How to add metadata to music: ultimate guide

Metadata is the unsung hero of the digital music world, quietly working behind the scenes to make sure your work is discoverable, properly credited, and fairly compensated. In an era where millions of recordings are at our fingertips, accurate and comprehensive metadata has become the backbone of the music industry.

Focused, correctly-formatted, up-to-date music metadata is vitally important to your success as a professional artist, since it plays a role in making sure royalties reach the right creators. In order for it to do its job, music metadata has to be correctly managed.

Music metadata for professional artists

Most creators think of music metadata in terms of how it will affect their discoverability on streaming platforms like Spotify or Apple Music, but this is only the tip of the iceberg. The real purpose of metadata is to facilitate your ability to accurately define your musical works and recordings, and pinpoint the role and therefore the attribution and remuneration owed to everyone that contributed to the creations. Music metadata is actually about communicating important details to other professionals in the music business. By preparing your music metadata correctly early in the process, you give yourself a fighting chance to get the opportunities you want, and get paid fairly. 

Music metadata: the building blocks of your music catalog

Metadata provides the fundamental building blocks of an accurate and organized music catalog, and is the key to effectively presenting your work when seeking recording contracts or synch opportunities. It’s the foundation for any artist to be able to register their music or distribute their music, and ultimately earn the money they are legally owed in a variety of settings.

If you are feeling overwhelmed and looking for an easy way out, you may be tempted to embed your metadata automatically. This is a big mistake. While it’s possible to embed IRSCs using various tools, the type of metadata you truly need is much more complex. 

In fact, automatically embedding metadata is a very common error and the most important one to avoid. Why? Because basic metadata is not specific enough to truly identify your recordings as uniquely yours in all situations. Your collaborators, music engineers, for example, also need to be recognized for their contribution to the production of your music. This can be done easily when using the MusicTeam® catalog management tool. It is a fair and professional way to make sure everyone is recognized for their contribution. Remember, it is important to acknowledge the contribution of all the music professionals who played a part in bringing your work to life, including sound and mixing engineers.  

On MusicTeam®, there’s no limit to how many contributors you can credit, and with the right tool to streamline the process, it doesn’t have to be a hassle.

Basic metadata usually comprises the following information:

• Title – The official name of the recording or album;
• Artist name – The primary performer(s) of the recording;
• Songwriter(s) – Legal names of all who composed the musical composition and wrote lyrics;
• Credits for the musical work, including the lyrics, sound recording, instruments, bpm, genre, acoustic characteristics, recording location and year of fixation. 

It looks like this:

But there’s much more to add if you want to be fully prepared to share your work professionally in the industry. There is a difference between the metadata that is displayed on DSPs/outlets; credits; and metadata like unique identifiers used by the industry in the back-end to identify rightsholders and match these recordings to rightsholders.

Your music metadata should work on your behalf

Professional music metadata will work for you even while you are busy creating new music. Let’s take a closer look at how to make this happen.

Most music creators, artists and producers can use a service like SkyTracks® to collaborate and a DAW to compose and produce their music. They will then fix the sound to a digital or physical support and keep it on their hard drive once the mixing and mastering is completed, once it becomes a recording. But this means that their files are neither organized, nor correctly identified via accurate metadata. These files will not be working for them.

Files (also called recordings, and frequently though unofficially referred to as ‘tracks’) that are stored in various locations without metadata are difficult to locate, unprepared for licensing, and in some cases even incomplete as tools to promote your work. To gain exposure and earn royalties, musicians need to use the right tools to be organized and able to present their musical compositions and master recordings in a professional manner.

How to organize your music and store metadata

A comprehensive professional music catalog will allow you to organize and link the various elements of your metadata and files to one another, making it the best way to be prepared for licensing and making your music commercially available. Let’s face it, a legal name won’t accomplish much on its own; it needs to be linked to an IPI and an ISWC. And for maximum impact, each ISWC needs to be linked with the corresponding ISRC. PROs need accurate, detailed information so they can pay you what you are owed.

When you use the MusicTeam® free music catalog service, you are guided every step of the way to include and link music metadata properly. Right from the start, before sharing your work, you will be able to correctly configure your metadata and access your accurately sorted and fully prepped work accordingly. In addition to making a recording to your own highest standards, you’ll be preparing your file for the music industry, giving you a greater chance of recognition and success. Getting it right from the start means you can move forward with new creative endeavors without regrets, confident that your completed work is ready to be heard.

Attributing and linking the right metadata to each asset is a complex task that can be facilitated by a music catalog management service like MusicTeam®.

How to make your files accessible and coherent across all platforms

Managing your music metadata accurately involves keeping your audio files in one place accompanied with their music assets. Properly organized and managed metadata makes your music accessible exactly when, where, and how you need it—whether you’re reaching out to promotion companies to boost your reach, approaching record labels, or negotiating distribution agreements.

Creators and artists should manage their music metadata and catalogs effectively because, together with their audio files, these assets hold significant value. When your metadata and audio are perfectly aligned, artists can use these assets to negotiate better terms and open up new opportunities in the industry. When they are not coherent, it opens the door to inaccurate attribution and inadequate remuneration.

In other words, metadata is not just about defining your music to listeners according to genre, mood or cultural relevancy. Music metadata is a key tool for defining everyone that contributed to the creation and asserting your rights as they relate to collecting royalties, and for being compensated appropriately according to current industry standards.

Accurate royalty payments, every time

It’s all about aligning information across multiple platforms and making key metadata accessible by other music professionals. Let’s look at an example:

Streaming platforms don’t directly pay out royalties to artists and creators. Part of your royalties are paid by your label or your distributor, whereas the rest is paid to your PROs and CMOs around the world so that they can pay their members. In Canada, this would include SOCAN, SOCAN RR, CMRRA, Artisti, ACTRA RACS and Soproq. In the United States, this would be ASCAP, BMI, SESAC, The MLC and SoundExchange. In the UK, this would be IMRO,PRS or PPL. How can these CMOs know whom to pay, and how much? The only way is through accurate, detailed metadata.

But most artists don’t realize that just adding their name and other general information is not enough. CMOs need unique music identifiers for musical works and recordings, like ISRCs and ISWCs, and for artists, like ISNIs and IPIs. They need this information for all parties involved in the production or the file, including composer, engineers, producers, performing artists,  etc. They also need to know whether each person involved is represented by a label and publisher (and remember, individual contracts may differ) or distributor, and they need to be able to identify whether each person is currently a member of that PRO. All of these elements contribute to the accurate payment of royalties.

In short, music metadata is much more than what you see in text boxes on a file as pictured above. Take a look at the example below! When you or your distributor attribute metadata to your recording in the form of a detailed xml file, CMOs can easily access the information they need to proceed to accurate payouts. As a creator and artist, you may not ever come across these types of file, but that’s how the industry operates, and complete metadata is the only way to ensure proper recognition and royalty attribution. MusicTeam® is here to help you manage your entire catalog and its metadata and deliver it where it needs to be. Whether it’s for distribution, work registrations, or recording registrations we’ll handle these complex data files so you can focus on creating.

Music metadata: getting it right

The music industry is complex and rules can be nuanced and difficult to understand. To make sure you haven’t overlooked any details, which could lead you to lose money in the form of black box royalties, use MusicTeam®. Our platform helps you navigate the complexity by guiding you through checkpoints that remind you of what type of metadata is missing and what you should include to give yourself the best chance at success.

Growing your career as an independent artist takes more than just great musicianship—it requires a basic understanding of the inner workings of the digital value chain in the music industry. Properly managing your music metadata according to industry standards is a crucial step to ensure your work gets the recognition and compensation it deserves.

Providing inaccurate music metadata or failing to include important elements of metadata can disrupt proper attribution, search results, and more importantly royalty payments. The easiest way to keep your metadata up to date, accurate and accessible – and to make sure that it matches across all platforms – is with the help of a music catalog management tool. Follow these steps:

Step 1: Recognise the importance of music metadata.

Step 2: Acknowledge that it is complex.

Step 3: Use MusicTeam® to help you get it right.

MusicTeam® is here to help you

Let us help you simplify the demands of music catalog management, music registrations, digital music distribution, and metadata sharing. At MusicTeam®, we streamline the entire process and help you get your music heard by a global audience. 

Initiatives like the UK Industry Agreement on Music Streaming Metadata, in which participants (including MusicTeam®) in tandem with the IPO make a positive commitment to improve metadata on music streaming services in the UK, are just one example of the growing global awareness of how important music metadata truly is.

It’s our goal to get you where you want to be. Use our free music catalog management tool, and make your metadata a valuable asset that helps you collect what’s rightfully yours. Sign up with MusicTeam® today for customized metadata management support.