RDR-R explained

The message defined in the Recording Data and Rights Revenue Reporting Standard provides a uniform mechanism for the declaration of revenues generated from the usage of Releases and/or Resources to owners or administrators of rights in sound recordings or music videos.

As such this standard has been developed to be used by music licensing companies to report revenues to other music licensing companies or record companies. 

This article aims to clarify the roles music licensing companies hold and their relationship with each other. As outlined in Clause 5 of the standard a music licensing company can be the collecting music licensing company, paying music licensing company and/or claiming music licensing company depending on the initiating event.

This article supports the two choreographies in Clause 5 to clearly identify who is the sender and recipient of the message depending on the roles of the music licensing company within those scenarios.

Scenario 1: Simple Scenario 

A music licensing company has collected revenue for a Resource and/or Release for which it has received a claim and wishes to report and pay these revenues to a Recording Rights Controller, typically a record company.

As outlined in figure 1 of Clause 5 there is one file being sent by the music licensing company to the Recording Rights Controller who is the claimant.

The music licensing company in this use case is both the collecting music licensing company and paying music licensing company. There is no claiming music licensing company in this use case.

In RS02 - Allocated Party Summary Record of the standard, the relevant Cells are called CollectingMlcName, PayingMlcName, ClaimingMlcName as well as CollectingMlcAllocatedPartyId, ClaimingMlcAllocatedPartyId and PayingMlcAllocatedPartyId.

In Scenario 1 as outlined above and in figure 1 of Clause 5 the Music Licensing Company therefore populates the following fields:

• CollectingMlcName;

• PayingMlcName;

• CollectingMlcAllocatedPartyId; and

• PayingMlcAllocatedPartyId.

Scenario 2 – Two-step scenario:

In this use case as outlined in Figure 2 of Clause 5, there are at least two music licensing companies involved before one or more Recording Rights Controllers are being paid. 

A music licensing company (A) has collected revenue for a Resources and/ or Release for which it has received a claim and wishes to report these revenues to the claiming music licensing company (B).

Music licensing company (B) has received a revenue report from a collecting music licensing company (A) and wishes to report these revenues to a Recording Rights Controller.

This typically occurs between two music licensing companies for international collection and payment of royalties. For example, a local music licensing company has collected revenue data from the local broadcasting company as in Scenario 1 and some of the revenues are being claimed by a music licensing company in a different territory for revenue for a Recording Rights Controller there.

In this use case there are two recipients for this transaction as outlined in figures 2 of Clause 5:

1. Music licensing company (claiming music licensing company) that made a claim for the Resource and/or Release to the collecting music licensing company;

2. Recording Rights Controller that made a claim for the Resource and/or Release to the paying music licensing company (claiming music licensing company).

In Scenario 2 as outlined above and in Figure 2 of Clause 5 the Cells in RS02 would be populated as follows:

RevenueDeclarationMessage 1:

(from MLC A to MLC B)

RevenueDeclarationMessage 2:

(from MLC B to Recording Rights Controller)