Two sources, two entirely different documents
An artist or label that's only ever dealt with a distributor assumes every royalty source reports the same way: a per-track breakdown, a monthly cycle, an ISRC on every line. Register a composition with a PRO and that assumption breaks almost immediately — a PRO statement keys to ISWC, arrives on its own much slower schedule, and often never mentions the recording-level code the distributor statement was built around.
Turning either one into something a spreadsheet can actually use — one row per track, per-source figures broken into their own columns — means reading the document on its own terms rather than forcing it into a template built for the other source's report.
Why these two are harder to reconcile than they look
Different identifiers, by design
A distributor statement is built around ISRC, the recording-level code. A PRO statement is built around ISWC, the composition-level code. Neither one substitutes for the other.
Completely different schedules
A distributor statement arrives within weeks of the activity it reports. A PRO statement for the same period often takes six months to over a year, after domestic and international collection has run its course.
Categories don't line up between the two
A distributor separates streaming, download and mechanical income per platform. A PRO statement separates performance income by territory and use type — radio, live, digital performance — categories that don't map cleanly onto a distributor's own.
Registration gaps compound the mismatch
A track never formally registered with a PRO, or a composition missing its ISWC, simply doesn't appear on that source's statement at all — not an error, just a gap in the underlying paperwork.
None of these four are unusual for either source — they're simply the normal shape of how each one documents income, and exactly why a catalog trying to force both into the same spreadsheet template by hand tends to give up somewhere around the third PRO statement.
What this doesn't do, stated up front
Doesn't calculate what a rate should have been
Per-stream and per-performance values vary by source and change over time. This confirms the figures a statement actually reports are read and structured correctly — it doesn't audit whether the rate itself was fair.
Doesn't connect to your distributor or PRO account
There's no API, no login, no integration. You download the statement yourself, the same way you already download it to check by hand, and upload it.
Doesn't register a missing ISWC on your behalf
A composition with no registered code simply won't appear correctly matched until it's registered directly with the relevant PRO — this surfaces the gap, but doesn't file the registration.
Doesn't file a black-box or underpayment claim
If a genuine gap looks worth pursuing with a PRO or distributor, that's a step you take directly — this surfaces the discrepancy clearly enough to make that conversation possible.
What's left is narrow, and it's exactly the part that eats a reporting cycle: turning a distributor statement and a PRO statement into a spreadsheet a catalog can actually work with.
What gets read
| Field | Source |
|---|---|
| Track title, ISRC and units/streams | Distributor statement |
| Composition title, ISWC and writer shares | PRO statement |
| Territory and use type (radio, digital, live) | PRO statement |
| Per-platform breakdown | Distributor statement, where itemized |
| Gross amount, currency and statement period | Both |
| Reference or claim number | Both, where provided |
Reading a distributor statement
A distributor statement from DistroKid, TuneCore, CD Baby, AWAL, The Orchard or a similar aggregator generally lists every track by ISRC, broken down per streaming or download platform, with units and gross royalty for each. The bottom-line total is the sum across every platform and track in that statement period — not a single figure worth extracting on its own.
Reading it means parsing every track-and-platform combination individually, since a track's Spotify royalty and its Apple Music royalty are reported as separate lines even though a catalog owner usually wants to see them rolled up per track first.
Reading a PRO statement
A PRO statement from ASCAP, BMI, PRS, GEMA, SACEM or a similar performance rights organization lists compositions by ISWC (or, on an older or less digitized statement, by title and writer name alone), broken down by territory and use type — broadcast, digital performance, live performance — rather than by streaming platform.
Because a PRO statement reports on the composition, not the recording, a single line can represent performance income collected across every recorded version of that song — the original, a cover, a remix — which is a fundamentally different grouping than a distributor statement's recording-by-recording breakdown.
Why a PRO statement looks different by country
A catalog collecting performance royalties internationally quickly discovers there's no single, universal PRO statement format. ASCAP and BMI in the US, PRS in the UK, GEMA in Germany, SACEM in France and SGAE in Spain each structure their statements differently, report on their own schedule, and use their own conventions for identifying a writer's share.
None of that variation is arbitrary — it follows from each society's own domestic collection infrastructure and reciprocal agreements with foreign societies. But it does mean a catalog comparing a statement from one territory against another shouldn't assume the two will share a layout just because both are, broadly speaking, “PRO statements.”
Reading each document on its own terms rather than assuming a fixed template is exactly what handles this correctly without a catalog needing to track which regional format applies to which society itself.
How a line finds its track
Matching runs on the identifier hierarchy described in ISRC and UPC matching across statements: ISRC first for recording-level distributor lines, ISWC first for composition-level PRO lines, with a title-and-writer fallback when a statement carries no code at all.
| Signal | Why it isn't enough alone |
|---|---|
| ISRC on the distributor statement | Says nothing about which composition and writers to credit on the publishing side |
| ISWC on the PRO statement | Says nothing about which specific recording or platform produced the income |
| Title and writer name | Weakest signal — titles and writer-name formatting vary across sources and territories |
A distributor line and a PRO line for the same underlying song are linked through the recording's registered composition relationship, not by expecting either statement to carry the other's identifier directly.
A statement and a statement, structured
One track, one quarter — a distributor statement reporting streaming income by ISRC, and a domestic PRO statement, arriving five months later, reporting performance income by ISWC for the same underlying composition.
| Source | Reports on | Amount |
|---|---|---|
| Distributor statement | The recording (by ISRC) | $340 |
| PRO statement, 5 months later | The composition (by ISWC) | $118 |
| Combined total for the quarter | Both | $458 |
Read from the distributor statement alone, this track earned $340 that quarter. The full picture — $458 — only exists once the PRO statement is matched to the same underlying composition and added in, five months after the quarter closed. Structured into Excel, both contributions land in their own columns against the same track row, rather than living in two separate, unconnected documents.
How it works
Upload the statements
Whatever the distributor or PRO exports, in whatever period each covers.
Every track-level line is read
ISRC or ISWC, units or performances, gross amount, category and period, kept linked to its source.
Matched by identifier
ISRC first, then ISWC, then title and writer, with a confidence level per match.
Export
Excel, CSV or JSON — matched, flagged and unmatched lines kept as separate, clearly labeled groups.
Running both sources side by side
A catalog earning from both a distributor and a PRO ends up with two structurally different source documents describing overlapping income for the same tracks. Structuring both into the same spreadsheet shape — one row per track, source contribution in its own column — makes it possible to see recording-side and publishing-side income together, something neither source's own dashboard is built to do since each only shows its own slice.
That combined view is often the first time a catalog sees, in one place, how much of a track's total income comes from streaming versus performance royalties — a split that matters directly for understanding where future growth is likely to come from.
Attributing lines across several writers
A composition with more than one credited writer splits its PRO income according to each writer's registered share — a split that a distributor statement, reporting only at the recording level, has no visibility into at all.
Where the PRO statement itself reports per-writer shares, that attribution carries through into the structured spreadsheet, so a multi-writer composition gets a per-writer breakdown on the publishing side alongside the single combined recording-side total from the distributor.
What happens to what doesn't match
A line that doesn't match anything on the other source isn't discarded or hidden — it's kept as its own visible group, with the title, identifier and amount as reported, so it can be checked directly instead of disappearing into a structured total that quietly absorbed a gap.
In practice, unmatched lines turn out to be one of a small number of things: a PRO statement that hasn't arrived yet for a period the distributor already reported, a composition genuinely missing its ISWC registration, or occasionally a title spelled differently enough between sources that the fallback match couldn't bridge it automatically. Each has a specific, quick fix once it's visible.
Who this is for
Self-releasing artists
A distributor statement's dozens of platform lines turned into a spreadsheet, not re-typed by hand.
Songwriters and composers
A PRO statement structured and matched to the recordings actually generating the performance income.
Catalogs earning from both
One consistent spreadsheet shape across two structurally different source documents.
Royalty accountants and administrators
The same structuring method applied regardless of which distributor or PRO a client's catalog uses.
This isn't a connected-account sync
Worth being precise about the boundary. This doesn't connect to your distributor dashboard or your PRO member portal — there's no login, no OAuth, no ongoing sync. You download the statement yourself, the same way you already download it to check by hand, and upload it here.
How this differs from the full catalog tool
This page focuses on the distributor-and-PRO pairing specifically, since that's the combination most catalogs deal with first. A catalog also earning through a sub-publisher, a mechanical collection society, or several of each at once benefits from the broader version — see royalty statement to Excel for the full picture across every royalty source a catalog might encounter.
A catalog that starts here, with just a distributor and a domestic PRO, typically expands to the full tool naturally as it adds a foreign sub-publisher relationship or a mechanical collection statement — the same matching logic and spreadsheet shape carry over without needing to relearn anything.
Handling a correction or adjustment statement
Occasionally a distributor or PRO issues a correction statement — a retroactive adjustment for a prior period's miscalculated rate, or a recalculation after a metadata fix takes effect. None of these are errors on the catalog's part, but each one breaks the simple assumption that every statement reports on the period it's labeled with.
Rather than forcing a correction line into the current period it doesn't actually belong to, it's read and kept as its own labeled row — visible, traceable to the statement it came from, and clearly distinguished from ordinary current-period royalties.
In practice, correction statements are uncommon enough that most reporting cycles have none at all, but common enough — a handful of times a year for an active catalog — that pretending they don't exist would leave real money unaccounted for on the statements where they do appear.
How often to run this
Distributor statements typically arrive monthly, so a light structuring pass whenever one lands keeps that side current with almost no effort. PRO statements arrive far less often — quarterly or semi-annually in most cases — so matching your fuller reconciliation cadence to whichever source reports slowest is the simplest rule that actually works.
For a catalog earning from both, batching the combined structuring on a fixed quarterly rhythm is usually easier to sustain than chasing each source's individual schedule — slightly less immediate on the distributor side, but far more likely to actually happen consistently.
What accuracy actually looks like
A useful way to think about matching accuracy isn't a single percentage — it's the shape of the distribution across confidence levels. A catalog with clean, consistently registered ISRCs and ISWCs sees most lines land at high confidence, with only a small tail needing review. A catalog with older or under-registered releases sees a larger medium-confidence tail, which means more review time, not necessarily more errors.
In practice, catalogs with well-registered metadata across most releases see somewhere between 80% and 92% of lines match at high confidence on a given reconciliation, with the rest split between a quick medium-confidence confirm and a smaller number of genuine gaps worth investigating individually.
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