3 Use Cases

When looking at Catalogue Transfers, two principal use cases need to be considered: the company relinquishing the catalogue can either be a Rights Controller such as a record company, hereafter referred to as a Relinquishing Rights Controller; or an Aggregator/Distributor, that is a company that sends Release information to retailers on behalf of a Rights Controller, hereafter referred to as a Relinquishing Aggregator/Distributor. The main difference between those two cases is that a Relinquishing Rights Controller usually knows who the acquiring company is whereas a Relinquishing Aggregator/Distributor usually does not.

A similar differentiation has to be made for the acquiring company: either the acquiring company is a Rights Controller, that is a company that has a direct relationship with the Relinquishing Rights Controller, hereafter referred to as an Acquiring Rights Controller; or an Aggregator/Distributor, who does not have such a direct relationship, hereafter referred to as an Acquiring Aggregator/Distributor. 

A fifth case can be said to exist where a Rights Controller is moving its catalogue from one Aggregator/Distributor to another. This is, however, a simplification of case IV in the figure above and is, therefore, not addressed separately in this document.

Not in scope is the situation where a catalogue is transferred to an Acquiring Rights Controller or Acquiring Aggregator/Distributor that has no commercial relationship with a specific DSP. This is not addressed herein as such a catalogue transfer is, for that DSP, just a take-down.