Metadata Matters: A Three-Part Series Demystifying Music Metadata for Artists and Creators
Announcing the launch of a three-part series that looks into the importance and challenges of metadata and how it affects artists and their teams. Brought to you by Byta & MusicBrainz.
Three articles, released once a month: May, June & July 2023, beginning Wednesday 17th May. Find them all right here on Byta’s blog.
Each article will be co-written with our friends at MusicBrainz, a community-maintained open-source encyclopaedia of music information.
MusicBrainz exists only to collect as much information about music as they can. They do not discriminate or prefer one “type” of music over another and attempt to collect information about as many different types of music as possible: published or unpublished, popular or fringe, western or non-western, human or non-human — they want it all in MusicBrainz.
Byta and the team at MusicBrainz know that metadata is fundamental to digital music. Each article will tackle the importance of metadata when creating, sharing and promoting music and how it relates to publishing, licensing and getting paid.
- The Basics of Metadata
- Why Metadata Matters in Today’s World
- Payments, Copyright and legal matters
Metadata makes it possible to find your music, but it can be easily confusing, wrong or incomplete and data can go stale surprisingly quickly. Keeping metadata up to date is not the whole picture either – there is also bad metadata and there are bad names! As an artist, if you release music without sufficient amounts of metadata attached to the release few people will ever be able to listen to it.
Here’s a brief summary of what’s inside each of the three articles:
Metadata Matters:
- Part I: The Basics of Metadata
In the modern music world that increasingly plays out online, music metadata becomes increasingly important. What does metadata mean and how does it affect your music and how people are able to discover it?
- Part II: Why Metadata Matters in Today’s World
Identifying and crediting artists, songwriters and contributors using metadata.
How can metadata make connections between the people who were involved in creating the music and the rest of the world?
- Part III: Payments, Copyright and Legal Matters
The role of metadata in music licensing and copyright protection.
How does metadata help artists to get paid correctly and efficiently? What is the impact of metadata on music royalty payments and rights management?
Stay tuned to read all three articles in the next three months right here on Byta’s Blog.