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ASCAP electronic statement fields, explained column by column

By Perpendis · Published 16 Aug 2026 · Reviewed 16 Aug 2026

ASCAP delivers its quarterly domestic electronic statement from the member portal as a zip file containing a CSV — 41 columns, laid out in ASCAP's own published file-format specification (March 2024 version). Drop the zip straight into the converter, unopened: it detects the layout, maps every column, and hands back a normalized Excel earnings tape.

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Drop the .zip exactly as ASCAP delivered it — no unzipping, no re-saving, no header surgery. Combine it with MLC, distributor and publisher statements in the same run if you like.

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What ASCAP actually sends you

Members download statements from the ASCAP portal under Earnings > Statements. The domestic electronic statement arrives as a zip archive holding one CSV, distributed quarterly. Its layout is genuinely documented — ASCAP publishes a file-format PDF — but the document is a PDF of field definitions, not something you can sort, filter or pivot. The converter reads all 41 columns; the table below explains the ones that decide what you were paid and why.

The 41-column layout — the fields that matter most

#ColumnWhat it holds
1–2DISTRIBUTION YEAR / QUARTERThe quarter ASCAP paid you in — not the quarter the performances happened.
9PERFORMANCE SOURCE/BROADCAST MEDIUMStatement category: radio, TV, audio streaming, live and so on.
10–11MUSIC USER GENRE / MUSIC USERThe type of licensee, then the specific station, service or venue.
13–14PERFORMANCE START / END DATEMM/DD/YYYY, with no leading zeros — 1/5/2024, not 01/05/2024.
15SURVEY TYPECensus, Sample or Library — whether the play was counted or statistically sampled.
17–18SERIES OR FILM/ATTRACTION · PROGRAM NAMEFor audiovisual rows: the series or film, then the episode or air date.
19–20WORK ID · WORK TITLEASCAP's work identifier and the registered title.
23NUMBER OF PLAYSPlay count for the row.
24PERFORMANCE TYPE (USAGE)How the work was used — feature, background, theme, etc.
25–26DURATION · PERFORMING ARTISTHH:MM:SS timing and the featured performer.
28EE SHAREEntitled Earner Share — your percentage of the work on this row.
29CREDITSASCAP's internal performance credits; negatives carry a "-" sign.
30DOLLARSThe money for the row. This is the column the earnings tape sums.
33–35ADJUSTMENT INDICATOR / REASON / ORIGINAL DATE"Y" marks a correction to an earlier distribution, with the reason and original date.
36ROLE TYPEOWNER-COLLECTOR, ADMIN-SUBPUB, COLLECTED-BY-OTHER or LEGAL EARNER/SUCCESSOR — see below.
37TYPE OF RIGHTPR, MR or SR; performing right (PR) is the default on ASCAP statements.
38TERRITORYTwo-letter territory code.
41PERFORMANCE QUARTERWhen the performances happened, as qQyyyy — e.g. 2Q2025.

Source: ASCAP Domestic Electronic Statements File Format (PDF, March 2024) and ASCAP statement guides — transcribed and checked against the engine's parser on 2026-08-16.

The converter maps all 41 columns, not just these. Several populate only for certain row types: SRE rows (Serious, Recital or Educational — column 22's classification code) leave the broadcast fields empty, while day-part codes, network service and premium credits appear only on non-SRE rows. Empty cells in those columns are the spec working as designed, not a broken file.

The ROLE TYPE subtlety that changes your total

Column 36 is the one that quietly breaks naive spreadsheet sums. Rows marked COLLECTED-BY-OTHER are royalties on your works that were collected by a different party — a co-publisher or administrator — and are shown for information only. That money is not in your remittance. Sum the DOLLARS column across every row and you will "earn" more than ASCAP paid you. The converter excludes COLLECTED-BY-OTHER rows from your total, counts them separately, and tells you it did so — the exclusion is printed in the output, never silent.

Two quarters on every row

Each row carries a DISTRIBUTION YEAR and QUARTER (when ASCAP paid) and a PERFORMANCE QUARTER (when the plays occurred), the latter formatted qQyyyy — 3Q2024 means the third quarter of 2024. Because distributions trail performances, the two routinely differ; the earnings tape keeps both so you can pivot by either. Dates elsewhere in the file are MM/DD/YYYY with leading zeros dropped, which is exactly the sort of thing Excel's date guessing gets wrong on import — another reason to let a parser built to the spec do it.

What the parser actually saw

Built to ASCAP's published 41-column specification. The parser applies the ROLE TYPE rule: COLLECTED-BY-OTHER rows are excluded from your total and reported as a warning with the count, because that money was collected by another party. PERFORMANCE QUARTER arrives as 'qQyyyy' (e.g. 1Q2026) and is normalised to a date.

Parsing runs in your browser — files are never uploaded. What the tie-out does and does not prove.

Frequently asked questions

Does this work for ASCAP foreign statements too?

The 41-column layout on this page is the domestic electronic statement. ASCAP's foreign/eStatement export is a different, 26-column layout; unrecognised layouts fall back to the generic header mapper, which labels its mapping so you can check it before trusting the numbers.

Related pages

ASCAP pays the performance side of a composition. The same song’s mechanical and publisher-routed income arrive on different statements, documented here:

Background reading: how to read a royalty statement — or go straight to the converter, which takes the ASCAP zip alongside the rest.

Ready when your zip is

One normalized dataset, a six-sheet Excel earnings tape, and a clear note on anything the parser excluded or could not read. Free, in your browser.

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