metadata and you!
You must be thinking what is metadata? That sounds like something that’s part of the scientific method, why must I, as a musician and songwriter, know what it means.
You know when you look at song and you see the title of the song and all the artists listed. In essence that is metadata!
Metadata is more than just the title and artists. Metadata helps Performing Rights Organizations track performance royalties, helps streamline and direct searches on platforms such as Tidal, Apple Music, and Spotify, helps properly list all people that provided their services for the track, helps music supervisors and music publishers find songwriters and their corresponding publishing companies/labels, and much more.
There are different types of metadata:
There is the high level metadata that the consumer sees at the surface. These are things such as the title, artist(s), and potentially the songwriters. Although this seems self explanatory, many of the digital service providers have specific guides on how these need to be formatted. For example, the Apple Metadata Style Guide. This provides insight into how artists need to format their music so there are no violations. However, the system is not standardize, so when formatting your metadata you need to keep in mind the specific needs of the digital service provider you are working with to maximize your success.
Metadata also delves below the surface of just the basic song information. This includes things such as the song writer splits and their P.R.O. affiliation, ownership percentages for the sound recording vs. the composition, publisher/record label information, ISRC codes, BPM, and other pertinent information regarding the track. This aspect of the metadata is vital for those who are on the track to get paid proper royalties.
Let’s look at an example of why it is important to have all the songwriter’s properly labeled. Picture you want to record a copy/cover of “Old Town Road” By Lil Nas X. You can either reach out to all the songwriters/publishers to get a mechanical license, go through an agency such as Harry Fox Agency, or under Title 17 Section 115 you can also acquire a “compulsory” mechanical license without express permission at the statutory rate (the current statutory rate is 9.1¢ for a composition five minutes or less, or 1.75¢ per minute for songs over five minutes). If you were trying to find the necessary licensor and/or publisher information in the song and it didn’t list it this would be a very challenging process to acquire a mechanical license. This may not be as big of an issue for a superstar like Lil Nas X, but if you found a song you wanted to cover of a less known band/artist without the proper metadata it can get tricky.
Vice versa, if you are a songwriter and your song blows up and tons of people are covering it and you are not listed as a songwriter on the track you will not receive the correct mechanical royalties you are owed.
Another form of metadata surrounds how music is recommended to the consumer. This is vital in todays digital age of streaming and digital downloads. This is generally a proprietary system created and utilized by the digital service providers such as Spotify, Tidal, Pandora, or Apple Music. It is done using a mix of machine learning AI algorithms and human curation. However, the more accurate and complete your metadata is, the more efficient this recommendation process will be.
Distributors, such as Tunecore and CD Baby, make it necessary to fill out basic metadata, but it can still be a complicate process making sure everything is up to snuff. So, make sure you are reviewing and proofing all of your metadata.
Provided is a small check list of key metadata you should keep track of as you review your music:
Song Title - the title of the song
Artist - the main artist on the track
Songwriters and P.R.O. affiliation - it is vital to list all the producers and songwriters on the track. This is not only a necessary means so royalties can be correctly paid out to those who worked on the track, but is a helpful way for music companies to identify song writers they may want to work with.
Sound Recording/Composition Splits - What are the percentage splits between all of the songwriters for both the sound recording and the composition. This come into play when trying to license your music to music supervisors in sync.
Genre - If you can provide this, definitely do so.
ISRC Code - All sound recordings are assigned an ISRC code. Your distributor will be able to provide this to you and it is important if you want to collect royalties.
Comments - This is a place to list the entity that controls the rights to track. This is usually the music publisher or record label. This helps music supervisors and other artists know who to contact if they want to be issued a license, sync, mechanical or any other kind.