Metadata for Musicians

Metadata is your digital liner notes, embedded in every file. As more music is consumed digitally, both bought and traded, the metadata in those music files matters. At the most basic level, the metadata is the artist, song title, album title, genre, and timing. With advancements in media players and various digital music and metadata delivery programs, artwork, lyrics, complete credits (sideman, composer, technical, etc.), recording and release date information, biographies, links, and more.

If you’re an independent musician, complete and consistent metadata will increase sales and help more fans discover your music. Metadata is searchable information and helps people connect one of your tracks to the rest of your catalog.

I’ve been in my share of crowded subway cars, in which every other person is listening to some kind of mp3 player. Whenever I’m crammed between a few people and nobody has a newspaper for me to read over their shoulder, I usually look at people’s iPod screens. More often than not, I’ll see that they’re listening to “Track 03″ by “Unknown Artist” from “Unknown Album”. Personally, that would drive me crazy. Even though I recognize most of the 6,000 or so songs on my 30 gigabyte iPod, occasionally something pops up that makes me curious enough to dig my iPod out of my pocket or bag and see what’s playing. If you’ve ever ridden in one of those rush hour subway cars, you understand that Harry Houdini himself would have difficulty with that maneuver.

Tracks without metadata are usually acquired through one of many scenarios, but can usually be traced back to just a few series of events. If you can get make your metadata available correctly from the beginning, you can avoid most of these problems.

Online Metadata Databases

When you put a CD in your computer, you usually expect your media player to open up and display the track names, artist, album title, etc. This information is pulled from one of several databases, the two largest being Gracenote, which supplies metadata to iTunes among other programs, and AMG, which supplies metadata for Windows Media Player and a few others including their website which has become a popular destination to find more information on artists and albums. It would make sense then, to get your albums’ information into their databases as quickly and accurately as possible.

In both cases, the information is stored based on the track timings on your CD. Because of this, it is very, very important you wait to submit the information until after your album has been mastered and the indexes and timings are final.

Gracenote is a fairly simple process with a few steps. Pop your CD into your computer and open up iTunes. It will probably display track numbers without any information. There are various ways of entering the information depending on what kind of computer you have and what version of iTunes is on your computer, and to prevent this guide from becoming outdated next week, I won’t walk through the process. Generally speaking, you want to highlight the tracks, right click, and look for some kind of “Get Info” option. Find the tab that allows you to edit the info.

I recommend you first edit the information that is common across the entire album, such as the artist, title, and genre. This way there will be no typos or discrepancies from one track to the next. After you’ve done this, edit the individual track names, and anything else track specific.

Next, import the CD into your computer. This way, every time you put the CD in your computer, those track names will come up.  Make sure everything is exactly as you want it to read before moving onto the next step.

Finally, look through your menus, most likely the Advanced menu, and choose the “Submit CD Track Names” or “Submit To CDDB” or some similar option. As long as you’re connected to the internet, the information should be sent fairly easily. If there is a problem with the database, the next time you put the CD in your computer, the track names should pull up because it will recognize that you already imported it. You should be able to submit the track names without needing to re-enter the information.

AMG (All Music Guide) is an even simpler process, but you have no control over the information is entered. At present, there is no automatic way for the information to be uploaded. Instead, you must mail a CD to their Product Submissions department. Here is the address, and be sure to read their instructions:

Product Submissions
All Media Guide
1168 Oak Valley Drive
Ann Arbor, MI 48108

Despite the delay mailing an actual CD and waiting for their people to manually enter the information, I recommend sending a finished, commercial CD. Whenever I release something as digital only, I never bother sending them anything. If I don’t have a professional looking product, I’m positive it will be lost in the piles of CDs.

I wish there was a better way to do this, but unfortunately it’s the process everyone must put up with. It’s almost unbelievable that they can’t ingest this information digitally, but such is life. Personally, the only problem I had when sending in one of my recent albums is that they only added myself and the mastering engineer in the list of credits, leaving out the rest of my band. AMG generally washes their hands of any responsibility by stating they have too many submissions to enter everything and must prioritize. I’m sure this is true, but as their service becomes more important to artists and labels, they need to get with the program or else their licensees will likely start using a different database for their metadata.

Digital Distribution Services

When you sign your album up for one of the various digital distribution services available to independent musicians, such as CDBaby, TuneCore, or a handful of others, double check all the information you are entering before you submit your form, and check again before the information is finalized and distributed. I only have experience with CDBaby, but I’ve been mostly satisfied with the experience. They did change some of the punctuation and capitalization on a recent release, which took a bit of pleading to have corrected, but in the end everything was as I wanted.

Punctuation and capitalization may seem like nonsense to you, but not all search engines understand that “&” is the same as “and” or that “Ghost Runner (Parts 1 & 2)” is the same as “Ghost Runner parts 1 & 2″. Remember, this information is most valuable to you as an artist if it is consistent. Similarly, if I enter my name as Cameron Mizell on one release and Cam Mizell on another, new listeners may not connect the two.

It’s also very important that information here matches the information you submit to the above databases, as well as what appears on your albums’ packaging.

Uploading Music To Your Website

Whenever I upload music to my website, I always use mp3s I’ve ripped using iTunes, with all the metadata entered to be consistent with everything above. Even though I don’t necessarily want people taking my music from my website, the people who want to take the time trying to figure out how to get are more than welcome to keep it. And therefore, if they’re going to have it, it might as well have the correct metadata.

One of the realities we must all face today is widespread file trading. My personal belief is that people who download my music for free probably weren’t going to buy it anyway, so it’s not a lost sale. However, if that mp3 is sitting on their computer with the correct metadata and they decide they really like my music, it’ll be a piece of cake to find more. That could result in some sort of revenue down the road. Fine by me.

A bolder approach would be to upload your music to file trading sites yourself. That way the files that are initially duplicated and continually traded will at least act as bread crumbs leading back to the rest of your music or at least proper knowledge of who you are for future reference.

Furthermore, the information you put on your website should be consistent with everything I’ve mentioned so far. On the off chance somebody has gotten this far and still doesn’t have complete information about your track, give them a chance to put two and two together.

The Bigger Picture

We now live in a society that is constantly pulling information. There was a time when jazz geeks like me would memorize who played on what album and the track sequence, not to mention any other obscure album those musicians or songs would appear on (well, maybe I still do that). Now any of that information can be Googled on your iPhone, and the results not only tell you about that track, but also what the artist is doing now. Even so, the internet is riddled with discrepancies, and therefore you must be the reliable source for your metadata, both embedded in the file and on your website or social networking profiles.

There will be a day where every piece of information for any given track will can be pulled from the track itself. As the independent artists and catalog albums, all major pieces of the Long Tail, become more commonly sought after by music consumers, the metadata will play a crucial role in discovery where large scale marketing and mass media are absent.