Glossary
Mercury uses a handful of words in a precise way. This page defines them; other pages link here rather than explaining again.
Organisation (org)
A tenant on the Cadenzabox platform: one library, one client facing site, one set of users and settings. Everything you see in the admin belongs to the organisation shown at the top of the sidebar. Every organisation has a slug (for example audiomachine) that appears in API paths such as /org/audiomachine/tracks.
You only ever see your own organisation. See Roles and permissions.
Release and recording
The release is the canonical record of a body of work (an album, EP, single or production music release) and the recordings are the individual audio works inside it, one per version (main, alternate, stem, cutdown). Releases and recordings are what you ingest from a metadata CSV and what you edit when you correct source data. A release belongs to a label.
Album and track
An album is your organisation’s catalogue copy of a release, and a track is your catalogue copy of a recording. These are what clients search, play, tag, add to playlists and download. In the normal case there is exactly one album per release and one track per recording, and editing either side keeps them in step.
The two layers exist so that the same release can appear in more than one organisation’s catalogue through subpublishing: the subpublisher gets its own albums and tracks, which it may retitle or recode within the limits of the agreement, while the original publisher keeps ownership of the release and recordings. See Releases and recordings.
Label
A label groups releases. Labels can be published or unpublished on the client site, given their own page, and used to scope groups and publishing agreements.
Interested parties
The people and companies with rights in a recording:
- Composers (songwriters) with their PRO, IPI number, capacity and shares.
- Publishers with their shares, which can be overridden per publishing agreement.
- Artists who performed.
See Composers and publishers and Artists.
Tag and tag category
Tags describe tracks (mood, genre, instrumentation, tempo and so on) and are grouped into tag categories. A tag can have a parent tag. Each tag on a track has a source (from ingestion, from an AI provider, or added manually) and can be visible or hidden. See Tags.
Group and access type
A group is a segment of users (by tier, client, location or industry). Albums and labels can be placed in groups, and a user only sees catalogue content that shares a group with them. Group membership grants access types: view, stems, license, MCPS, watermarked download and full download. See Groups and access types.
Playlist, pitch and project
Curated lists of tracks. A playlist is a public or private list; a pitch is a list shared with a specific client, optionally by share code with expiry and download rights; a project groups work around a brief. See Playlists, Pitches and Projects.
Import
A metadata CSV upload and the job that validates it and writes releases, recordings, albums and tracks. Imports move through states from created to complete, complete with errors, failed or aborted. See Import metadata.
Delivery
Sending tracks to a third party service such as AIMS, BMAT, Cyanite, DAACI, Figaro or Soundmouse, and tracking the result per track. See Deliveries overview.
Export
A job that assembles audio, and optionally a metadata CSV, into a ZIP or delivers it to an SFTP server. See Export audio and metadata.
Publishing agreement and subpublish process
A publishing agreement links an original publisher organisation to a subpublisher organisation and says which codes and text fields the subpublisher may change. Each release covered by an agreement has a subpublish process that moves from delivered, through accepted, to published (or rejected). See How subpublishing works.
Admin and user
The two roles you will meet in the admin. See Roles and permissions.