Why is metadata relevant in the digital distribution of music?

The term metadata, which seems to be the name of a medicine, was coined in the 1960s to define a group of data that describes and informs about the content of a product.

In the music industry it has acquired unprecedented and decisive importance in the context of digital distribution; and its omission or poor treatment can greatly harm the producers, performers and creators of musical works and content. As you have already noticed and we have told you a couple of times in this section, nowadays being musicians and making a living from it requires a series of skills that were not needed before, and which includes data management.

Metadata we call in the world of music today the set of identifying credits that must be incorporated and appear related to any release of a single, album, video or in general any audio or audiovisual content on digital platforms. It includes, in a general sense, descriptive information and ownership or property information.

The descriptive metadata includes, for example, the title of the work, the date of publication, the art or cover, the main performers. It may also include information that is useful for inclusion in playlists historical, thematic or mood such as “Cuban rock of the 90s”, or “music for graduation parties”.

Ownership metadata includes all information related to rights holders (people with rights to that content), which may include the producer of the phonogram, the performers, authors or co-authors of each work —both as composers and as lyricists— , music producers or arrangers, if applicable. It is absolutely vital for each one to obtain the royalties that correspond to them, according to the previous agreements or pacts that they have reached between them and with the aggregators and digital distributors.

Due to current trends in music (remixes, featurings, multiversion works even for different formats) many of the songs have the additional complexity of having a plurality of authors, who have made contributions to the final work. That each artist and company incorporated in the chain of creation, production and launch is adequately compensated, can be a very complex task that, in general, is only possible through the use of sophisticated computer programs and artificial intelligence algorithms, which process the set of data that relate to each content.

An omission or error in the metadata can result in an artist or composer losing money (a little or a lot depending on the actual commercial exploitation of the musical content). The practically infinite amount of music available in diverse and global spaces on-line legal, alternative or illegal, makes everything much more complex.

The music industry has been extremely slow to establish information standards or metadata. In the first 15 years of streaming music, for example, musical composers were not included in the basic information of the tracks that swarmed through digital platforms and consequently lost a lot of money, until first-rate artists and composers like Radiohead or Taylor Swift prohibited companies like Apple Music and Spotify from using their music. For his part, Pharrell Williams threatened YouTube with a lawsuit if he did not withdraw his videos, which, despite having millions of views, were not generating dividends. Music publishers and collective management entities for authors and composers finally got their act together. The large native digital platforms for music distribution had to sit down to negotiate and modify their metadata requirements and their algorithms.

In case I have managed to convince you of the importance and absolute usefulness of the quality of the metadata associated with music that we make available on digital platforms, I leave you with a group of tips or good practices when defining, organizing and uploading the information of a musical release:

— Confirm several times that you do not have any person or institution that has been part of the musical content without being identified. For this, it is useful to take note from the beginning of the creation of the musical work of who is getting involved and the agreements reached along the way.

— Try to define the participation percentages of each of the creators involved —if they vary—, to the extent that the creative process progresses and, if possible, do not leave this decision for the launch moment.

— Make sure that you are absolutely clear about the role of each person and match it with the correct professions or responsibilities in the spreadsheets or data forms. If you have doubts, ask the platform.

– Check the correct spelling of proper names and titles of works.

– Pay attention to the way in which the information requests to be registered (for example, if the surnames should go before and after the names, if the pseudonym or artistic name has a different box, if the art is requested in .pdf, .tiff format ,.jpg).

– Make sure to place the ISWC codes in the boxes determined for it^[1]of the works. If you don't have them, find out with the copyright collective management entity that represents you.

– Place the ISRC codes in the boxes determined for this^[2] of the recordings, or in case you do not have them, make sure that the distribution platform grants one to each recording of your work made available.

I hope I have not overwhelmed you too much with this office that seems written for Information Science specialists. You can always entrust the work to someone on your team who is especially knowledgeable in this field, but you better know at least the ABC of the issues related to your career, which is what we try to offer you in this section. Until next time.

^[1] ISWC (International Standard Musical Work Code or international standard code for musical works) is a unique, permanent and recognized reference number in the world for the identification of musical works. All ISWCs begin with the letter T, followed by nine numbers and a check digit at the end (Example: T-123456789-1). ISWC license numbers are assigned by copyright management societies at the time of registration of works.

^[2] ISRC (International Standard Recording Code) is an international standard code to identify audio recordings and music videos. Each recording, version and remix of a song will have its own ISRC code. ISRC codes are granted by national agencies (depending on the country and its association with the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry IFPI), as well as officially authorized ISRC managers, such as some digital music distribution platforms.