STIM’s management of unidentified works

1. Rightsholder identification process

All works in usage reports from licensees are auto-matched with registered musical works in STIMs-works documentation database. Remaining unidentified works are manually processed according to varying thresholds for each distribution area in order to find matching correct documentation for both works and rightsholders before the reports are ready to go into the distribution process.

When usage reports are ready for distribution, works information is quality assured in the ICE-Copyright data base in regards to new works documentation and incomplete data. Within this quality assurance process works with amounts above a certain threshold value are manually checked towards the CIS-Net Database in order to complete its missing data (i.e. IPI number). All remaining works that are still unidentified after these steps are registered as Un-notified works.

If there is any information indicating that at least one rightsholder on a work is a STIM affiliate the amount of collected royalties for the unidentified individual work will be reserved and that is also the case when the work lacks information on the works society affiliation membership. STIM will distribute the royalties for all other un-notified works to the identified affiliate sister societies to the respective work with information on the usage that have generated the distributed royalties.

All Un-notified works that have reserved royalty amounts are re-matched  with the ICE-Copyright database in the preparations for all new distributions. As soon as there is a match on a Un-notifed work that can transform it to a fully identified work the reserved total amount of royalities for that work will be paid in the following distribution to the then identified rightsholders and/or the relevant Sister Society. Payment to the individual rightsholder will however be withheld until that rightsholders total account exceeds 99 SEK but there are no payment limits for amounts that is to be distributed to Sister Societies.

Reserved amounts in regards to individual unidentified works will be kept for 36 months from the date of the original distribution. When the 36 months rightsholder identification period has passed   STIM will reallocate relevant reserved monies to the distribution process and the corresponding distribution areas. This means that for unidentified works there will not be monies reserved longer than 36 months from the original distribution.

2. Information procedures

STIM affiliated rightsholders and publishers, sister societies and the public are informed of unidentified works by lists made accessible to them in the purpose to get help with the identification of unidentified works.

Information to all STIM affiliated rightsholders and music publishers regarding unidentified works in the aim to obtain correct works documentation and identification on the works correct rightsholders:

• STIM affiliated rightsholders and music publishers have access to lists of Un-notified works in their individual member pages on the internal STIM website.
• On their member page STIM-affiliated rightsholders can access all undocumented works where STIM has not received a works notification or where it was not possible to identify a  work via the the ICE-copyright database or the CIS-NET database and where the respective rightsholder might have an interest according to a usage report.  
  Information available includes:
  I. Individual work registration number (”ICE Work key”)
  II. Reported titel of the work
  III. Reported rightsholders
• STIM affiliated Music Publishers are ahead of Stims quarterly distributions given access to all Un-notified Works. This information is published via the STIM FTP-server and contains information received on the work in relevant usage reports.
  Information available includes:
  I. Individual work registration number (”ICE Work key”)
  II. Reported title of the work
  III. Performing artists
  IV. Reported rightsholders

Information to Sister Societies in regards to Un-identified

• STIM publishes Un-notified Performance lists (UP-lists) twice a year to Sister Societies. These lists are accessible for the societies after the June and December distributions on the STIM FTP-server and contain all unidentified works that were part of that distribution.
  
  Information available includes:
  
  I. Individual work registration number (”ICE Work key”)
  II. Reported title of the work
  III. Performing artists
  IV. Reported rightsholders

Information to the public in regards to unidentified works

• STIM quarterly publishes information regarding Un-identified works on the STIM-website on the following address: https://www.stim.se/en/unregistered-works showing all information received on the unidentified works in the usage reports of the individual work from Users on (if applicable):
  
  I. Reported title of the work
  II. Reported rightsholders
  III. Other relevant and registered information that may contribute to the identification of the relevant rightsholders.