Music Publishing Splits & Songwriter Ownership

Who owns what % of a song's publishing — reconciled, deduped, and audit-flagged. This is the one metadata layer that catalog buyers, sync teams, and clearance desks cannot get cleanly from any single source. Enter a song title or ISWC; get back a canonical work with its writers (and IPI numbers), publishers, administrator chains, and collection shares — with ownership discrepancies flagged.

Why this exists (the gap)

The MLC — the Music Modernization Act's federally-designated registry for US mechanical royalties — publishes song ownership, but three things make the raw data unusable on its own:

1. It's a deeply nested tree. Each work carries original publishers, each with an administrator chain, each with its own share. You need the flat "who collects what %" table. It doesn't give you one.
2. It returns dozens–thousands of registrations per song. A search for Bohemian Rhapsody returns 6,523 raw records — the real Queen work, live versions, remasters, arrangements, AI covers, and competing publisher submissions, all mixed together.
3. Errors hide in the pile. Shares that don't sum to 100%, missing IPI numbers, missing ISWCs, orphaned admin links — the exact things a royalty auditor or acquirer needs surfaced.

This Actor solves all three. It's the reconciliation that is the product.

What it does (the moat)

• Flattens the nested original-publisher → administrator chain into clean share rows.
• Reconciles every MLC registration of one song into a single canonical work, keyed by ISWC (fallback: normalized title). 6,523 raw hits → a handful of canonical works, most-recorded first.
• Flags discrepancies: shareLooksIncomplete, missingIswc, writersMissingIpi, share-sum totals — the audit signal.
• Optional Songview cross-check (ASCAP/BMI): when you supply your own reCAPTCHA token, Songview records are merged into the same canonical work and cross-source conflicts are surfaced.

Real output (live, Queen — Bohemian Rhapsody)

title           : BOHEMIAN RHAPSODY
iswc            : T0101545054
mlcSongCodes    : B60422
recordingCount  : 9412
writers         : FREDDIE MERCURY [IPI 00077406269] CA (Composer/Author)
publisherSplits :
   - QUEEN MUSIC LTD -> EMI BLACKWOOD MUSIC INC  share=100%  ipi=00223437493
reconciliation  : { sources:["mlc"], mlcRegistrationsMerged:1, publisherShareSum:100,
                    shareLooksIncomplete:false, missingIswc:false, writersMissingIpi:[] }

And the reconciler earning its keep on the messy pile it separated out — a 10-registration group with no ISWC, flagged automatically:

publisherShareSum: 687.5   shareLooksIncomplete: true   missingIswc: true
writersMissingIpi: ["KA TA REU SI SEU","MARK BRYMER","FELIX LOEHNERT","DAVID DODSWORTH"]

Output schema (per canonical work)

field	meaning
title, iswc, mlcSongCodes[]	canonical identity (all MLC codes merged into this work)
writers[]	{ name, ipi, role, roleCode } — deduped across registrations, IPI preferred
publisherSplits[]	{ originalPublisher, administrator, collectionShare, hfaNumber, ...ipi }
recordingCount, sampleIsrcs[]	linkage to recordings/DSP data
reconciliation	source list, registrations merged, share sum, and every discrepancy flag
songviewPublishers[]	present only when a Songview token was supplied

Who buys this

• Catalog investors (Hipgnosis / Sony class) — verify actual ownership % before a nine-figure buy.
• Sync & sample-clearance teams — find every publisher/administrator to clear, with IPI + HFA IDs.
• Music lawyers & royalty auditors — the discrepancy flags are the audit surface.
• AI-music-licensing startups — resolve ownership at scale by ISWC.

Input

{ "title": "Bohemian Rhapsody", "exact": true, "maxWorks": 25 }

or precise-by-code:

{ "iswc": "T-010.154.505-4" }

Sources & access (honest)

• The MLC — accessed via its public Work Search API (the same open, key-less JSON endpoint the MLC's own public search box uses). No login, no CAPTCHA. This is the federal work registry; use is subject to The MLC's Musical Works Database Terms of Use.
• Songview (ASCAP/BMI) — the shared ASCAP+BMI view is reCAPTCHA-gated (every request needs a Google reCAPTCHA token), so it is disabled by default. Supply your own songviewToken to enable the cross-check. For bulk needs, ASCAP publishes a downloadable repertory file and The MLC offers a Bulk Database Feed. This Actor never solves or bypasses CAPTCHAs.