Songlinks › IPI name number lookup

IPI name number lookup: by number, or by writer name

Hold a number? It has an address of its own, and leads to the writer. Hold a name instead? Songlinks groups the registrations belonging to that one person and shows every IPI name number they carry — often more than one — the spelling each sits under, and the records carrying none.

Free, and nothing to sign up for. Try mick jagger, amy allen or che ecru.

If you already have the number

Paste it here. It leads to the writer who holds it, or says plainly that nobody here does.

Leading zeros are part of the number, but you do not have to type them: a shorter run of digits is padded to eleven. Spaces and dashes are ignored.

What comes back

• Every number, not the first one found. A writer can hold several IPI name numbers, because the number follows a name rather than a person. Mick Jagger’s registrations carry two, across three spellings of his name.
• The records that carry no number. About six in ten songwriter records have no IPI name number at all. They are still that writer’s registrations, and a search that matches on the number alone never reaches them.
• The reason for each join. A shared number, shared works, shared co-writers — shown per record, so you can check the grouping against what you already know.
• What was left out. Records that might belong to the same writer, but that the evidence does not settle, are listed apart rather than quietly merged.

Every number has an address

A number resolves at songlinks.io/ipi/00015036818, which leads to the page for the writer who holds it. The address is stable and can be linked to directly.

A number that reaches nobody here says so, and says which of three things it means: it belongs to a publisher rather than a writer, its registrations have not been grouped yet, or a digit is out. Very occasionally one number leads to two people — where records sharing it were kept apart because somebody decided they are different writers — and then both are shown rather than one chosen.

Going the other way — a name, and every number attached to it — is the harder direction, and the one no single number can answer. That is the box at the top of this page.

What a number does and does not prove

• Two different numbers are not two different people. Inside the IPI system a person’s name numbers are tied together by a base number, and that base number is not published. From registration data alone, the link has to be established some other way.
• The same name under two numbers can be two people. In a random sample, 8% of songwriter records carrying a number — 81 of 1,018 — shared their exact registered name with a record under a different number.
• A number does not mean a person. Publishers and administrators are interested parties too, and hold numbers of their own. A self-published writer can appear twice: once as the writer, once as their own company.

Sample figures measured 2026‑09‑15 on the registration data Songlinks reads: 2,826 records drawn at random. More on what an IPI name number is, and what it identifies.

If you are looking up more than one writer

The same grouping runs over a whole roster at once. Bulk songwriter lookup, for publishers, administrators and registries. Or read why one songwriter appears many times, and the questions people send us.