Bjorn Ulvaeus, co-founder of ABBA and president of CISAC, unveiled a new global initiative called “Credits Due” on Tuesday that is intended to upgrade the music industry’s payment processes. The initiative, created by the Ivors Academy and the Music Rights Awareness Foundation and announced at the songwriter-based Ivor Novello Awards in London, is intended to “unite the music industry’s approach to ensuring that complete and accurate song metadata is attached to all recordings at the point of creation.”
According to the announcement, five data points are required: creator identifiers and role codes (IPI, IPN & ISNI); the musical work identifier (ISWC); the recording identifier (ISRC); the song title and alternative song titles; and the writer, performer, producer and contributor names. If all new recordings and songs moving forward have this metadata linked, all creators and contributors can be correctly identified and credited.
As the awareness of the value of songwriting and intellectual property has grown in recent years, so has awareness of the flaws in the industry’s traditional systems of payment, which often leave creators or rights-holders under or uncompensated for their work.
Ulvaeus, co-founder of Music Rights Awareness Foundation, said: “I could think of no better event to launch the Credits Due initiative than at the Ivor Novello Awards. You could say that we celebrate all the great UK and Irish songwriters and composers by starting this open and inclusive collaboration with The Ivors Academy. We want to raise awareness of and provide solutions to problems that are well-known and, to put it mildly, frustrating in the songwriting community. It’s very simple, music recordings must credit all involved and thus ensure that the right people get paid. 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. If we achieve Credits Due it’s a win-win for the whole music industry. Thankfully, a lot of good work is underway and we very much look forward to further support from the industry in finally giving creators the financial recognition they deserve.”
Songwriter Fiona Bevan from The Ivors Academy added, “We are thrilled to be working with the Music Rights Awareness Foundation to launch Credits Due – an initiative that will move the industry in a better direction by ensuring that creators are paid fairly. As a multi-platinum songwriter and artist, I have personally experienced the pain of missing and slow payments, resulting from the lack of proper credit data, after writing huge hits. We have a great opportunity to change this if the industry pulls together, uses new technology and most importantly, engages our songwriters, producers and performers in the task of ensuring credits are attached to recordings at the point of creation.”
Find more information at www.creditsdue.org.