PRO, IPI, Publisher: The Metadata That Actually Pays You

Three pieces of metadata decide whether the money a song earns actually reaches its writer: the PRO, the IPI, and the publisher entry. They're unglamorous, they take ten minutes total, and skipping them is how royalties end up in the industry's unclaimed pile.

The three, in plain terms

• PRO (Performing Rights Organization — ASCAP, BMI, SESAC, SOCAN and peers): the body that collects performance royalties when your song is played publicly. Every writer should belong to exactly one.
• IPI number: your global ID as an interested party — the number that distinguishes you from every other writer with your name. Your PRO assigns it; it goes wherever your name goes.
• Publisher entry: the entity (often your own single-writer publishing designee) that administers the composition's publishing share. Name, PRO, IPI, and split.

Where they live on Starchild

When you submit a song, writers and publishers are collected up front. When things change — you form a publishing entity, add a co-writer, fix a split — edit the song from your library: the Edit Song panel carries full writer and publisher sections (name, PRO, IPI, percentage). Changes sync to the song's rights record immediately, which means every license certificate any buyer downloads from that moment on carries the corrected credits — including certificates for licenses sold before your edit.

That last part matters more than it sounds: your buyers' paperwork stays permanently consistent with your registrations, with no support ticket in between. Set it once, correct it ever, and the system keeps every document downstream honest.

Sources

• CISAC — IPI: Interested Parties Information system
• ASCAP — What's an IPI Number? (FAQ)
• ASCAP — What's an ISWC? (FAQ)