Björn Ulvaeus launches Credits Due initiative for songwriters

The initiative aims to tackle several key issues in songwriting, including creators not getting credited for songs, missing and inaccurate income, costs, and other inefficiencies in the royalty process.

“Too often music recordings and songs are not linked with the proper metadata to identify and credit the creators and contributors,” a Credits Due blog post reads.

The campaign will ensure that all new recordings and songs have five key bits of metadata: song titles (including alternative titles), musical work identifiers, creator identifiers and role codes, recordings identifiers, and details of the writers, performers, producers and other contributors.

Credits Due has secured backing from streaming platforms Spotify and Apple Music, as well as BMG, PRS for Music, the Featured Artists Coalition, CISAC and a number of other industry bodies.

“It’s very simple, music recordings must credit all involved and thus ensure that the right people get paid,” Ulvaeus said. “People ask me why this isn’t the case already and I don’t know what to say. Today, in 2021, there’s really no excuse.”

A Synchtank report called Drowning in Data: Royalty Accounting and Systems in the Digital Age published in April suggests publishers are are potentially losing out on billions of dollars in revenue due to poor data management and inefficient systems that are unable to handle the large volumes and complexities of the digital age.

In a recent interview with senior vice-president of Downtown Muisic Holdings’s new global department, David Alexander, the exec said the “payment to the established MLC [Mechanical Licensing Collective] by the DSPs of more than $424m is an indicator that there is a huge data issue. Unfortunately, a lot of that data is for songs from emerging and developing markets where the desire to get their music online as quickly as possible trumps the need for first making sure that the metadata is fully compliant to ensure that the money flow is directed back to the correct songwriters in their correct shares.”