The Zinfonia ecosystem was built with a singular focus: bridging the gap between publishers and customers. In today’s global market, direct and clear communication is the backbone of successful transactions.
While email is a familiar tool, it often falls short in a professional transactional environment. Here are the primary challenges that can hinder your workflow:
Security Filters & Spam: Modern security layers are essential but aggressive. Important messages—especially those with PDF attachments—are frequently miscategorized or stripped of content without the sender ever knowing.
Fragmented Conversations: Email is inherently private. In business, multiple team members often need access to a transaction. Relying on individual inboxes creates silos and risks missing critical updates if a specific contact is away.
Inbox Overload: High volumes of daily mail make it nearly impossible to prioritize effectively. Vital information can easily be buried under a mountain of unrelated notifications.
Simply enter your search term and click the MESSAGES button to instantly filter your history.
Any order containing that specific phrase will be displayed. Please note that while searches are not case-sensitive, they do require an exact match of the words or phrases used.
Note: This button is not visible if the work selected is published by you or if logistics modules have been deployed on this transaction. B2B orders will only work if you have a Zinfonia login using the SAME email that is used to receive all Zinfonia orders.
Upon selecting the button, you will be prompted to enter the delivery address. This defaults to your own address, but you can update these details if you wish to send the parts directly to the customer.
You can also enter a B2B message which is sent along with the request to the original publisher.
You can also include a custom B2B message for the publisher. Next, you will be prompted to confirm the required parts, which is based on the customer’s original request. You can add new instruments and specify the delivery date at this stage.
Note: Empty instrument values will be ignored by the publisher.
Click the SAVE button to create the B2B request. The Zinfonia ID for the B2B request will appear as a Private Note:
To make this transition, ensure you are using the most recent versions of HLMSW and ancillary systems (current build: 8.3.2.6). With the update installed, we recommend two changes:
Please contact us if you need assistance with this transition.
New UIC Functions
The UIC Toolbox has been updated to include new search capabilities, including a reverse UIC search (to locate UICs by number) and a “quick-UIC locator” based on common system usage.
This week, Zinfonia is excited to announce the launch of our new Advanced Search Tools, designed to help our users explore the vast Zinfonia catalogue with greater precision than ever before. Whether you are looking for specific instrumentation, thematic genres, or works based on composer origins, our latest updates make finding the perfect piece easier and more intuitive.
and in Zinfonia by clicking the same option (which is only available if the user has the Zinfonia Export Mode option enabled in the user account options).
Discover Music Using Our New Tag System
Because composer and title searches only go so far, we have introduced a comprehensive Tag system. This allows both publishers and users to categorize pieces, helping everyone locate music based on specific predefined genres.
While some tags are applied automatically by our systems, publishers AND users can now contribute by assigning relevant tags to specific works. Publishers can also remove any system assigned tags on their works. Users can tag works for their own use, or if they are part of a Zinfonia Group with Edit facilities, they can apply tags which are available to the entire group.
Feel free to let us know if there are some new tags you would like to see in Zinfonia.
Search by Instrumentation with the UIC
When the Universal Instrumentation Code (UIC) was created, one of its prime objectives was to give users the ability to easily search listings based on the instrumentation without needing to worry about language or format.
UIC searches can search for locate works by using a specific set of search parameters against instrumental groups :
In this example, the search will include all types of flutes (eg. flute, piccolo and alto flute).
We also now provide a search to find works with the SAME instrumentation using the option in the UIC screen here:
Of course these searches require the provision of your catalogue in UIC format which is recommended because UICs are also used in the order process when presenting users with a list of instruments to select (otherwise a generic instrument request is provided with no reference to the actual parts in the set).
UICs can be added to any existing title via the Work Edit screen, and bulk upload of UICs is also available. Please contact us for details.
Additional Search Enhancements
We have also expanded our search filters to include:
Difficulty Search: While previously available, difficulty levels (Easy, Moderate, Hard) are now searchable, making it easier to find repertoire accessible for non-professional performances.
Country Search: You can now locate titles based on a composer’s place of birth, death, or nationality, leveraging our meticulously maintained composer database.
Important Note for Content Owners
To get the most out of these new features, we encourage content owners to ensure their listings are updated with this data—especially for Tags, Difficulty, and UIC. If you need assistance updating your catalogue or want to suggest new tags, please reach out to us.
We are committed to making Zinfonia the most powerful tool for your music discovery needs. Try out the new Advanced Search options today and explore our catalogue in a whole new way.
Quickly build a customized list of regions you regularly communicate with by clicking any existing time or using the ADD/CLEAR buttons. (Remember to hit SAVE to ensure the system uses your modifications every time.)
The system uses the industry-standard TZ database of time zones, with more details available here.
There is also a special time zone option called local that uses your IP address to display your linked time zone wherever you may be.
Find the Perfect Meeting Time – Instantly
Use the SHARE button to generate a URL of your clock configuration that can be accessed by anyone, which is a great way to find mutually agreeable times for a meeting.
Zinfonia has always been focused on connecting performers, librarians, and academics with publishers and their distributors. A major challenge in this mission has been the vast linguistic diversity of our users: our statistics show that our 102k Zinfonia users natively speak 40 different languages. This diversity often meant that responding to some customer inquiries required time-consuming, external translation.
Our new system leverages Google AI to translate incoming messages upon request, as well as the messages you write in your native language. By integrating these powerful translation capabilities directly into InCopyright, we aim to save you significant time previously spent copying and pasting text into separate tools.
A Note on Accuracy: While these translation tools are improving daily, we must advise that the results may not always be perfectly accurate. We recommend using them with a degree of caution.
How to Translate an Incoming Message
A new translation option will automatically appear whenever the system detects that the customer’s primary language differs from your own.
Note: Translations are temporary and are not visible to your customer.
How to translate an Outgoing Message
When sending messages, you can use the option here:
Importantly, using internal messages also avoids the common issues associated with modern email transmission, particularly the frequent blocking of attachments (such as PDFs) by many email systems.
Top 10 Native Languages on Zinfonia
For insight into our most frequently used languages, here are the top 10 native languages spoken by Zinfonia users:
ShipStation streamlines logistics, reduces shipping costs, and automates tasks through the integration with hundreds of platforms, carriers, and marketplaces to import orders, manage inventory, generate shipping labels in batches, and track shipments from a single dashboard and is available for businesses in the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, France, and Germany.
Today is a momentous day for the Zinfonia team: we have officially passed the milestone of 100000 registered accounts. That so many individuals have navigated the registration process to explore what we offer is truly humbling, and I want to mark this occasion by reflecting on our journey.
The concept of Zinfonia was first introduced at a meeting of music publishers at the Frankfurt Musikmesse back in April 2009. At this time, most of the major rental libraries of the world were managed by a piece of software I wrote when I left my role of Head of Promotion at the Sydney office of Boosey & Hawkes in 1998 called HLMSW. I had the idea that combining the data of all of these individual systems would create a resource unlike any other. Following the meeting, a new company called Zinfonia Holdings was created as a partnership between my Company (BTM Innovation) and 4 of the biggest names in Classical music at the time: Boosey and Hawkes, Music Sales (now Wise Music), Peters Edition, and the Universal Music Group. In 2011, at the Major Orchestral Librarian Conference in London we announced the launch of the Zinfonia service which quickly grew to be a central player in the delivery of all rental materials worldwide.
We are proud of many aspects of our operation, which is borne out of the complexity of creating a cohesive platform from so many different sources to fulfil orders in so many countries. For example, every single composer in our database has been manually curated to maintain an accurate and comprehensive resource which is under constant revision. I created the now ubiquitous system for instrument identification (called the Universal Instrumentation Code or UIC) and recently introduced a similarly free to use distribution platform called Connect in Copyright (CinC) which provides important common standards for sheet music distribution, especially in this digital age.
We have also responded to many thousands of questions from musicians and librarians to assist them in their journey, and we take pride in the speed and personal nature of these responses (no AI bots here!).
The Zinfonia team is pretty small – just three of us make the system function. While I have undertaken all of the software development myself, the platform would not exist without the support of two invaluable colleagues. Ulrich Steffen Eck has been with me on the Zinfonia project from the very first day, and it has been a wonderfully rich collaboration. Steffen has many talents – he is a musicologist, a polyglot (an essential skill for international publisher and customer assistance), a librarian with vast experience and has committed a large slab of his working life to this project. Joanne Hayley, my partner in life but also the manager of everything administrative and financial keeps everything running smoothly. Zinfonia would not exist without these two and it has been such a joy to have such dedicated and talented colleagues and friends.
There have been many others along the way that have contributed to Zinfonia in all its forms that I would like to mention including Kent Hoskins, Janis Susskind and Bevis Hungate (Boosey & Hawkes), Bob Wise, James Rushton, Chris Butler, Adam Harvey (Wise Music), Simon Baker, Cristiano Ostinelli, Carlo Dalla Vecchia, Simone Fuligno (Universal Music Group), Nicholas Riddle (Peters Edition), Matthew Freeman, Sonya Kim, Melinda Parent (for the Zinfonia logo) and all of our translators including Simone Fuligno, Alessandro Olto, Anna Czajka, Jose Ferrer, Marin Fauvel and Denis Feletto.
Finally, I want to thank all our publishing partners and our customers, many of whom have contributed in so many ways to make the platform better every day. We look forward to continuing to serve you into the future.
Peter Grimshaw December 15, 2025.
Posted inZinfonia|Comments Off on 100k of Zinfonia Users
This system is an ideal online alternative for companies currently using legacy library systems. It’s designed to work in close conjunction with all our other software products and services, including Zinfonia, HLMSW, Chordata, and the UIC.
While access to these services will incur additional fees in the future, no additional charges will apply during this preview period.
Ready to see it in action? Contact us today to request a demo!
Enhanced API for Direct Data Access
We’re in the process of updating our systems to provide direct access to your data (works, sets, and transactions) through a user-friendly API. This will enable you to easily update and retrieve data to power your external systems.
Please note: APIs are only available to publishers with an active subscription that includes the logistics module. More information is available upon request.
Tags: A dynamic taxonomy of descriptive words that can be assigned by publishers, end-users, or programmatically by our systems. This allows for diverse repertoire searches based on: • Period/Era • Form and Genre • Standard Concert Types • Regions, Peoples and Cultures • Schools and Movements • Moods and Characters
Difficulty: Filter searches by “Easy,” “Moderate,” or “Hard.”
Composer Nationality: Restrict searches based on a composer’s place of birth, death, or life.
UIC (Universal Instrumentation Code): Enable repertoire searches based on available parts, allowing you to find works for specific instrumental groups or those with similar instrumentations.
ISWC Integration for Global Publishing
All of our software services are implementing the storage and searching of works based on the ISWC (International Standard Musical Work Code). This globally recognized system offers numerous benefits for publishing and is crucial for Performance Rights Organizations to accurately identify copyrighted works internationally. Integrating ISWC into our reporting will significantly improve the correct allocation of revenue in most situations.
Need help getting your ISWC into Zinfonia? Let us know!
Managing the international distribution rules for your catalogues on Zinfonia presents a real challenge due to the intricate and ever-changing nature of copyright assignments on a global scale.
When you visit this page, you can use the options at the top of the screen to filter long lists of rules, and as soon as you click on any item, the rules are displayed by country in four geographic areas: Europe, The Americas, Asia/Oceania and Africa. On desktops you can hover over a country to find it’s full name.
You will also have some or all of these options:
View: will display ALL titles with that rules in the Zinfonia Catalogue
Export: provides you with a CSV export of the values
New: will create a new CinC entry
Edit: will edit an existing entry
Replace: provides a quick and convenient way to replace one distributor with another
Copy: which will create a NEW CinC entry which is an exact copyh of an existing rule
Editing a CinC
When you have clicked on the Edit, New or Copy buttons you are presented with a list of ALL Countries which may or may not have Authorities assigned.
To change the authority:
First make sure the name and permissions and Active status are correct.
Select the country or countries so that it turns green. You can also use the Quick buttons like the EU button in Europe to select specific groups of countries. You can also select all countries by the authority name by selecting it from the list and press the BLUE select all button. (the red button will clear all selections, and the YELLOW eye to the left of the Authority will give you more information about the Authority). TIP: if you are working with a complicated set of countries, you can select the countries and use the burnt orange button to copy the codes into the clipboard and use the purple PASTE button on the right of the screen to select these countries again and again.
Once you have selected the countries, locate the authority you want to assign from the drop down list and press the green UPDATE button or press the red CLEAR button to remove any Authority from the selected countries.
The first step is to locate the CinC code rules that need to be fixed. There are a few ways you can accomplish this.
If you know the CinC rule name or the CinC Authority ID, enter it in the SEARCH TEXT box at the top of the Connect in Copyright screen
If you do not know the code, locate any piece which you know uses this rule in the Zinfonia Catalog section, and display the information screen, click on the distribution rules section and then the Eye button to view the rule.
Once the correct record is displayed you can edit an discussed previously
How to change the CinC rule for a publisher.
Locate the Publisher you want to Edit the Publisher section
Click on the EDIT icon in the top right corner
Make changes in the Connect in Copyright section to select a different CinC rule for both small right and grand right usage.
Using your CinC Data in Other Applications
A read-only version of the CinC data is available from a public repository located here: https://cinc.zinfonia.com/
This repository is updated with any changes daily.
Need Help?
Feel free to request help or guidance with any aspect of the CinC at help@zinfonia.com
