Why one songwriter appears many times in rights registrations
Look a songwriter up in registration data and you rarely find one record. You find several, under different spellings and numbers, mixed in with other people who share the name.
Figures measured 2026-09-15 on the registration data Songlinks reads.
Each record is a name as someone once registered it, with the works registered under it. Nothing in the data says that two records are the same human. Five things split one writer across records, or put two writers under one name.
1. The same name, spelled more than one way
Legal names, short names, a missing or misspelled middle name: each registration keeps whatever was typed. Mick Jagger’s works are registered under three records with an IPI name number:
| Registered as | IPI name number | Works |
|---|---|---|
| MICHAEL PHILLIP JAGGER | …36818 | 720 |
| MICK JAGGER | …36916 | 22 |
| MICHAEL PHILIP JAGGER | …36916 | 2 |
Counting each work once, that is 744 works. Searching one spelling finds a fraction of them. Numbers here are shortened to their last digits.
2. More than one IPI name number
An IPI name number belongs to a name. One person can hold several: for a pseudonym, a spelling variant, a change of name. The records above carry two different numbers, and both are the same writer. The number that ties a person’s names together is not published, so registration data alone cannot prove that two numbers are one person. More on IPI name numbers.
3. Records with no IPI name number at all
In a random sample of 2,826 registration records, about six in ten songwriter records (1,639 of 2,657) carried no IPI name number. Those records have only a name to go on. Under names like Mick Jagger’s there are at least four more records with no number, holding 20, 5, 2 and 1 works. Some are probably his. A name alone cannot settle which.
4. Different people with the same name
The opposite problem. In the same sample, 8% of songwriter records with an IPI name number (81 of 1,018) share their exact registered name with a record under a different number. Registrations under “Amy Allen” names include three different IPI name numbers, on records with 349, 33 and 12 works, and two records with no number, with 95 and 3 works. Treating the name as the person merges their catalogues. Treating each number as a different person splits one writer’s.
5. A writer’s own publishing company
A self-published writer usually appears twice: once as the writer, and again as the publisher, often under their own name. The publisher record is a company, not the person, even when the name is the same.
Finding every work registered to one writer
- Search every spelling: the full legal name, the short name, initials, a stage name.
- Collect the IPI name numbers you find. Different numbers do not mean different people, and the same name does not mean the same person.
- Check records with no number against something else: shared co-writers, titles, publishers.
- Leave publisher records out of the writer’s count.
Songlinks does this grouping by model and shows the reason for each record it joins, and the ones it leaves apart. It is in beta, and no person has checked its answers: try a lookup.