Songlinks › Guides

Works registered under another spelling or IPI number: how to get them fixed

Most writers with a long enough catalogue have works filed under a spelling or number that is not their main one. This is the follow-up to why one songwriter appears many times: what to do once you have found them.

Published 2026-09-26. The figure below is from a sample drawn in September 2026.

What a split registration is

A writer’s registration is split when their works are spread across more than one registered name: a legal name and a short one, a spelling with and without a middle name, a typo, a second IPI name number, or a record with no number at all. Each registration is correct on its own terms. Nothing in the data says they are the same person, so each one holds its own slice of the catalogue.

It is not the same thing as a split sheet, which divides one song’s shares between its writers. A split registration is one writer divided across several names.

Why those works may not reach the writer

Collecting societies and administrators pay against registrations. A work registered under a spelling or number that nobody has connected to the writer sits apart from the rest of their catalogue: it may be missing from the writer’s own statements, from their publisher’s view of the catalogue, and from any review that searches their main name or number. Whether it is actually paid elsewhere depends on the society and on how the work was registered, and nothing in the registration tells you which. That is why it is worth finding.

How to find them

• One writer: look them up by name. Songlinks groups every registration it can join to the same person and shows why. Where some works sit off the main IPI name number, the writer’s page says how many, and on which registrations.
• Several writers: paste their IPI name numbers into a writers check and see which have works under another spelling or number, up to 50 at a time.
• A CWR file: CWR Check validates the file and checks the writers in it.
• Every spelling, by hand: search the full legal name, the short name, initials and any stage name, and collect the numbers you find. Different numbers do not always mean different people.

What to do about it

1. Write down what you found. For each writer, note which registrations are theirs and which are someone else’s with the same name. A free Songlinks catalogue keeps the list for your team and downloads as CSV.
2. Take it to the publisher or administrator who registered the works. Only whoever made a registration, or the society holding it, can change it.
3. They file a corrected registration, often as a revised CWR file sent to each society (what a CWR file is). Some societies also take corrections through their own member portals.
4. Check again once the corrected registrations have been processed, which can take weeks, and look at the writer’s other names too: a correction to one spelling does not touch the others.

What Songlinks does, and does not do

Songlinks finds the registrations and shows its evidence. It does not change any registration, it does not contact a society or an administrator for you, and it does not say what anyone is owed. Its groupings are made by a model from public registration data, and no person has checked them: treat them as a lead to confirm, not a verdict.

Songlinks is in beta. Other ways to check a roster: three ways to check your songwriters’ registrations.