Music Metadata Made Easy: why it matters & how to get it right

You spend countless hours writing, recording and perfecting your music - but if your metadata is wrong, you might be wasting your time…

While most independent artists treat metadata as an afterthought (at best), copying-and-pasting artist names and guessing at genres, making sure your metadata is accurate is one of the most important parts of releasing your own music.

Why?

Because incorrect metadata has a real, tangible impact on the growth of your music career. It can result in lost royalties, lost discoverability, and make your catalogue difficult for your fans to find.

It’s not glamorous, but metadata really does matter. Getting it right takes a few moments of your time, but can yield dividends.

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What is music metadata?

Metadata is the largely-invisible information that’s embedded into your releases to identify the recording, the artists, the rights, and various other important details.

Your audio file contains the actual music, but it’s your metadata that contains all the information about that music, including the fact that it's yours. 

Metadata is input at the point of distribution and travels with your audio file on its journey across the internet, including to streaming platforms like Spotify, Apple Music and Amazon Music, as well as to social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram and TikTok and royalty collection databases (like PROs, who collect your publishing royalties on your behalf).

While platforms differ in terms of which bits of metadata they show to the public, your metadata is used in the backend of most platforms for categorisation, monetisation and other purposes.

Key pieces of metadata include:

• Track title, release title, artist name
• Songwriter, composer, performer and producer credits
• Featured artist credits
• UPC and ISRC
• Genre and subgenre
• Release date
• Copyright and publishing information
• Language of lyrics
• Explicit content, samples used, or AI used flags

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Why does metadata matter?

Royalty Collection

Metadata connects your streams/downloads to actual payouts to you, as the artist.

Every stream, download or radio play generates royalties - and it’s the metadata that connects those earnings to the right payee.

Multiple streams of royalty revenue rely on metadata to pay rightsholders properly:

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Performance Royalties

PROs (Performing Rights Organisations) like ASCAP, BMI or PRS use songwriter and publisher metadata to assign royalties earned by public performance of your music (including public streams).

Mechanical Royalties

Royalties earned by reproductions (e.g. downloads) and interactive streams are collected and paid out based on songwriter and publisher ownership percentages in your metadata.

Neighbouring Rights

CMOs (Collective Management Organisations) like PPL and SoundExchange use performer metadata to assign royalties earned by your music being played on radio stations or in public venues.

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Estimates suggest that there could be as much as $2.5 billion in unclaimed royalties around the world. If your metadata is inaccurate or inconsistent across your catalogue, part of that unclaimed revenue could be rightfully yours - but can’t be claimed easily if your metadata isn’t right.

To claim all the revenue your music has earned, you need to make sure that the following metadata is accurate:

• Songwriter legal names and PRO affiliations
• Publisher names and IPI numbers
• Ownership percentages (splits) must total 100%
• Performer credits
• Spelling of all names across all releases must be consistent

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Music Discovery & Playlisting

If your metadata is wrong, you could be missing out on tonnes of discoverability.

Streaming platforms use your metadata to categorise your music, determining which playlists, radio stations, and ‘discovery’ algorithms your releases should appear in. 

Logically, the genre and subgenre information you provide influences where your music appears. If you’re making indie rock music but you accidentally choose lo-fi as your primary genre, your music isn’t going to be found by fans of indie rock.

Alongside genre, the information your metadata provides platforms about primary artists, featured artists, and composers/producers will also help to influence where your music is shown, particularly when you consider how Spotify creates ‘Artist Radios’ that feature ‘similar’ artists.

If you’re pitching your music to editorial playlist teams, metadata matters just as much as your pitch. Curators usually have particular genres they focus on and will filter pitch submissions based on the genre metadata of tracks - if yours is inaccurate, your pitch will get in front of the wrong editorial team and won’t get featured.

To maximise discoverability opportunities, you need to make sure the following metadata is accurate:

• Genre and subgenre (don’t just choose a ‘popular’ genre if it’s not reflective of your music)
• Main primary, primary and featured artists are credited accurately 
• Lyric language tags
• Release date

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Music Metadata Mistakes That Cost You Money

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Inconsistency

Spelling artist names differently (including inconsistent capitalisation) across releases can mean your catalogue is split across multiple artist profiles on streaming platforms, making it difficult for fans to engage properly with your music.

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Missing or Incorrect Songwriter Credits

Leaving songwriter fields blank or spelling legal names wrong makes it difficult (or impossible) for PROs and mechanical rights organisations to match revenue from your music with you as a payee, meaning you’re missing out on royalties.

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Incorrect Splits

If your track splits are entered incorrectly or they don’t add up to 100%, you and your collaborators could end up not being paid the correct amounts. Confirm splits in writing before release to avoid any disagreements later down the road.

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Incorrectly Attributing Featured Artists

Using ‘feat. XYZ’ in a track title field instead of using the Featured Artist field can mean your featured artist isn’t properly credited on streaming platforms and misses out on royalty earnings too.

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Wrong or Missing Genres

Whether you deliberately choose a genre you think is more ‘popular’ or simply misselect at the distribution stage, using inaccurate genres affects your reach and discoverability and can mean your release doesn’t reach your future or existing fans properly.

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How to use metadata correctly

Ensuring your metadata is correct comes largely down to checking, double-checking and understanding what each metadata field is asking for.

Distributors may use different terminology for some fields, but for the most part your metadata won’t be affected by who you use to distribute your music - as it relies primarily on you (or the person inputting the metadata on your behalf) providing the correct information.

Instead of seeing metadata as an afterthought (that annoying part of the distribution process that’s just standing in the way of you getting your music live), plan for it and take your time to make sure it’s correct.

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Before you distribute your release:

• Confirm songwriter splits with collaborators in writing
• Decide on consistent artist name spelling across all releases
• Name your audio files correctly before uploading them
• Collect all rightsholders’ publishing information

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Enter your release-level metadata:

• Release (Single, EP or Album) title - check spelling
• Artist(s) - check spellings
• Relevant and accurate primary and secondary genres
• Label name, if relevant
• Release date

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Enter your track-level metadata:

• Track title - check spelling
• Artist(s) - check spellings
• Featured artist(s) - check spellings
• Composer credits, if relevant
• Producer credits - check spellings
• Songwriter credits - check spellings
• Add ISRC if the track is a re-release (leave blank if new)
• Lyrics language
• Track properties:
  
  • Samples used
  • Explicit content
  • AI used

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Publishing metadata:

• Choose whether each rightsholder uses a publisher or is self-published
• Confirm copyright holders
• Use correct legal names for publishing fields

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The most important step is the final step: double-checking you’ve input everything 100% accurately. It’s easy to mistype or misread a field and enter the wrong data - so make sure you’re leaving time to run through every field again with a fine-tooth comb to be sure it’s correct.

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