Metadata And The Album Release

I recently came across an excellent article on the musicianswages.com website called The DIY Musician's Pre-release Checklist by Cameron Mizell. There were a lot of great tips, but the ones I liked the best were about the ever important metadata.

Metadata is data about your data, which in this case amounts to all the information about your album. The article suggested that you create a document that has all the information about the album in one place so it's easy to access when it's later needed.

This data should include:

The Album Basics:

• Album title
• Artist name
• UPC or barcode

The Track Basics:

• Track titles
• Track timings
• Writer/composer and publishing credits
• Performer credits if they differ from track to track
• ISRC (International Standard Recording Code)

The Rest:

• Performer credits for the entire album (however you would list it in the liner notes)
• Additional liner note credits inluding recording, mixing, and mastering engineers, designer, photographer, etc.
• The legal line, or the information that shows up in small print on the back of your CD
• The rest of your liner notes, such as thank you’s, essays, or any other words
• Marketing blurbs, or short descriptions you plan on using online or in press packets

The more information that you upload with your music, the more likely it will be searched for, which can bring you potential new listeners. You may not be the object of the search (it could be your producer, engineer or art director), but you never know how you can benefit from a search for them that brings them to you.

Also, a lot of this information can be embedded into your MP3 files, and should be. Never leave a field blank if you can help it, because anyone curious about your music will want this information.

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