From artist + title to a report-ready file
PPL is the UK's neighbouring-rights society for recorded music, and the ISRC is the identifier it relies on to match a reported play to the right recording. Most station play logs don't carry it.
SonoVault's Bulk Lookup closes that gap. Paste a list of tracks with just the artist and title, resolve them against a catalog of 90M+ recordings, and download a file with Artist, Title, Album, Label, and ISRC for every track — ready to map onto your PPL report.
Resolve your play log in the Bulk Lookup tool in your SonoVault dashboard. A free account includes 1,000 lookups a month — no credit card needed.
🇬🇧 What PPL needs from your report
PPL licenses the use of sound recordings across the UK — on broadcast, online, and in public — and distributes the money to record companies and performers. It's the recording side of the coin; PRS for Music licenses the underlying song (the composition). Since 2018 the two jointly run PPL PRS Ltd for a single public-performance licence, but their royalty collection and distribution stay separate.
PPL identifies recordings by ISRC. It's a key field in PPL's repertoire database — mandatory when a rightsholder registers a recording, alongside recording title, artist, and label — and it's what lets PPL match usage reported by broadcasters, online services, and overseas societies to a specific recording. Without ISRCs, plays are far harder to match to the right rightsholders and performers.
The gap most reporters hit: radio automation and playout exports usually log only artist, title, and a timestamp — not the ISRC, label, or release version PPL matches on. Different commercial variants of a song each carry their own ISRC, so a bare artist–title log mis-matches. That's the gap this tool fills.
How it works
- 1
Paste your artist + title list
Drop in a column of tracks — a station play log, a setlist, or a catalog export — one per line, up to 1,000. Or import a CSV and map the Artist and Title columns.
- 2
Resolve to ISRC + label
Press Resolve. Each line is matched to a canonical recording and its ISRC, album, and record label — the fields a usage report relies on to identify a recording.
- 3
Download the enriched file
Export a CSV with Artist, Title, Album, Label, and ISRC for every track, then map those columns to the format your society's report expects.
What SonoVault adds to each track
One row per track, enriched with the recording identifier and clean release data your report needs.
ArtistThe featured artist, cleaned to its canonical spelling.TitleThe recording's title, normalised against the catalog.AlbumThe release the recording appears on.LabelThe record label that released the recording.ISRCThe 12-character recording code, upper-cased — the reliable recording identifier.ISRC, plus clean metadata
ISRC is PPL's primary matching key for recordings, backed by recording title, artist, and label. SonoVault returns all of it, normalised against a 90M-recording catalog.
One 12-character code that names the exact recording — the studio cut, the radio edit, the remaster all have their own. It is the cleanest, highest-match way to tie a reported play to the right recording.
Clean, canonical release data corroborates the match and stands in when an ISRC is unavailable. SonoVault returns all of it, normalised against a 90M-recording catalog.
Common uses
Broadcast / airplay reporting
PPL licensees supply usage reports of the recordings they played. Resolve your play log once and attach the ISRC and label PPL matches on.
Online / webcaster reporting
Online and streaming services report the recordings they broadcast. Turn an artist + title log into a file with ISRC, album, and label attached.
Register your repertoire
Rightsholders registering recordings need ISRC, recording title, artist, and label per track. Pull the ISRCs for a whole catalog in one pass.
Fill missing ISRCs
Older or third-party recordings without ISRCs on file, matched against a 90M-recording catalog to recover the codes.
Reporting to another collecting society?
SonoVault supplies the ISRC and metadata for these reporting flows too.
Frequently asked questions
Enrich your report free
A free SonoVault account includes 1,000 lookups a month. Paste your artist + title list, resolve it to ISRC, album, and label, and export the file — no credit card, no code.
Not affiliated with PPL. SonoVault is an independent music metadata service and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or connected to Phonographic Performance Limited (PPL). We supply ISRC, label, and release data; you are responsible for your own membership, licences, and reporting, and for confirming PPL's current requirements. Always verify data before you submit it. Official sources: PPL — recording rightsholders (ISRC) · PPL — broadcast data reporting.