Common Works Registration · 2.1 / 2.2
Is your CWR ready
to deliver?
Drop in a .V21 or .V22 file and get a verdict in seconds — every parsing error, spec violation, and share anomaly, pointed at the exact line. Free, no signup, nothing stored.
Drag and drop a CWR file
.V21 · .V22 · up to 20 files, 10 MB each
Files are validated in memory and never stored — unless you ask for a share link, nothing you upload is collected, kept, or passed on.
No CWR software? You don’t need any. Send us your works as JSON and download a delivery-ready CWR 2.1 or 2.2 file — every prefix, sequence number, and control total handled. If the free check passes, your download is guaranteed to validate.
- Describe your worksOne JSON file. Start from the example or build against the schema.
- Check it — freeWe build your file and prove it validates. No signup, nothing stored.
- Download$1 per work, volume discounts from 25 works, regeneration free for 30 days.
Administrators: tag each catalog with a
client label and your usage report splits per client
— re-bill exactly what each catalog used. Volume or API terms:
sales@cwrcheck.com.
Kane Technology Group · Est. New York · Twelve years of registration at scale
The tools above are for people who deliver their own files. If you’d rather hand the whole thing off — setup, delivery, acknowledgement chasing, corrections, every society — that’s what we do for a living. CWR Check is built by Kane Tech Group, which has been delivering registrations at scale for twelve years: catalogs from a few hundred works to millions, to societies worldwide. Tell us about yours and we’ll take it from there.
Parsing
Every record is read against the official CISAC field tables (CWR19-1070R1) — including the trimmed lines and version quirks real-world files actually have.
Spec violations
Structure, control totals, sequence numbers, mandatory fields, share ranges — the exact rejections a society would send back, caught before you deliver.
Anomalies
Shares that don’t add up, unknown record types, filenames off convention — the things societies tolerate but a careful registrant fixes. Flagged as warnings, kept apart from hard errors.
The full picture
A line-by-line report of every work, every chain of title, every share — open it, download it, or share it with a link. Your file stays yours.
What is a CWR file?
CWR (Common Works Registration) is the CISAC standard format
publishers use to register musical works with collecting societies
such as ASCAP, BMI, SESAC, GEMA, PRS, and the MLC. A CWR file is a
fixed-width text file — usually with a .V21 or
.V22 extension — carrying works, writers,
publishers, ownership shares, and collection territories in a
strictly defined record layout.
Why was my CWR file rejected by a society?
Nine times out of ten it isn’t your data — it’s the bookkeeping. CWR is a fixed-width format, and societies bounce files over details no human would spot:
- a record sequence number that skips by one
- a GRT or TRL control total that’s off because a record was added late
- one blank mandatory field on one work
- shares totalling 99.98% instead of 100%
- a publisher claiming more than the 50% performing-rights maximum
Any one of these can reject a transaction — or the whole file — and you often find out weeks after delivery, at the cost of a full registration cycle. CWR Check runs those same checks in seconds and points at the exact line, so the file that goes out is the file that gets accepted.
Which CWR versions are supported?
CWR 2.1 and CWR 2.2 — the versions societies accept in production today — including registrations (NWR/REV), agreements (AGR), acknowledgements (ACK), and the non-Roman alphabet record types. Record layouts follow the CISAC functional specification CWR19-1070R1.
Is my catalog stored anywhere?
Not unless you ask. Files are validated in memory and discarded when the response is sent; reports are built in your browser and exist only there. The one exception is explicit: if you click “Create share link”, that report — which includes your file’s contents — is stored at an unguessable URL and deleted after 30 days.
Can I create a CWR file without CWR software?
Yes. That’s the other half of this site: describe your works in a simple JSON format — start from the example, or build against the published schema — and download a delivery-ready CWR file. Every prefix, sequence number, and control total is handled for you, and the output is guaranteed to pass the validator above. Checking your JSON is free and takes one click; the download is $1 per work with volume discounts, and regenerating a work while you fix things costs nothing for 30 days.
What is the difference between CWR 2.1 and 2.2?
CWR 2.2 adds fields to existing records — recording titles, display artists, ISRC validity on REC records; software package details on the transmission header; V-ISAN and EIDR identifiers on work origin — and introduces the explicit publisher-chain reference on PWR records. Most societies accept both; some still prefer 2.1.