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Old Mar 30, 2012, 03:06 PM
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Dag Dag is offline
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Default JASRAC, music credits and you

Who?
JASRAC (Japanese Society for Rights of Authors, Composers and Publishers) is roughly like the RIAA but much worse (to the point you have to ask for permission to quote lyrics).

What's relevant to our interests is that they catalogue copyright info for songs and they have an online, public database to check them.
This copyright info may include rightholder, composer, lyricist, arranger, vocalist, and so on.

Why?
Often and sadly, albums lack compositions credits, or may be incomplete (ex.- only arrangers).
Fortunately, JASRAC may have copyright info about those albums. This often includes composer info. You may get instead a generic "Capcom Sound Team" or nothing at all, too, but it's worth a try.

What?
The DB is accesible here (or here). You add some search params and get the results below.
Then you can click on the purple "details" (詳細) button to see detailed data.

Is JASRAC accurate? Well. They are "reliable". I take they are just content regurgitators, so if the original rightholder lies it's not their fault.
I've seen tracks credited to wrong people (rare), or arrangers as composers. But very often they have credits that mimic printed ones.
Just in case mark JASRAC credits as such and do some checking. They are trustable but some common sense should be applied.

How?
- Start here
- Add an album name (you don't need the full name, try different approaches) or even a track name on second row, first input box.
- Or an artist name on the third row, second input (also try third row, first input or second row, second input)
- Hit enter.
- The results should appear. Use the big buttons below to paginate if needed.
You'll need to copy & paste Japanese text to search. Sometimes romaji works but usually it's JASCII only.

When?
Seemingly JASRAC searches expire, so you can't link them directly.
While usually credits are monolithic, they may (rarely) add or remove credits a while after the release of an album.
It may go down at times due to maintenance too, don't panic if the domain stops working.


(TODO: screenshots with translations, more info how to search, other tricks and so on)

Last edited by Dag; Apr 3, 2020 at 12:30 PM.
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