How Publishers Can Track Music Usage
Publishers see compositions, not recordings — which makes tracking usage a matching problem. Here is how to approach it.
A publisher controls compositions. Monitoring systems detect recordings. Every usage question therefore starts with a translation step: which composition does this detected recording represent, and what are your shares in it?
Start with the catalog, not the monitoring
Detection quality is capped by catalog quality. Before adding any monitoring source, make sure each work has an ISWC where one exists, a complete writer list with shares, the recordings you know about with their ISRCs, and explicit territory scope for your rights.
Sources worth combining
- Society distribution statements: authoritative but slow, and they only show what was already matched.
- Broadcast and digital detection data: timely, but it arrives as recordings that still need matching to compositions.
- Cue sheets and sync confirmations: the primary evidence for audiovisual usage.
Reconcile, then investigate
The output you want is a per-work, per-territory, per-period comparison between detected usage and reported usage. Anything detected but not reported is a question. Anything reported at an unexpected share is a different question.
Where to focus first
Rank by potential value rather than by volume. A handful of high-value broadcast usages usually deserves attention before thousands of low-value streams. And remember that the platform complements your societies and administrators — it does not replace them, and any claim still runs through them.