Names That Match
A registration can be correct on every field and still pay nobody. Matching is done by machine, against exact strings and against numbers, and a database has no opinion about who you obviously are.
Three codes carry the whole system. Learn what each one names and most matching failures stop being mysterious.
The ISRC names a recording. The ISWC names a song. The IPI names a person or a company, and the money travels along whichever one is filled in correctly.
Three codes, three jobs
Each code answers a different question, and they are issued by different people at different moments.
ISRC, the recording code, comes free from your distributor or from your own prefix at $95 one time. It travels with the audio.
ISWC, the song code, is assigned free by your organisation once the work is registered there. It travels with the composition.
IPI, the party code, is issued free on affiliation, one as a writer and a second for your publishing entity, and both go on every registration.
Two ends of one link. The reported stream carries the recording code, your registration carries the song code, and payment happens where they meet.
The order they arrive in
Every writer on a work needs an IPI before an ISWC can be issued for it, so affiliation comes first, then work registration. Try it the other way and the registration stalls with a co-writer flagged unidentified. Nobody rejects it. It sits, and the money sits with it.
The other ordering trap is the recording code. Register a work at The MLC without an ISRC and reported usage has nothing to attach to.
Every writer named in legal form with an IPI
The recording added, ISRC included
Publisher entity at the writer's own organisation
A stage name where a legal name belongs
Recordings left off because the field is optional
Shares adding up to something other than 100
The left column is one form filled slowly. The right column is the same form filled in four minutes on a phone, and both look finished on screen.
What a split sheet proves
A split sheet is a document with standing. The MLC's own dispute policy lists signed split sheets among the things that substantiate a claim, alongside publishing agreements and letters of direction.
Sign it at the end of the session, before anybody leaves. It carries the title, the date, each writer's legal name, affiliation and IPI, publishing name and percentage, and a signature from everyone.
When a name does not match
Jon Smith and Jonathan D. Smith are two parties to a matching engine. So are a stage name in one system and a passport name in another, and so is the same name with different punctuation. Use your legal name on every registration and put the artist name in the artist field.
Under 100 and over 100
Two failures live at the total. Claim less than the whole work and the remainder becomes unclaimed royalties, held on the three year clock while nobody comes for it.
Claim more and The MLC calls it an overclaim, defined as claimants claiming shares totalling over 100 per cent. Royalties for the contested share go into suspense, and claimants get 30 calendar days from the notice to document it.
Type the three shares your last co-write agreed on, then read what happens underneath.
Under 100 costs one writer their slice. Over 100 stops payment for every collaborator on the work, including the ones who filled their part in correctly, while the clock keeps running.
The MLC will not decide who is right, because ownership questions belong to the parties or to a court. So who on your last co-write has never told you their IPI number?
Where these numbers come from
The overclaim definition, the suspense mechanism and the 30 calendar day documentation period are quoted from The MLC Dispute Policy of February 2021, with the substantiating documents list in section 5.1.1, checked September 2026. The identifier roles come from The MLC's identifier guidance.