On a whim I decided to add an ISWC to a very niche work entry I happened across:
and thought I might document my research more than normal while I am at it; there is not much information about these sorts of decisions, so hopefully the resulting discussion can be useful to future editors trying to understand the norms and methods for ISWC matching in MusicBrainz.
Tips for ISWCNet
I mainly use the CISAC site, which has some unexplained terminology in its results:
Creator IP Name Number - is an IPI
Creators and Titles in the database have role and type codes respectively; these appear to be related to CISAC’s CWR (Common Works Registration) system and there is a document on CISAC’s website for the CWR lookup table. The important parts from that for us, taken from the CWR 3.0 document are:
| Role | Description | Code |
|---|---|---|
| Adaptor | The author or one of the authors of an adapted text of a musical work. | AD |
| Arranger | A modifier of musical elements of a musical work. | AR |
| Author, Writer Author of Lyrics |
The creator or one of the creators of a text of a musical work. | A |
| Composer Writer |
The creator or one of the creators of the musical elements of a musical work. | C |
| Composer/Author | The creator or one of the creators of text and musical elements within a musical work. | CA |
| Sub Arranger | A creator of arrangements authorized by the Sub-Publisher | SR |
| Sub Author | The author of text which substitutes or modifies an existing text of musical work | SA |
| Translator | A modifier of a text in a different language | TR |
| Income Participant | A person that receives royalty payments for a work but is not a copyright owner. | PA |
| Title Type | Description | Code |
|---|---|---|
| Alternative Title | An alternative to an original title. | AT |
| First Line of Text | The beginning of a text. | TE |
| Formal Title | A standardised title in which the elements are arranged in a pre-determined order. Normally created for classical works. | FT |
| Incorrect Title | A spurious or unacceptable title sometimes mistakenly used for identification. | IT |
| Original Title | A title given to the work by its creator(s) shown in its original language. | OT |
| Original Title Translated | An original title translated into a different language. | TT |
| Part Title | A section of a work which is not recognized as an excerpt in its own right and does not have its own ISWC. | PT |
| Restricted Title | A title from which all initial articles and punctuation have been removed. | RT |
| Extra Search Title | An alternate title created to aid database searching (e.g. where special characters, puns, or slang have been replaced by standardized elements). | ET |
| Original Title with National Characters | The Original title of the Work in it’s original language, using ‘accented’ National characters | OL |
| Alternative Title with National Characters | An alternatice work title in it’s original language, using ‘accented ‘ National characters. | AL |
Remember that Creators are usually SURNAME GIVENNAME MIDDLENAME
Reasoning
Looking through the ISWC database for Anne Bryant’s works, I see these possible options for the main Jem Theme (official video from ), with AT (Alternate Titles) and ET (Extra search Titles) in the parenthesis, and additional Creators after the hyphen:
T-926.405.123-2 JEM 01 (JEM, JEM VOCAL THEME, JEM INST. THEME, JEM MAIN TITLE THEME, JEM END TITLE THEME) - BACAL JULES MICHAEL
T-926.405.124-3 JEM 03 (JEM)
T-931.447.026-3 JEM (JEM, JEM T V SERIES EPISODE STOLEN AL, THERE AINT NOBODY BETTER) - HARMAN BARRY
T-071.752.649-2 JEM VOCAL THEME (JEM OPENING THEME) - KINDER CLIFFORD ARBERY
BACAL, JULES MICHAEL was the executive producer of the Jem TV show; KINDER, CLIFFORD ARBERY I cannot find much information about; HARMAN, BARRY was a songwriter, but in an interview specifically mentions that he was not involved in the theme songs: Barry Harman - Rock Jem
Did you also write the Jem theme songs and the songs in the Jem doll commercials?
NO. THE ORIGINAL THEME SONG WAS WRITTEN FOR THE PILOT, BEFORE I JOINED THE SHOW. …
It should be noted that there is a second theme song (YouTube example), but the Wikipedia page for Jem mentions that the first theme remained as the closing theme.
Looking at this information, I would decide that JEM 01 T-926.405.123-2 is the theme this entry is for.
So, sounds reasonable? Any concerns?