Catalogue import

What it is

If you run a label, a publishing house or a management company, your catalogue already exists: it is just spread across a Spotify playlist, a distributor export, a folder of signed PDFs and a spreadsheet someone keeps updating. The catalogue importer brings all of it into Aden in one go.

One artist becomes one Aden team linked to your organisation. Their tracks, releases and mixes land inside that team. You can attach the contract you signed with them, and invite them by email so they can claim the workspace from that point on royalty statements, splits and reporting happen in Aden instead of over email.

Nothing is created until you have seen a dry run. The importer always shows you which artists are new, which already exist in Aden, and how many tracks each one brings, before you commit. Sorting a decade of releases is not a five-minute job, so your progress is kept in the browser: close the tab, come back tomorrow, carry on where you stopped.

Using it

Starting from your Spotify playlist

Most labels already keep one public playlist with everything they have ever released. That playlist is usually the cleanest catalogue you own. It has the ISRC, the album and the release date on every track.

1. In Spotify, open the playlist → ⋯ → Share → Copy link to playlist. The playlist has to be public: Aden reads it as an anonymous listener.
2. Go to your organisation's Import catalogue page (/org/[orgId]/import) you need to be an owner or admin of the org.
3. Paste the link and press Read playlist. Aden pulls artist, title, ISRC, album, release date and duration for every track (up to 2000), then hands you the same match → review → import steps a spreadsheet gets.

Spotify does not carry email addresses, so artists imported this way have no invite address. Add the emails later from a spreadsheet import, or invite each artist from their team page.

Starting from a spreadsheet

1. On the same page, drop in a CSV. One row per track: artist, title, ISRC, album, release date, label. Exports from your distributor or your PRO work as-is. If you would rather start clean, download the template and paste your data into it.
2. Match your columns. Aden guesses each one from its header. Anything marked with a sparkle is a guess you can change or reject. If your file covers a single artist and has no artist column, type the artist's name once and every row lands under them.

Reviewing before anything is created

The review step shows counts (new teams, matched teams, tracks, releases, playlists) and a row per artist. Per artist you can:

• Untick them to leave them out of this run. Useful when a playlist mixes in tracks you do not control. Excluded artists appear as chips you can click to bring back.
• Choose where they land: "Create a new team", or an existing team in your organisation when the name in the file does not quite match the one in Aden.

Three switches change the whole run:

• Create a team for new artists: off means artists with no matching team are left out entirely.
• Skip what is already in Aden: tracks matched by ISRC or title are left alone instead of imported twice. Leave this on if you might re-run the file.
• Invite the artists by email: every artist with an email address gets an invite to claim their team.

Then Import. You land on a summary with what was created, what failed and why. Fix the failing rows and import again. Everything already in Aden is skipped the second time.

Leaving and coming back

Everything above: the loaded catalogue, your column matches, which artists you excluded and where you sent them. Is saved in your browser as you work. Come back to the page and you get a Pick up where you left off banner with Continue or Start over. Very large catalogues are the one exception: your matches and per-artist choices still come back, but the rows themselves have to be loaded again (the page tells you when that happens).

What lands where

• An artist becomes a team named after them, linked to your organisation and visible on your Teams page. You are not added as a member of that team it is the artist's workspace.
• A track with a release date is created as released; without one it starts as an idea. Importing a released back catalogue never emails anyone's fans or triggers release automations.
• An album column groups that artist's tracks into a release, in file order.
• A playlist column builds a playlist or mix for that artist from the same rows: useful for DJ sets and compilations.

Bringing in the contracts

On the Contracts tab, upload each signed agreement and attach it to the artist's team. Aden reads the PDF and pre-fills the title and the start/end dates for you to confirm. With the contract in place, the deal, its term and its renewal live next to the music it covers.

Inviting the artists on a playlist

The Artists tab flips the playlist read around: instead of tracks, it lists every artist credited on the playlist, with their Spotify picture, follower count and how many tracks they appear on. Spotify shares no email addresses, so you type each artist's contact email, then send the invites in one click. Every invited artist gets a team (matched by name or created), the link to your organisation, and their Spotify profile already attached, so signing up is mostly done before they open the email. Artists who already have a pending invite or an Aden account are flagged instead of re-invited.

Royalty statements

The Royalty statements tab points at the statement importer. Import your catalogue first, statement lines match tracks by ISRC, then bring in the statements you receive from distributors, PROs and publishers. Aden remembers each source's column layout, so the second statement from the same distributor takes one click.

Letting an AI assistant do the sorting

If your catalogue is a pile of contracts and folders rather than one clean playlist or spreadsheet, the AI assistant tab walks you through connecting Aden to ChatGPT or Claude as a connector, and gives you a prompt to paste. The assistant reads your paperwork, structures it, shows you a dry run, and imports only after you approve. An assistant can never email your artists on its own invites it creates are saved as drafts on your Invites page for you to send.