"DP" credit in PRO sources

MusicBrainz
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Greetings. I would like to ask - how do you treat a “DP” (writer) credit from PRO sources (ASCAP, GEMA, etc.)? I am aware it means “Public Domain”, which probably mean that this writers dont fall under royalty usage.

Here is an example from my practice.
Scraped credits list:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Yj96f4UG4Xrt8HITE1vUVcPzl8zrvSvBrzHlXTh0aNA/edit?usp=sharing
Release itself:
https://musicbrainz.org/release/0bc4a428-6d1e-4075-8bb1-0f3a4b869a6e/edit-relationships

I supposed that all these songs are traditional ones, but since i dont know which ones exactly, i just set a [traditional] credit, but ideally i suppose it should be a link to a original song itself. What do you think?

And a second part of this. Could you help to create a correct links to original classic works for these releases. I listed classic composers along with trailers ones, while i suppose it would be more correct just to link there an original classic works.

https://musicbrainz.org/release/72ea7318-9ce8-4334-9a01-3a9fc52325c4
https://musicbrainz.org/release/0d58e511-035d-4f73-b402-fc45c364dcbe
https://musicbrainz.org/release/87464437-0b2f-455f-afd4-150f14007d99
https://musicbrainz.org/release/870f8ab7-9719-48ee-aedb-931e1b3049e9
https://musicbrainz.org/release/a2925658-38d5-4961-ba85-8c0500df097f

1 Like
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After some amount of time, work copyrights fall into public domain.

This is one of the reasons why PRO is not an ultimate reference for work credits.

It can be a good secondary source, to cross check, though.

Other sources include booklets, encyclopedias, articles, interviews, etc.

So to answer your question, PRO does not really try to present work credits, they just need to know current rights owners.

So you just don’t link anything for this DP info, IMO.
Or rather, you link writers you can find in the booklet, for instance.

4 Likes
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Well, in current cases i already credited original writers. The question is how should i add writers of original (based on) works - i could add a writer directly or link to an original work - in this case original writer would be shown through a relation.

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The best you can do if you have no other resources than PRO and you see D.P. is to link as [unknown], or not link.

Update (sorry I forgot to make it obvious): [unknown] is better than [traditional] when we have no clue. :wink:

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Yeah, its probably the best option.