Music Publishing Splits & Songwriter Ownership

Turn The MLC's public musical-works records into canonical, audit-friendly work records. Search by title or ISWC to receive writers, publisher and administrator interests, recording identifiers, and explicit reconciliation flags.

What the Actor does

• Flattens nested original-publisher and administrator interests into consistent share rows.
• Groups records with matching published ISWC and writer IPI sets; otherwise preserves MLC source identifiers with review-required identity. A title or writer-name match alone never merges works.
• Deduplicates writers and publisher interests while preserving identifiers and source provenance.
• Preserves unknown shares, public-domain flags and recording counts; flags missing/invalid ISWCs and conflicting public-domain states. Share completeness is not assessed without compatible denominator, territory and period: neither 100 nor 200 establishes complete ownership.
• Ranks results by linked recording count and returns a bounded number of canonical works.

The Actor does not call Songview, ASCAP, BMI, CAPTCHA-solving services, or private music-industry systems. Its production data path is limited to The MLC's public musical-works data.

Input

Search by title:

{ "title": "Bohemian Rhapsody", "exact": true, "maxWorks": 3 }

Or use an ISWC:

{ "iswc": "T-010.154.505-4", "maxWorks": 3 }

Output

Each canonical work includes:

Field	Meaning
title, iswc, mlcSongCodes[]	Canonical identity and merged MLC work codes
writers[]	Writer name, IPI, and role information
publisherSplits[]	Original publisher, administrator, collection share, and identifiers
recordingCount, sampleIsrcs[]	Recording-linkage metadata
reconciliation	Registrations merged, share sum, and discrepancy flags
identity, provenance, coverage	Match basis, source clocks/page hashes, limits and review boundaries

maxWorks is 1–100. Missing numeric values are null, not zero. recordingCount is a sum of published registration counts, not a deduplicated recording count. RUN-RECEIPT separates raw hits, retrieved records, groups and output caps. MLC pagination now keeps page size fixed and avoids a redundant count request. A truncated query cannot establish complete ownership.

Source, permitted use, and limitations

The data comes from The MLC's public musical-works database. The MLC states that public database information may be used for any lawful purpose, subject to its terms. Results can contain incomplete, conflicting, or publisher-supplied claims; this Actor organizes and flags those records but does not adjudicate copyright ownership. Verify consequential licensing, clearance, payment, or acquisition decisions with the relevant rightsholders and qualified counsel.

Scaling requires the applicable official Public Search API/bulk access arrangement. Browser endpoint reachability is not approval for bulk retrieval or avoiding cost-recovery terms. This local repair has not changed accounts, registered works or disputed any rights.

• The MLC Musical Works Database Terms of Use: https://www.themlc.com/musicalworksdatabasetermsuse
• 37 CFR 210.31 (public musical-works data): https://www.copyright.gov/title37/210/37cfr210-31.html
• 37 CFR 210.32 (access to public data): https://www.copyright.gov/title37/210/37cfr210-32.html