct a distribution
Where no interested-party details identify a work, the unidentified special account holds its allocation for three years from allocation. If the work remains unidentified, its money is added to distributable revenue for the following general distribution. A split dispute is different again: FILSCAP holds disputed royalties until all parties report a final settlement or a competent authority issues a final judgment. The rules do not give that dispute account the same fixed three-year clock.
Once a distribution has been made, members and foreign societies can seek an adjustment for misidentified works or interested parties. The written claim must reach FILSCAP within two years of the relevant distribution. That is a correction route, not a substitute for joining before a temporary holding share is reallocated.
One section of FILSCAP’s PDF gives conflicting words and numerals for the deadline on incomplete shares, where parties’ percentages fail to total 100%. Do not infer a one- or three-year deadline from that line. Ask the society to confirm the operative rule while correcting the split immediately.
Build a claim file before release
Put every songwriter, lyricist and publisher into a work register, with legal names, roles, agreed percentages and the party responsible for society registration. FILSCAP’s sample Declaration of Works explicitly asks for interested parties and shares totaling 100%. Keep the signed split agreement beside that declaration, and record any later assignment to a publisher.
Then keep the recording identifier, release date, DSP links, work title variants and society correspondence in the same claim file. Compare each FILSCAP statement with the distributor’s master-side report. The two statements can have different payment dates and cover different rights; a missing songwriter line is not explained by a healthy master balance. Our earlier Philippine OTT royalty breakdown shows why usage data and cue sheets matter for matching.
Review that file each quarter. FILSCAP lists digital royalties in its April, July, October and December distribution schedule, subject to its rules on receipt of payment and usage data. A label should record the date an allocation or distribution appears, then diary the applicable one-, two- or three-year date. As the Vietnam songwriter royalty guide also shows, catalogue administration works best when registration and statement checks are separate recurring jobs.
A distributor can keep recordings, identifiers and split reporting organized. The songwriter claim still needs a complete work record and a named owner for follow-up. For a Philippine catalogue, that small operational distinction is the difference between spotting a held share while it can be claimed and discovering it after redistribution.
