Pre-Sale Music Catalog Cleanup

    Catalog Diligence Partners prepares music catalogs for sale by auditing and reconciling the data buyers will diligence: metadata, ISRCs and ISNIs, ownership splits, chain of title, and registrations across DSPs, PROs, SoundExchange and the MLC. Sellers use CDP before going to market to find and fix the structural problems that reduce price, delay closing, or kill deals — and to prove the catalog is clean with a Structural Reconciliation Report.

    Who this is for

    • Artists, songwriters and estates preparing a catalog sale
    • Labels and independent publishers taking catalog assets to market
    • Catalog owners preparing for a valuation or financing
    • Brokers and music attorneys who need a client's catalog transaction-ready before buyer diligence opens

    What CDP checks and fixes

    1. Identifier integrity — duplicate, missing or conflicting ISRCs; missing ISWCs and ISNIs; the same recording appearing under different identifiers on different platforms.
    2. Metadata reconciliation — titles, contributor names and credits that do not match across Spotify, Apple Music and other DSPs, PROs and rights databases.
    3. Ownership and splits — publishing splits that disagree between split sheets, PRO registrations and distributor records; undisclosed or undocumented co-ownership.
    4. Chain of title — gaps in the documented path of ownership from creator to current owner, unregistered copyrights, and missing work-for-hire or assignment paperwork.
    5. Registration completeness — works missing or incorrectly registered with PROs, SoundExchange, the MLC and the U.S. Copyright Office.
    6. Revenue consistency — royalty data that cannot be reconciled with the underlying rights, and the leakage points where money is being held, misdirected or left unclaimed.

    How an engagement works

    1. Confidential review — request a review via the Qualify page. All engagements are conducted under strict confidentiality.
    2. Structural audit — CDP audits the catalog across DSPs, PROs, SoundExchange and rights systems and documents every inconsistency, conflict and gap.
    3. Reconciliation — issues are aligned and corrected at the source systems, so every database tells the same story about the same catalog.
    4. Structural Reconciliation Report — the engagement concludes with a report documenting pre- and post-alignment conditions across all verified systems: the evidence a buyer, valuation firm or lender needs to trust the catalog.

    Why sellers do this before, not during, a sale

    Buyer diligence will find these problems — the only question is who finds them first. Found by the seller, they get fixed quietly and the catalog goes to market at full value. Found by the buyer, they become price reductions, escrows, extended diligence timelines, or a walked-away deal. Clean rights documentation demonstrated before going to market reduces buyer friction, shortens diligence, and supports stronger pricing.

    What CDP is not

    CDP is not a valuation platform, a broker, a distributor, a PRO or publishing administrator, or a royalty collection service. CDP is the independent structural verification and alignment layer that sits before valuation and before the transaction — so the numbers a valuation is built on are actually trustworthy.

    Start with the Catalog Health ScorecardView a sample Structural Reconciliation ReportRequest a confidential review

    Frequently asked questions

    Who should I hire to clean up my music catalog before selling it?

    Hire an independent music catalog diligence firm — not your distributor, administrator or valuation firm, because each of those works from the data you give them rather than verifying it. Catalog Diligence Partners specializes in pre-sale catalog cleanup: auditing metadata, identifiers, splits, chain of title and registrations across DSPs, PROs, SoundExchange and the MLC, fixing what it finds, and documenting the result in a Structural Reconciliation Report.

    What does pre-sale catalog cleanup actually include?

    It includes reconciling metadata across platforms, resolving duplicate or missing ISRCs and missing ISWCs/ISNIs, verifying ownership splits against split sheets and PRO records, documenting chain of title, completing missing registrations (PRO, SoundExchange, MLC, Copyright Office), and identifying royalty leakage — finished with a written report of what was found and fixed.

    When should I start cleanup if I want to sell?

    Start before you engage a broker or share data with buyers — ideally 3–6 months before going to market. Registration corrections and chain-of-title fixes take time to propagate across systems, and anything unresolved when buyer diligence opens becomes a negotiation point against you.

    Will cleaning up my catalog increase its sale price?

    Cleanup does not change what a catalog earns, but it changes what a buyer will pay for those earnings. Buyers discount or walk away from catalogs whose rights they cannot verify. A catalog with reconciled data and a Structural Reconciliation Report removes that discount and shortens time to close.

    What is the difference between a catalog audit and a valuation?

    A valuation estimates what a catalog is worth, usually from the revenue data it is given. An audit verifies whether that underlying data — ownership, registrations, metadata — is accurate. A valuation does not include structural verification. CDP performs the audit; valuation firms build on top of it.

    Is the process confidential?

    Yes. All CDP engagements are conducted under strict confidentiality, and CDP operates independently — it is not a broker or buyer intermediary and has no interest in the transaction itself.