Performing rights organisations in the US may sometimes take potshots at one another, but collaboration is in the air this week. It focuses on the Songview database of metadata for musical works. That means the database will swell to more than 38m works in total. Which, at a time when the US Copyright Office has been looking into “licensing efficiencies” in the PROs sector, is timely. Significantly, the first statement in the announcement came from a Congressman, Scott Fitzgerald, who described the news as “a giant step towards transparency” after “music ownership data has for years been fragmented and opaque, compounded by continued growth in the performing rights industry”.