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Overview

Writers represent the individuals who create musical compositions. This includes songwriters, composers, lyricists, and arrangers. Writers are automatically extracted from contracts and can be linked to entities (publishers).

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Writer Information

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Fields

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Viewing Writers

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List View

The writers list shows:
  • Writer name
  • Associated entities (publishers)
  • Merge badge showing how many records have been consolidated
Writers still being processed are hidden from the list until reconciliation finishes. Writers that need review or failed to process are real data and stay visible.

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Views

Switch between two views using the dropdown:

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Searching

The list is searchable by writer name or the name of any associated entity. See Working with Lists for how search, sorting, and views behave across Royaltyport lists.

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Writer Detail View

Click View on any writer to see full details:

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Tabs

A single scrollable page that brings together everything about the writer. Use the section navigation on the left to jump between sections (or the dropdown on smaller screens):
Click the pin icon next to any section in the Details navigation to keep it at the top of the page. Pinned sections are remembered the next time you open a writer.

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Why Multiple Entities?

A writer may be linked to multiple entities because their publishing relationships change over time:
  • Different compositions — Different works may be published or administered by different publishers
  • Sub-publishing — Deals in different territories create relationships with multiple entity records
  • Career changes — New publishing agreements are signed while older ones remain in effect for existing works
These relationships come from the contracts in your system. The Timeline tab shows agreements chronologically; see Agreement Timeline for details and how it differs from IP Groups.

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Adding Writers

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From Contract Extraction

Writers are automatically added when contracts mention them:
  1. Upload a publishing or co-writing contract
  2. AI extracts writer names
  3. Writers are matched to existing records or created new
  4. Review and verify details
Writers are extracted from contracts. There is no manual entry option - all writers come from contract processing.

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Smart Linking & Deduplication

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Automatic Matching

When contracts are processed, writers are automatically matched using:
  1. Exact Name Match - Direct name comparison
  2. Embedding Match - Semantic similarity using AI embeddings
  3. AI Semantic Matching - Fuzzy matching for name variations

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AI-Powered Deduplication

When a potential duplicate is detected, the AI evaluates:
  • Name similarity and variations
  • Associated entity relationships
The system automatically merges duplicates when confident, preserving all data from both records.

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Viewing Merge Reasoning

When writers are automatically merged, open the primary writer record and scroll to the merged records on the Details tab; hover over the sparkle icon next to any merged writer to see why the AI determined they were the same person.
When clicking on a merged writer from anywhere in the platform, you’ll be automatically redirected to the parent (primary) writer record.

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Unmerging Writers

If writers were incorrectly merged, open the primary writer record, find the merged record on the Details tab, and click Unmerge. The writer becomes independent again.

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Agreement Timeline

The Timeline tab shows an AI-generated chronological view of all agreements involving this writer. For a full description and how it differs from IP Groups, see Agreement Timeline.

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Bulk Actions

Click the bolt icon to enter edit mode, then select writers with the checkboxes to perform bulk actions.

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Deleting Writers

Delete a single writer from its detail view (Actions → Delete), or several at once in edit mode using the bolt icon.
Writers that are linked to a contract are protected from deletion — they are skipped so your contract records stay intact. After a delete, a summary tells you how many writers were deleted and how many were skipped because of a contract relationship (for example, “4 deleted, 2 skipped due to contract relationship.”).To remove a contract-linked writer, delete the contract that references it first. When a contract is deleted, any writers left with no remaining contract or entity links are cleaned up automatically — see Deleting contracts.

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Best Practices

On the writer Details tab, verify AI-merged records are correct.
Ensure writers are linked to the correct publishers.
Switch to entity view to see all writers associated with each publisher.

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Next Steps

Entities

Learn about managing company records.

Compositions

Link writers to their musical works.