Development Roadmap for Django Music Publisher

Django Music Publisher has a narrow focus. It covers the needs of most writers who are also original publishers of their own musical works, regardless if they are the only author or not. It also covers the needs of some original publishers who publish multiple writers. And there is no plan to change the focus.

Some things never change

Original Publisher(s)

Django Music Publisher originally supported just one publisher per installation. This was extended for the US. A set of up to three publishers in different PROs in the US can be used, with one of them being the “main” one. No data on other publishers (publishers for non-controlled writers) can be entered. This will not change.

Administration, Co-Publishing and Sub-Publishing

Django Music Publisher only supports one original publisher per controlled writer and does not take data on administrators or sub-publishers, nor any territory-related data. None of it is on the roadmap for Django Music Publisher.

Writer and Publisher Shares

Django Music Publisher only supports one model, in which writers maintain 50% of performing rights, while the other 50% and 100% of mechanical and synchronization rights are transferred to the original publishers. The only information needed is the writers’ relative shares, all share data is calculated based on that.

If you are from the US, then we need to use a different language to explain this. Writers keep and directly collect writer share for performing rights, everything else is owned by original publishers. Nothing else is on the roadmap.

Writer Affiliations

As the result of described limitations, specifically, no territory-related data (the only territory is World), only a single performing rights affiliation is possible. Furthermore, due to the Writer and publisher shares limitation, mechanical and sync affiliations for writers are pointless, so they will not be included.

And some things do change

2018 releases were primarily about data for CWR registrations, but also about setting up and documenting the development process, and simplifying deployment.

Since 19.1 release, we have internal data validation, CWR generation and complete test coverage, but also we have started with royalty distribution processing, as one of the key areas for 2019. The other large area to cover is data validation and registrations on the recording side of the industry.

We are currently planning and considering these features for next versions.