Blog
Mar 18, 2021
Metadata for Musicians
Tuesday, November 4, 2014
Metadata is all that information that describes and identifies your music. In some cases, metadata is text – composer and musicians’ names, dates, genre. In other cases, it’s numeric data such as UPC barcodes and ISRC codes. As the music landscape becomes more digital and global, proper metadata is an increasingly important part of your release workflow.
At the 2014 Future of Music Policy Summit (October 27-28, 2014), we organized two lunchtime workshops to focus on Metadata for Musicians. The goal of these workshops was to provide musicians, managers and indie labels with a better understanding of how music and data work together to power discovery, attribution and payment. Panelists from mastering studios, digital aggregators, performance rights organizations, labels and digital retailers discussed the current digital music ecosystem, and described what data is important, how to get it, where and when to embed it, and what musicians need to keep track of.
We approached this topic in a linear fashion. During the first session, we covered all the activites that happen prior to the music’s release date, including the data artists need to keep track of in the studio, registering repertoire, obtaining ISRC codes and UPC barcodes, and preparing artwork and data for aggregators.
Takeaways from Monday’s conversation:
- Metadata is increasingly important. It underlies discoverability, proper attribution and payment across a growing number of platforms
- Ultimately, it is the artists’ responsibility to document creators and contributions
- Be consistent with spelling, diligent with data entry
On day 2, we moved into post-release environment and talked about the data that digital service providers use to identify downloads/streams and properly pay rightsholders. We examined how core data, such as credits, lyrics, and artist bios, is disseminated to dozens of platforms via APIs. And we heard from video and cue sheet experts about the metadata that is fundamental to new digital ecosystems.
Takeaways from Tuesday:
- Your music + data is frequently disseminated from core sources and displayed on multiple platforms
- Careful attention to your metadata before you release your music is key
Musicians that take the time to document song data, acquire ISRCs, get a barcode, register copyrights, then submit various bits of data to your PRO, SoundExchange, SoundScan, Gracenote and Rovi are head and shoulders above many, many artists. While taking these steps does not guarantee music success, NOT taking them could reduce your chances of your music being discovered, and for you as creator or label to reap the benefits.
Postscript: here is an excellent blog post from Mike Petillo from Airshow Mastering, one of the panelists during Monday’s session.