How do groups work?
- For a user to see a track, the user and the track need to share a group.
- A user must have at least one group but could be in many groups. By default, upon signup users are automatically added to the “Main Catalogue” group.
- For tracks, groups need to be applied at the release level, or at the label level. Groups cannot be applied directly to individual tracks.
- Groups cascade from releases & labels onto all tracks beneath them (all main + alt versions).
Types of group
There are four categories of group: tier, client, location and industry. They function identically (see above) but help you distinguish quite different use cases.
Examples of each are:
- Tier — Gold / Silver / Bronze …and/or… Commercial / Noncommercial
- Client — BBC / Netflix / Apple
- Location — France / Germany / Croatia / Rest of world / Worldwide (location groups can also carry a Country)
- Industry — Broadcast / Advertising / Games
The “Main Catalogue” group
Every new library is created with a “Main Catalogue” group. Unauthenticated users see tracks and releases that are in this group, as long as Access to main-catalogue group is enabled for unauthenticated users under Settings > Access.
By default:
- All users are added to “Main Catalogue” upon signup
- All releases are added to “Main Catalogue” upon ingestion
This flow works for the vast majority of use cases but may be modified if more subtle access privileges are needed.
Create a group
- Log into the admin
- Navigate to Clients > Groups
- Click the + icon
- Enter a Name, choose a Category and, for location groups, a Country
- Save
Assign groups
- To a user: open the user under Clients > Users and add the group in the Groups field. New signups can be given default groups under Settings > Access; see Pre-approved signups.
- To a release: open the release under Catalog > Releases and add the group in its Groups field. All of its tracks inherit it.
- To a label: open the label under Catalog > Labels and add the group in its Groups field. Every release on the label inherits it.
Groups can also be set in bulk at ingestion with the LIBRARY: Groups and ALBUM: Groups columns; see Prepare your metadata.