{
  "_meta": {
    "title": "Where credits actually live: a register comparison",
    "version": "1",
    "publisher": "RapCanon",
    "license": "CC-BY-4.0",
    "attribution": "Data by RapCanon (rapcanon.com). Free to reuse, including commercially, with attribution and a link back.",
    "collected": "2026-08-12",
    "method": "Six places a song's credits are commonly looked up were compared on four axes: what the register is authoritative FOR, who can edit it, what it structurally cannot tell you, and what happens when it is wrong. This is a structural comparison of registers, not an audit of any individual song's credits.",
    "why_this_shape": "People argue about whether a credit is 'right' without first asking which register they are reading. Most credit disputes dissolve once you notice the two parties are quoting different registers that were never designed to agree.",
    "limits": [
      "This describes how these registers are designed to work, not a measurement of their accuracy. We did not audit credit records against each other at scale.",
      "Practice varies by territory, label and era. Older catalogue behaves differently from a 2026 release.",
      "The 25% unpaid-mechanicals figure is an industry estimate reported in trade press, not our measurement, and estimates in this area vary widely.",
      "'Who can edit' is simplified. Several of these registers have review or dispute processes that are not captured by a single field."
    ],
    "variables_measured": ["register", "authoritative_for", "who_can_edit", "cannot_tell_you", "cost_of_error"]
  },

  "registers": [
    {
      "register": "The streaming display (Spotify, Apple)",
      "type": "display",
      "authoritative_for": "Nothing. It renders what the label or distributor supplied.",
      "who_can_edit": "The label or distributor, by resupplying metadata. Not the artist directly.",
      "cannot_tell_you": "Ownership shares, publishing splits, or whether anyone is missing. A complete-looking credit list and a complete credit list are different things.",
      "cost_of_error": "Invisible contribution; no direct royalty consequence, because payment does not route from this surface.",
      "note": "Spotify states that some label-provided credits are incomplete or may contain inaccuracies. From 2025 it rejects releases at QC that supply initials, nicknames or incomplete contributor information."
    },
    {
      "register": "Label / distributor metadata",
      "type": "supply chain",
      "authoritative_for": "What gets delivered to every downstream platform.",
      "who_can_edit": "The label or distributor. Corrections typically take days to propagate.",
      "cannot_tell_you": "Whether the composition was registered anywhere, which is a separate act entirely.",
      "cost_of_error": "Propagates everywhere at once. A name variant introduced here appears identically wrong on every service.",
      "note": "The accumulation of inconsistent supply-chain metadata is what the trade press calls metadata debt."
    },
    {
      "register": "The MLC musical-works database",
      "type": "statutory registration",
      "authoritative_for": "Who is registered as owning shares of the COMPOSITION for US digital mechanical purposes.",
      "who_can_edit": "Registered rights holders, via claim and dispute processes.",
      "cannot_tell_you": "Who performed on the recording, or who produced it. It is a composition register, not a credits list.",
      "cost_of_error": "Direct and financial. An unregistered or misregistered share does not get paid, and unmatched money is eventually allocated by market share.",
      "note": "Public and obtainable in bulk because the Music Modernization Act requires it. It is the only register in this table that is legally compelled to be open."
    },
    {
      "register": "PRO registration (ASCAP, BMI, SESAC)",
      "type": "statutory-adjacent registration",
      "authoritative_for": "Who is registered to receive PERFORMANCE royalties on the composition.",
      "who_can_edit": "Registered writers and publishers.",
      "cannot_tell_you": "Mechanical shares, recording credits, or session personnel.",
      "cost_of_error": "Direct and financial, and can freeze income while conflicting registrations are reconciled.",
      "note": "Being registered with a PRO does not register you with the MLC, and this is one of the most common and most expensive misunderstandings in the field."
    },
    {
      "register": "Crowd-sourced (Genius, Wikipedia, fan wikis)",
      "type": "crowd",
      "authoritative_for": "Nothing formally. It reflects what contributors believe and can support.",
      "who_can_edit": "Anyone, subject to community moderation.",
      "cannot_tell_you": "Anything with legal or financial force. It can be excellent and it can be confidently wrong, and it does not distinguish the two on the page.",
      "cost_of_error": "Reputational and informational rather than financial — but see the note.",
      "note": "This is the register most heavily represented in the text corpora that general-purpose AI assistants were trained on, which is why an assistant's credit answers inherit crowd-level reliability while sounding authoritative."
    },
    {
      "register": "Liner notes / physical release",
      "type": "publication",
      "authoritative_for": "What the releasing party chose to state at the time of release.",
      "who_can_edit": "Nobody, after pressing. It is fixed.",
      "cannot_tell_you": "Anything that changed afterwards, and anything the label chose to omit.",
      "cost_of_error": "Permanent. A missing credit in the notes is the historical record for that release.",
      "note": "Often treated as the ground truth in cultural debates precisely because it is fixed, even though it was never a rights register."
    }
  ],

  "findings": [
    "None of the six registers is authoritative for the whole question. Each is authoritative for a narrow slice and silent on the rest.",
    "The registers that carry FINANCIAL force (MLC, PRO) contain no recording or production credits at all, and the registers people actually read (streaming display, Genius) carry no financial force.",
    "Most credit arguments are two people quoting different registers that were never designed to agree.",
    "The only register legally compelled to be public is the MLC, and it is the one least often consulted in public credit disputes.",
    "General-purpose AI assistants inherit the reliability of the crowd register, because that is what dominates their training data, while presenting answers with uniform confidence."
  ],

  "context_figures": [
    { "figure": "~25%", "what": "Industry estimate of mechanical royalties due publishers and songwriters going unpaid due to identification difficulties", "source": "trade press estimate, Billboard" },
    { "figure": "10+ years", "what": "Period over which the industry has publicly promised complete credits on streaming services", "source": "WMOT special report, 2024" },
    { "figure": "2025", "what": "Year Spotify began rejecting releases at QC for initials, nicknames or incomplete contributor information", "source": "distributor guidance on Spotify metadata requirements" }
  ]
}