What Is Metadata? Music Industry - 5 Mins or Less

You hear about it all the time, but what is Metadata?  If you are a music creator/owner/administrator - it is HOW YOU GET PAID!  

Click on these links for more information about this topic:

https://exploration.io/what-is-a-composition/#importantmetadata

https://www.themlc.com/preparing-2021

 

Welcome to our “Music Industry - 5 Mins or Less” video series.  These short bites are designed to help everyone understand the basics of the music industry and how it all fits together.

 

In This Video:

Question: What Is Metadata?

Answer: Metadata is any piece of information tied to your copyright.  For songwriters and music publishers, this data is essential to making sure you are getting paid every penny from every source in the music industry. 

 

Metadata can include - title, writer names, writer IPI numbers, PRO work codes, HFA song code, writer/artist ISNI numbers, publisher names, ownership percentages including territories controlled, ISWC code and ISRC codes for any recordings of the song.

 

When possible, the most complete metadata should be registered at your PRO, HFA, Music Reports, YouTube, and other metadata repositories.   You should double check the data already registered at these sources to make sure everything is up to date.  You should also resolve conflicts with co-publishers as these can hold up money at source., And you should make sure any duplicate entries of songs in these databases are combined so all the writers are getting paid on every use.   Doing all this work now, will not only make sure you are getting everything you are due, but it will make sure you are ready when it’s time for you or your publisher to get your metadata into the MLC.

 

Organizing your metadata and keeping it clean everywhere is important because the music industry has become dependent on accurate metadata to track and pay royalties on uses at digital platforms like Spotify, Pandora, Amazon and YouTube.  If your metadata is incomplete you might not be getting paid everything you should be  from a source.  For example, you should be getting paid for Spotify from both your PRO AND Harry Fox Agency.  If you are only getting paid from one, then you aren’t getting everything you should be.