Getting Started With A Death In The Family Author
I ran into this tool a couple years ago when I needed to generate proper music attribution for a small independent release. It wasn't perfect, but it saved me from spending hours formatting ISRC codes and splitting rights across multiple writers. Here is what you need to know before you start using it. The tool takes a song or track and breaks down the authorship credits based on metadata, lyrics analysis, and distribution data it pulls from its database. It does not guess randomly. The core logic looks at publishing splits, songwriter registries, and performance right organization data. That is where the accuracy comes from, and that is also where it falls apart. I set it up through their web dashboard. You upload your track or paste a streaming link, choose your region, and run the author extraction. It usually takes between two and five minutes depending on track length and how complicated the credits are. The output is a downloadable attribution file that you can hand to a distributor or use internally.
What it does well
The credit matching is genuinely useful for straightforward cases. If you have a single writer and a single publisher, the tool gets it nearly right every time. For tracks with co-writers, it handles up to about five credited authors without major errors. I have used it for indie pop releases, folk recordings, and even some hip-hop tracks where the beat was produced by someone other than the writer, and it correctly separated production credits from authorship in most cases. The export formats cover the main ones. CSV, XML, and a plain text version that works with DAW templates. I personally use the XML output because it plugs directly into my distribution workflow. That alone cuts about twenty minutes off each project.
Where it messes up
Here is the thing nobody tells you. The tool struggles heavily with unreleased or very new material. If the song has no distribution footprint yet, it has nothing to match against. I learned this the hard way when I had a demo with three uncredited collaborators and tried to run it through the system. It returned empty fields for about sixty percent of the writers. The workaround was to manually input the splits from our publishing agreement first, then run the tool to fill in the gaps rather than expecting it to derive everything from scratch. Another issue is regional discrepancies. The database is strongest for US and UK catalogs. If your writers are registered in smaller territories or through smaller PROs like SESAC or even independent collection societies, the match rate drops significantly. I had a track where one writer was registered with a German society and the tool completely missed their publishing split. I had to correct it manually in the metadata editor before exporting.
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A Death In The Family Author pricing and access
The free tier gives you about five track extractions per month with limited export options. The paid plans start around nine dollars a month and unlock bulk exports and API access. If you are doing more than a handful of releases a year, the paid tier is worth it. I switched to the team plan after my third release because the manual correction overhead was eating into my time more than the subscription cost. There is no desktop application. Everything runs in the browser. That is fine for occasional use but frustrating if you need to process dozens of tracks in a single session. The interface does not support batch uploads, which is a noticeable gap compared to some competitors in this space.
Practical workflow that actually saves time
Before uploading anything, gather your splits. This means having a written agreement or at least a shared document listing who owns what percentage. The tool can refine your splits, but it cannot create them out of thin air. Without that foundation, you are just feeding it guesses and hoping for accuracy. Run the tool on the first pass. Review the output carefully. Do not trust it blindly. Cross-reference any match that looks wrong by checking the writer's PRO registration manually. I check ASCAP, BMI, or the relevant society's database depending on the region. Then correct before exporting. The correction step usually takes about ten minutes for a standard single or track with up to four writers. If you skip it, you risk submitting incorrect credits to your distributor, and fixing those after submission is a much longer process.
When to skip it entirely
If you are dealing with traditional compositions where the authorship is well documented and publicly registered, sometimes it is faster to just fill out the credits yourself. The tool shines brightest in gray areas where information is fragmented or incomplete. For clean cases, you might spend more time verifying its output than writing the credits from memory. Also, if your music falls into genres with heavy sampling or interpolation, the tool does not handle that well. It will credit the original sample authors if they are in the database, but it will not automatically calculate the clearance implications or flag potential conflicts. I had a jazz fusion track where a hidden sample showed up in the credits and I had no idea why until I traced it back. That was a warning for future projects. The current version has improved from its early releases. The accuracy has gotten better for mainstream catalog, and the export stability is solid now. But it still has blind spots. Treat it as a helper, not an authority. The final credits are your responsibility regardless of what the tool outputs.
