With tools for different needs, ‘CIS-Net Powered by FastTrack’ today is like a Swiss Army knife for royalty management societies. Among the various CIS-Net tools, MWI is arguably the most widely used by the DIVA societies (CASH, MACP, MCSC, and MUST). For example, at CASH, our Distribution and Documentation team of 20 users looks for information on works of foreign societies through MWI’s interactive search engine on a daily basis. They routinely carry out search by Title, IPI Name and Performer, using various combinations of the ‘Contains’, ‘Begins’ and ‘Exact’ logical operators to narrow down the search for more accurate results. Not limited to royalty distribution, they also use the data obtained from CIS-Net to update information in local databases, resolve licensing issues and answer copyright enquiries.
The other practical tools in CIS-Net have not gone unnoticed by the DIVA societies. MACP and CASH have requested cue sheets through AVI. CASH has started using UP upload to match unidentified performances and is planning to contribute to AV Index and AVR. The Request Tracking Facility (RTF) is another service we believe will boost our productivity. MUST, MCSC and MACP, with a total of approximately 40 users, are expected to follow suit in the coming months.
Long before the DIVA node was available, CASH, the developer of DIVA, had been contributing works information to the World Works List (WWL)/Works Information Database (WID). But with the launch of the DIVA system and the discontinuation of WWL, we needed another channel to share works information with sister societies. Setting up a DIVA node on CIS-Net was the most logical option.
Officially open to the CIS-Net community in early 2008, the DIVA node now contains information on works from CASH, MCSC and MUST. Works controlled by Malaysian society MACP will be added to the DIVA node in the near future. At this stage, only domestic works of DIVA societies with a valid ISWC are uploaded to the node. When all works information is in place, we hope the DIVA node will become a centralized, comprehensive and reliable source for CISAC societies to look up information on Chinese works for royalty collection and distribution.
There were some technical issues in the initial setup of the DIVA node. For example, our works titles and IP names could not properly be displayed and searched because the CIS-Net user interface did not support Asian languages. But thanks to the savvy technical team at FastTrack, those issues were ironed out in a timely fashion.
CIS-Net has been an important tool in the operation of DIVA societies, especially for documentation and distribution. We expect its role to continue to grow as the search response time improves and new tools are added. Among sister societies, CIS-Net is now seen as an authoritative source of musical work information and we are grateful to be a part of it.
Alfred Lau, Head of CASH IT Department
« Back to Home