What is music metadata?

Music metadata is data embedded in your songs and albums that gets used to display information on digital streaming platforms (DSPs), and make collection of royalties easier.

Music metadata includes:

• Song title, artist name, album title, and release date.
• Genre, tempo, mood/style, and similar artists.
• Songwriters, record label, copyright owner, and publisher.

Four reasons to include metadata

Music metadata is vital to protecting and owning your music, as well as conducting business and opening new doors within the music industry.

Get paid fast and accurately

Without providing DSPs information like who the songwriters are, who is your publisher, and what are the publishing splits, it can be near impossible to get money earned in the right hands. Make sure that every name and label is spelled correctly so that your collaborators get paid too.

Discover your fanbase

In the streaming era, curated playlists create more first time listeners than any other promotion method. By tagging your music with qualitative data, such as genre and tempo, curators can search for the type of music they need with accuracy and efficiency.

Land more placements

Movies and commercials also have specific needs, and they pay well for it. Music supervisors especially want to know who you sound like and what the arrangement is.The more data you provide about your music, the easier it is to get placements in media.

Avoid rejection from DSPs

Apple Music and Spotify are becoming more vigilant about the quality of metadata, meaning your music could get removed if there isn’t adequate information. Specifying that your song is an original composition or a cover song ensures that there is no copyright infringement.

How do I add music metadata?

While you can include metadata yourself by tagging the original audio file, which is still good practice, DSPs require that metadata be manually entered when submitting for distribution. CD Baby walks you through the data entry process, making sure that all information is correct and thorough.

What does good metadata look like?

Throughout the music industry, metadata is met with frustration because there has yet to be a shared standard. Here are some points to consider that will make DSPs happy.

Capitalization

Following standard capitalization practices for release titles is generally the safest way to avoid problems with digital streaming platforms.

Consistency

Keeping your metadata consistent within your release and across instances in which you describe or provide data about your music will ensure it’s searchable and credible.

Features

The issue of how to properly credit features, and more-so producers, has yet to be resolved. Mass consensus yields that you should credit your collaborators as a separate artist, and not within the title of your song.

The power of good metadata management

CD Baby has been collecting robust metadata from our artists for over 25 years and is a preferred distribution partner of major platforms like Spotify and Apple Music. That ensures the music we deliver to our partners has a low “rejection rate” due to copyright issues, publishing discrepancies, or outright missing info. Being proactive about gathering data that’s not yet the industry standard has kept us ahead of the curve and ready to deliver.

Ready to get started on your next release? CD Baby offers distribution to over 150 streaming platforms worldwide at affordable pay-per-release rates.