Arabic catalogs

International rights systems struggle with Arabic script and transliteration.

Inconsistent handling of Arabic, Latin and transliterated variants creates matching failures at scale — and makes regional catalogs disappear from the systems that should pay them.

Overview

Most international DSPs, PROs and rights databases were not built around Arabic script. Variations in transliteration, character handling and field encoding routinely cause the same work to appear as several different works — none of which match cleanly against usage.

What goes wrong

The same title appears in Arabic on one platform, in transliteration on another and in English translation on a third. Performer and writer names diverge across systems. Splits attached to one variant do not flow to the others. Usage matching fails silently — and revenue accumulates unclaimed.

Why it matters

It is one of the largest invisible sources of leakage for MENA catalogs.

Standard global tooling does not solve it — alignment requires deliberate, per-catalog work.

Without alignment, even fully registered works fail to collect on cross-border usage.

The fix is operational, not creative — but it has to be done before anything else can collect properly.

How we operate it

Define canonical variants

Arabic, transliteration and English locked to the same work.

Propagate consistently

Aligned across DSPs, PROs, CMOs and publishing systems.

Maintain on release

Standard applied to every new track entering the catalog.