Metadata for Artists: Protect Your Most Important Asset - Your Music
Music is the lifeblood of any artist. It’s what you wake up to, it’s your energy for creativity, it’s how you express yourself, and it’s what makes your art come alive. What if we told you that metadata could also be a massive asset for artists?
What is metadata?
Metadata is the information about your music stored in digital files or databases. Metadata contains details about your song, such as the artist name, song title, release year, genre, and a variety of other pieces of information. It’s these details that make your song more discoverable.
Why metadata is important
All that is required for music metadata to be perfect is getting the data right. Otherwise, you’ll find yourself staring at opportunities while your music gets lost amongst all other songs. That’s where your music metadata comes into play — you require it for all sorts of things.
Discovery — Metadata is one of the criteria used by search algorithms on streaming platforms, Google, and other search engines.
Money — Performing Rights, Mechanical Rights, and Collective Management Organizations cannot pay you without accurate data. So your song’s data has to be precise.
A report by The Verge stated that one of the biggest problems facing musicians today is related to their music’s metadata. One out of five royalties from streaming services goes unpaid because no one bothered checking if an artists’ recordings were correctly tagged with their song title or cover art on Spotify or Apple Music before uploading them onto these platforms. If anything, not paying attention when mastering and recording your own track could mean missing out on revenue due to credits being given incorrectly for an artist’s work as well as a compromised user experience which hinders discovery among listeners who cannot easily search through thousands upon thousands of tracks uploaded per day across various streaming platform databases without having correct tags applied beforehand!
How to use metadata for your music
When you use your aggregator to upload music, make sure that you include all possible metadata. The metadata may consist of Artist Name, Genre, Sub Genre, Featured Artist, Songwriter/Composer, Producer, Copyright Year, Explicit Content, Lyrics Language, Lyrics Publisher, Release Language, Master recording owner, Additional Contributor, Record Label and ISRC.
While it is tempting to click on ‘Distribute’ for your latest masterpiece as quickly as possible, please check and re-check to ensure it is accurate.
Once the release is up on Spotify, Apple Music, etc., check again, and if necessary, use your aggregator to update the metadata again.
I am a small independent artist. Why should I bother?
Simple — your music is your asset and grows in value over time. At this stage in your career, you may not be able to afford the membership fees for ASCAP, BMI, and SESAC or intermediary services. BUT you are doing this for the long-term, and one of your songs may blow up or end up being covered by someone else.
So do yourself a favor and invest your time in your music’s metadata.
This article originally appeared on Traxfly.
