What is the difference between the P line and C line?

RouteNote‘s here to draw the line.

The P Line and C Line are both used to pay the royalties to the owners of the content – they essentially identify who owns what part of the music.

The P Line is for the phonographic copyright holder – the person who owns the asset of the final sound recording, and excludes any samples, melodies, lyrics or compositions used to produce the music.
With RouteNote, you can choose to be independent and own this yourself, or use a publisher to handle your phonographic copyright. Which ever you choose, be sure to add that to your P Line when creating your release.

The C Line is for the composition copyright holder – the person(s) who created the music, i.e the melody, lyrics, structure etc.
This kind of copyright is automatically implemented on any creative work once it takes on a tangible form.

Example 1:
You are an independent artist and you’ve written and recorded your own track
P Line: Your Artist Name
C Line: Your Artist Name

Example 2:
You are an independent artist and you’d like to cover Money by Pink Floyd
P Line: Your Artist Name
C Line: Pink Floyd

Example 3:
You are a label uploading on behalf of an artist
P Line: Label Name
C Line: Artist Name

Check out our YouTube video below! We’ve also written a helpful blog post for further info on this.

Check out the full RouteNote Style Guide here!

See also:
What should I write in the C line?
What is the P line?
Can I credit my label in my C line/P line?

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