Music: metadata, storage and sharing
We are announcing the launch of a three-part series that looks into best practices when it comes to working with audio files. Three articles, released once a week, beginning Thursday 16th September, right here on Byta’s blog.
Byta has commissioned music journalist Shawn Reynaldo (First Floor, Pitchfork, Resident Advisor, SPIN, DJ Mag, NPR) to look into three issues in the music ecosystem that we thought needed some attention:
Speaking to a variety of music professionals while researching and exploring best practices when it comes to working with audio files, Shawn has put together a three-part series, Digital Blues: The Day-to-Day Challenges of Music Sharing.
Here’s a brief summary of what’s inside:
Digital Blues: The Day-to-Day Challenges of Music Sharing
Part I: Metadata – those in the know, know. Metadata is important.
“… and while it’s not exactly the sexiest topic—after all, we’re literally talking about making sure that song files are labeled properly and have complete and accurate credits—its capacity to foul things up is practically immeasurable…”
Part II: Sending Music – there are seemingly countless options for delivering audio files, and they’re anything but identical.
“Most music professionals have their own preferences when it comes to sending and receiving files, but the landscape is so varied that fluency in multiple platforms has become a mandatory aspect of the job.”
Part III: Storing Music – Storage remains extremely important and very complicated even in a world dominated by streaming.
“…I do a separate iTunes library for each of my shows so I can build playlists,” she explains. “Somebody else recommended it to me and I was like, ‘You are crazy! How could that be an efficient system?’ …It does take up a lot of storage space though.”
Our State of Music Sharing survey was circulated globally for four weeks in June and July. This November, after analyzing the data and conducting a number of one-on-one qualitative interviews, we’ll be launching a State of Music Sharing whitepaper / research report to lay out our findings—and yes, graphics, graphs and pie charts will be part of it.
Stay tuned and read Shawn’s articles in the meantime.